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The words emerged with such incredulity that her father stirred beside the fireplace.

"Now, my dear," he said gently, addressing Katherine, "what has passed cannot be undone. You will make yourself ill with all this sobbing."

Cordelia slowly turned her head toward him.

Her father sighed and approached the sofa.

"Your sister was wrong," he said, his expression sympathetic. "There can be no disputing that. But she has admitted her mistake, and I believe she is sincerely remorseful. Allow her to apologize, Cordelia, and find it in your heart to forgive her."

For a moment, Cordelia could only stare at him.

Then something fierce and terrible rose within her.

"Forgive her?"

Her father frowned slightly.

"Cordelia, there is no need to raise your voice."

"Forgive her?" she repeated, scarcely recognizing the fury trembling through her words. "Papa, do you understand what Katherine has done?"

"Of course I understand that she behaved most unwisely."

"Unwisely?"

Cordelia rose from the sofa so abruptly that Katherine startled.

"She and Lady Victoria bribed a footman to lace George's drink with some vile substance and deliver it to him. They deliberately rendered him helpless so that Victoria might compromise him before witnesses, and you call that unwise?"

Her mother gasped.

Their father went very still.

Katherine lowered her handkerchief.

"Cori..."

"No. You will listen to me now, Katherine, because I have listened to quite enough of your excuses."

Her sister's eyes widened.

Cordelia's heart pounded so violently that she could feel it against her ribs, yet she refused to be silenced.

"I’ve already received a letter from George, who sent his man of affairs to investigate what happened. The footman has already admitted that he was paid to tamper with George's particular drink and deliver it to him. I cannot even imagine what the two of you obtained from an apothecary. Was it laudanum? Something stronger? Did you consider what might happen to him? Did you consider whether he might become dangerously ill, or whether the substance might do him lasting harm?"

Katherine shook her head frantically. "I did not know what Victoria intended to give him."

"Then why did you agree to it?"

"I thought..." Katherine pressed a trembling hand against her chest. "I thought she would have merely seduced him, and that he would give in.”

Cordelia stared at her. For one dreadful moment, she could not find a single word to express the horror of what she had just heard. "Give in…" she repeated softly.

Katherine began to cry again.

“Only yesterday, George asked me to marry him,” Cordelia said, a tear slipping down her cheek. “I said yes, because I love him with all my heart, and I trust him, Katherine. I trust his honor, his kindness, and the goodness of the man I have come to know so intimately. He has never given me reason to doubt him, and yet you went to such dreadful lengths to shatter that trust, to make me believe that the man I love was capable of betraying me in the cruelest fashion. Do you have any notion what it was like to walk into that room and see him with her? And for a few terrible moments, you succeeded. I believed the man I loved had betrayed me. I believed everything he had promised was a lie, and that I had been a fool to trust him. You made me doubt everything I knew of him, every tender word he had spoken, every kindness he had shown me, and even the sincerity of his love. Do you understand how much that hurt? How much it still hurts to know that my own sister deliberately tried to destroy something so precious to me?”

Cordelia’s voice trembled, and she pressed a hand against her aching heart. “I am so thankful that I stopped and thought about the man I know, the man whose character I have witnessed for myself, because I realized that he could never be the faithless, dishonorable gentleman you and Lady Victoria were so determined to show me. Had I not trusted my own heart and returned to that library, I might have abandoned him when he needed me most. And I cannot bear to imagine what might have happened to him then. Do you know what happened when I returned to the library?"