A Lord Rotheby's Holiday Bundle (42 page)

“
Would you care to
explain,” Quin asked with a deadly calm tone after his grandfather
emerged into the center of the clearing, “why you took it upon
yourself to invite guests into
my
home? Particularly guests whom you know very well
that I have no desire to step foot anywhere near my property?” He
indicated Lady Phoebe.

A pain assaulted Aurora’s
abdomen, much stronger than before. She bit her lip to keep from
calling out. Now was certainly
not
an appropriate time.

“
If you will recall,”
Rotheby said, “technically, this is still
my
home. I will invite whomever I see
fit. I saw fit to invite this piece of garbage” he waved toward
Griffin “because you have yet to put a stop to his treachery. His
sister was invited in case she has also played a part in it,” he
added as an afterthought.

Griffin’s treachery. So Lord Rotheby
knew about the scandalous new gossip rags, and he thought Griffin
responsible?

Another pain gripped Aurora. She
doubled over with a whimper. But she couldn’t allow herself to
indulge in such self-possession for long. As soon as the clenching
pain passed, she straightened.

“
I hadn’t handled it yet
because I wanted to avoid a scene just such as this one. The fact
that he has dragged my wife and her good name through the mud,
spreading his vicious lies about her has hardly passed unnoticed by
me, I can assure you.”

“
This is slander, all of
it,” Griffin said. “I’ve done nothing against your wife. Certainly
nothing that would hurt her reputation worse than you already have,
Quinton. A blackguard with your history could hardly help her, but
then to force her into an impromptu marriage by ruining her in the
middle of a ballroom? To allow gossip about her and her
writings
go without any
attempt at a denial of their veracity, running away to hide in the
country? What else could the good people of the
ton
think but that it was an
admission of truth?”

Quin stepped toward Griffin, grasping
him by the starched points of his collar. “You and I both know that
the first was hers. I don’t know how you got the pages. That is
beside the point. But the fact remains that you took from my
wife”

“
And that is somehow worse
than what you took from my sister?” Griffin interrupted. “You
offered for her. You signed the contracts with my father. And then
you disappeared on the morning of your wedding, not to return until
just before you dragged poor
Lady
Quinton
into your sordid affairs. You
couldn’t even be bothered to take the time to inform either your
intended or anyone in her family that you were crying off, so we
could not have the opportunity to call you out for your cowardice.
For that matter, the staff of your own home did not learn of your
whereabouts for months.”

Quin tightened his grip, his lips
forming a snarl. “So you decided to gain your revenge through
attacking my wife. Do you even realize what your sister is? Why I
could not marry her, or even why I would never wish her upon my
greatest enemy?”

Yet again, pain coursed through
Aurora’s center, nearly blinding her this time with its
intensity.

“
My lady,” said a vaguely
familiar voice from behind her with a great deal of insistence.
Someone she’d met only that evening, surely. Aurora turned to see
who it was, still caught in the grips of her pain. Oh, the sweet,
young woman from just before this all started. What was her name
again?

“
Mrs. Poole?” Aurora
finally said when the name came to her.

Quin’s voice ripped through her pain.
“She beat a stable boy with a horsewhip,” he bellowed to the entire
crowd. “For the sin of placing her saddle upon the very horse she
had him saddle for her the previous day. She whipped him until
blood seeped through every inch of his clothing, until he was
passed out on the ground in the stables, until he could no longer
cry from his pain.”

Oh, dear good Lord. The pain. Aurora
couldn’t handle the pain much longer.

“
My lady, please,” Mrs.
Poole insisted, placing a hand upon Aurora’s arm and tugging
gently. “The blood. You must come away at once, ma’am.”

She couldn’t concentrate. Her mind
wouldn’t cooperate. “This all happened years ago, Mrs. Poole. There
is no blood now.”

“
The boy likely deserved a
good whipping,” Lord Griffin said. “If Phoebe hadn’t delivered it,
rest assured he would have received worse from someone else—someone
stronger. Are you afraid of a lady? Were you afraid that she would
beat you?”

“
Not the boy, ma’am,” Mrs.
Poole said. “You. You’re bleeding, all down the back of your lovely
gown.”

Aurora looked down at her gown.
Bleeding. She was bleeding.

The baby.

Her child was gone. Their chance at
appeasing Lord Rotheby was gone. Her chance to make Quin happy…to
be what he needed her to be…

“
No child deserves such
treatment,” Quin said, so softly Aurora almost couldn’t hear it.
“No boy or girl. No man or woman. And I would
not
spend the rest of my days aligned
to someone who would think it appropriate to mete out such
punishments. I’ve lived enough of my life in such a manner. Never
again.”

“
Mrs. Poole, I…” Aurora
didn’t know what to say. What could one say at such a
moment?

But the young woman looked on her with
kind eyes and took her hand into her own. “Come with me,” she said,
and then she pushed her way through the throng watching the
spectacle in the courtyard.

“
And a lady deserves to be
left at the altar without a backward glance? Without a
by-your-leave, or even a letter of explanation?” Griffin hollered.
“You ruined my sister’s chance at making a respectable match, so I
decided to ruin your wife’s chance of upholding a place in society.
After the things she’s supposedly written, she’ll never step foot
inside the grand ballrooms of London again.”

“
And you’ll never step foot
on my property again.” A loud thud sounded. The crowd let out a
collective gasp.

Then all went silent.

Chapter
Twenty-Six

26 June, 1811

It’s all over
now.

~From the journal of Lady
Quinton

Mrs. Poole helped Aurora back into the
house. Thankfully, the entire ballroom had emptied. No one, save
Mrs. Poole and the servants, would see her in such a state of
distress. Indeed, tears had been pouring down her cheeks the entire
way through the crush. Her only saving grace had been that Quin and
the scene he was causing held everyone’s attention rapt.

Once inside, she thanked the young
woman for her assistance, then found Mrs. Marshall to take her up
to her chamber.

Rose helped her to clean herself and
change clothes. She tried to dry Aurora’s eyes, as well, despite
the pointlessness of such an endeavor. The tears would not cease.
For that matter, they might never dry up again. Aurora waved her
maid off. She needed to be alone. She needed time to think. To
write.

Now, for the first time in her life,
Aurora understood her mother. She’d always loved her mother. She
had often felt pity for her—which might have something to do with
why she abhorred pity coming from anyone else. Aurora never wanted
to be bleak, full of grief and sorrow and pain. She never wanted to
be in an empty marriage, one without love.

One with love, but too much hurt to
bridge the gap to where love could matter more than pain. Yet here
she was. Married to a man she loved more than breath itself, yet
unable to be the wife he needed. Full of all the heartaches of life
and devoid of the joys.

Aurora took a candle from the mantle
and sat down at her escritoire. She ought to go back down to the
ballroom. Surely by now, Quin had sent Lord Griffin and Lady Phoebe
off, and the revelers had returned to their evening of mirth.
Surely she would be missed. It just wasn’t done, for a hostess to
abandon her own guests at a ball, to leave them to their own
devices while she wallowed above stairs in her misery.

But she couldn’t face them. Not
tonight. Not now.

Not Quin.

Though she feared she might never be
able to face him again, he needed to know. He deserved to
know.

So Aurora picked up her quill and
dipped it into the inkwell.

And she wrote.

She wrote their story—their true
story, and not the fantasy she had imagined. She wrote her parents’
story. She wrote until she could write no more. Tears splattered
the pages of foolscap, but taking the time to rewrite it would only
instigate more tears. The tears would have to stay.

But Aurora could not.

She took her journal into Quin’s
chamber, placing it upon the pillow of his bed.

And she left.

~ * ~

“
I don’t believe a single
one of your guests has left,” Jonas said to Quin as they stood off
to the side of the ballroom.

Quin scanned the room, taking in a
mental count of the people. Amazingly enough, it seemed Jonas was
right. The scene between himself and Griffin and Phoebe had been
badly done on his part (on theirs, too), but all indications
pointed to it being one of those moments the townspeople would talk
about for years to come—but only in derision when it came to
speaking of Griffin.

Somehow, Quin came up aces on this
one. He’d never understand it in all his life.

But when he had returned, he wanted
Aurora. He wanted to hold her, to kiss her, to tell her again that
he loved her. He wanted to see the sly smile she always gave him
and to hear the sassy tone of her voice.

She was nowhere to be
found.

Mrs. Marshall informed him that her
ladyship was feeling rather under the weather and had gone up to
her bed early. She begged his forgiveness for deserting him with a
ballroom full of guests.

It was probably best that he allow her
to rest. She was carrying his child, after all. Their child. And he
was not so oblivious to not recognize that she was having
difficulties with it.

So he carried on with the ball without
her, entertaining their guests, dancing with the wallflowers,
charming everyone in sight. Without flirting, of course. To be
honest, it felt rather odd to not even have the inclination to
flirt with a young lady or three. The only one he wanted to flirt
with was Aurora.

Instead, he went through the night as
though nothing was amiss. Now, after much dancing and discussion
and a supper suited for a king, followed by still more dancing, the
final set of the night was upon them.

“
Have you put your name on
anyone’s dance card yet?” Quin asked his friend. Jonas had already
danced the opening quadrille with Nia, and the supper dance too—a
waltz. Quin ought to have voiced a complaint about Nia dancing a
waltz, since she wasn’t out yet. She didn’t yet have permission to
dance the waltz from one of the patronesses of Almack’s. But his
mother had reminded him that they were not in Town. The rules of
propriety need not be adhered to quite so strictly in the country.
The remainder of the sets he had spread out amongst various ladies
from the house party and a few from the town.

Nia hadn’t managed to be quite the
wallflower she would have liked, either, with a partner for every
set but one, when she instead chose to go for a walk around the
kitchen gardens with her father. Quin barely managed to get his
name on her card before it was filled, and he knew Aurora would
never forgive him if he had not acted the part of the older
brother.

Jonas looked across the floor at a
grouping of young ladies, refusing to meet Quin’s eyes. “Yes, I’ve
made arrangements.”

On the dais, the violinist tapped his
bow against the floor, signaling their readiness to begin the final
dance. Odd, that Jonas was avoiding giving more answer than that.
“I suppose we ought to go and fetch our partners then,” Quin
said.

“
Indeed we should.” With
that, Jonas turned from him and walked away.

There was no time to ponder Jonas’s
reaction at the moment, however. Quin must fetch his mother. He’d
requested that she waltz with him—something he had never in all his
life done.

With her on his arm, they took up
their positions on the ballroom floor. Quin looked around to find
Nia, to be certain she had a partner for the final dance of the
evening. “What the devil?” he said when he finally found her.
“Mother, why have you allowed Nia to dance a third set with Jonas
tonight? It isn’t proper. They’ll think her fast.”

“
I see nothing improper or
fast about it. And you really can’t say anything about impropriety,
since abandoning me without a word and not writing to me to tell me
you were alive for years is hardly proper. Being married for
months, without a brief note to inform me of such is hardly
proper.” His mother frowned up at him as the music started and they
began to dance. “A third dance with a gentleman who is virtually
family, at a country ball no less, is perfectly fine.”