Authors: Rules of Engagement
This was maddening. Eliza raised her palms before her. “Will someone please tell me what is happening? What have I done?”
“In a moment, dear. In you go.” Aunt Letitia shoved Eliza into the carriage, then shimmied in herself, allowing Grace and Aunt Viola to scramble in behind her.
Eliza stared blankly out the window as the carriage jolted forward. Then, to her astonishment, she saw Lord Hawksmoor emerge through the swarm of partygoers crowding the doorway.
“Grace!” he shouted. “Grace, come back …”
Eliza looked into her sister’s startled, wet eyes as the sound of Hawksmoor’s plea faded into the rumbling grind of the carriage wheels upon the cobbles.
Eliza put her arm around Grace and held her against her. “There now, it will be all right.”
“No, it won’t. I am ruined,” Grace managed through her tears.
Eliza looked up at Letitia. Something was terribly wrong and she was at the center of it all. “Please, Auntie, what happened inside?”
Hesitantly, Aunt Letitia explained. “It seems that a rumor was spread this evening—that you sold what was
most precious
for Lord Somerton.”
“My paintings, you mean?”
“Of course, gel. We know as much. But this is how the rumor began. The most regrettable part is that by time it reached Lady Hawksmoor, what was
most precious
to you had somehow evolved into your
favors.”
Eliza gulped. Was she actually being accused of selling her body? “Surely, Lady Hawksmoor does not believe such drivel,” Eliza said in utter disbelief.
Aunt Viola looked at her sadly. “My dear, the ton loves nothing more than juicy gossip. They will believe even the most outrageous of accusations, if it amuses them.”
“This is incredible.” Eliza sat motionless, holding her sobbing sister and staring blankly out the carriage window. She felt numb.
Grace lifted her head. “Lady Hawksmoor demanded that her son withdraw his offer of marriage.”
Eliza snapped her head around. This could not be happening!
Aunt Viola reached across the cab and patted Grace’s arm. “Hawksmoor’s a good man. What happened tonight will be of no consequence to him. He’ll make you a fine husband yet. You’ll see.”
Grace sniffed loudly, then smiled a little. “I hope so.”
Eliza squeezed her eyes, praying that she’d soon wake to find this night had all been a very bad dream.
To truly surround him, you must leave a way of escape.
Magnus slashed his crop through the still air and decapitated the nettle’s head from its reedy stalk. He watched it fall, with a surprisingly heavy plop, into the green lapping water of the Serpentine. Then, his irritation still high, he set about hacking at its jutting stem, which had the bad taste not to fall with its mistress.
The air was abnormally moist this day and already, after such little exertion, Magnus felt the coolness of sweat breaking across his back.
Where the hell is she ?
he wondered, as he lopped off another nettle top in frustration. Miss Peacock should have arrived thirty minutes earlier.
It was imperative that he speak with her, alone, before their wedding on the morrow. He had made arrangements with Caroline, herself, to meet secretly at the water’s edge, sure that her parents would not otherwise grant him an interview with their daughter so close to the wedding.
Nay, they had worked hard to see Caroline betrothed to a peer. Had gone so far, Magnus believed, as to have purchased his brother’s duns in a devious attempt to force him into their betrothal vice. And it had worked. They’d squeezed from him an offer for their daughter, Caroline.
Now that everything sailed precisely in the Peacock’s current they would hardly risk allowing Magnus a moment alone with Caroline—a moment through which he might wriggle free from his betrothal bonds.
But that is precisely what Magnus hoped to do this very afternoon. Before it was too late. He had to convince Caroline to cry off, to break their connection herself, to avoid ruin.
For how could he marry another after Eliza sold her paintings, her dreams, her heart and soul, for him? She’d cast her dreams to the breeze all to help him save Somerton’s loyal crofters. Did she know just how much that meant to him? How it touched him?
Though she vehemently denied her feelings, Eliza’s heartfelt offering showed Magnus a depth of love and sacrifice he had never known in his lifetime. A love so powerful that it made him ache inside. How could she marry another? How could he?
From the moment Eliza fled the rout upon hearing the news of his engagement, Magnus felt the hollowness of his decision to marry Caroline. It was wrong, no matter how logical it seemed. Wrong for both of them.
But today, he’d correct his mistake and break his engagement to Miss Peacock. If it was possible. If Caroline was as ambivalent about their upcoming nuptials as he suspected.
For, though he and Miss Peacock had been affianced only a very short time, Magnus had not missed the lass’s ever wandering gaze at Society events. Quite likely, her heart lay elsewhere and she had only agreed to Magnus’s halfhearted offer under strict orders from her parents, who plainly desired a title for their daughter far more than her happiness.
Only a furlong away, a shiny black coach drew to a halt on Rotten Row and from it alighted Caroline Peacock and her diminutive lady’s maid.
Caroline slipped her fingers through her saffron ribbon ties and removed her modish bonnet as she walked toward him across the verdant lawn. Pausing for a moment, she handed her hat to her maid and bade the woman, Magnus gathered, to allow her the privacy of a few yards.
She came to him then, smiling brightly in the golden sunlight. But somehow her supposed joy at seeing him never quite reached Miss Peacock’s eyes, and Magnus became more convinced of his suspicions.
“Lord Somerton, how wonderful to see you.”
He bowed to her then, but before he could speak a word, Miss Peacock started again.
“Pray, why have you asked me to meet with you in secret? As you well know, should my parents learn of this, they would be most displeased. The wedding is tomorrow, after all.”
“Aye,” Magnus agreed. “Which is why I must speak with ye today.” He offered her his arm, which she politely took, and they began their stroll around the Serpentine.
As they walked along the footway, Caroline nervously glanced back at her carriage, as though she longed to be inside it headed for home. Magnus wished she were there, too, and that what he was about to do was but a distant memory.
“Miss Peacock—”
“You may call me Caroline, my lord.” She feigned a pleasant smile for him. “After all, we are soon to be husband and wife.”
“Aye.” Magnus squirmed uncomfortably beneath his overwarm coat. “About our marriage—”
"Mother is so excited. Despite the rush of it all, she has seen to every detail herself, no matter how inconsequential.”
Bluidy hell.
Enough prattle. He couldn’t endure this mindless prelude any longer. He whirled before her. “Look here, Caroline. I am about to ask ye something, and ye must answer me truthfully.”
Miss Peacock pushed a coiled lock of her copper hair behind her ear and squinted at her maid in the distance. “Of course, my lord.” She couldn’t even look him in the eye.
“I know that ye dinna love me.”
“I think everyone knows
most
arranged marriages don’t begin with love.” She looked up at him with false confidence gleaming in her eyes. “But I—” she began, but Magnus quieted her with a finger laid vertically across her lips.
“All right, ye dinna love me
now.
But do ye think ye could? That ye might learn to … someday? I must know.”
He held his finger before her lips for some seconds more, allowing her time to think her reply through. To come to an answer not drilled into her mind by her mother, but an answer straight from her own heart.
She lowered her head and toyed with the frothy lace upon her sleeve. “You’ve seen through me, Lord Somerton.” Finally she looked him square in the eye. “I do not love you. Just as
you
do not love me. Best not fool ourselves that it will ever be otherwise.”
Magnus nodded his head. At least she was being honest.
“This is naught but a match of convenience for us both,” she added. “Surely you know that. Payment of your brother’s vowels and money to restore Somerton is why you are wedding me. My family will benefit from my becoming a countess, the wife of a peer. Doors that were once closed will be warmly opened. My parents will overcome the stain of low birth.”
She looked off across the rippling water. “It’s so simple really. This marriage is everything Mother wants for me.”
Magnus knew he had to be gentle now. Careful in his words. “I know our union will benefit yer family, lass. But if it were yer choice alone … what is it that ye want?”
Caroline forced a small laugh and shook her head. “I tell you, it is of no consequence. Even if you did not exist I would never be allowed my heart’s desire.
Never.”
Caroline eyed the carriage again.
“Does that mean there is someone?” he asked, hopefully. “Someone ye love?”
Caroline tempered her emotions before speaking again. “My lord, we should not be discussing such things. We are to be married on the morrow.”
Magnus took her hand in his. “Caroline, ‘tis exactly why we must discuss this now. Before ‘tis too late. It appears our hearts, both yers and mine, reside with others. How can we forge a marriage from such unhappiness?”
When she looked up at him, Magnus could see tears welling in her eyes. “Because I do not have the strength to do otherwise.” Then, she looked away, embarrassed by her admission.
Slipping his fingers beneath her chin, he turned her head up to face him. “I think ye do, lass. If there is love enough in yer heart.”
His words seemed to startle her, and she flinched, freeing a lone tear from her lashes to stream freely down her cheek.
“I cannot defy my parents, my lord,” she said, sniffing back any more tears. “I—I simply cannot.” Caroline pulled back from him. Catching up her skirts, she ran toward her maid and together they hastened to the carriage.
Magnus’s spirit plummeted as he watched her go.
The footman reached for the door, but surprisingly, it swung open for them from the inside.
There, in the dimness, sat the very man Magnus thought he’d seen weeks before at the docks. The man he suspected of trailing him through the predawn streets of London.
A moment later, Magnus’s eyes met those of the gentleman and he tipped his hat, sure now that this man was Caroline’s forbidden heart’s desire.
He knew now. This man, whose love for Caroline was about to be sorely tested, was his only hope for surviving the morrow a free man.
Standing before the open valise on her bed, Eliza checked the date on her billet of passage to Italy for the fourth time this morn, almost unable to believe the ship would set sail this very eve.
There was no use remaining in London. Here, she had become a liability. Already her presence had damaged her sister’s chances to wed respectably. If she remained much longer, she might also ruin Magnus’s chances to marry and to save Somerton as well. No, tonight, quietly, so her family would not stop her, she would leave for Italy.
Crash.
Eliza jammed the ticket into the valise she’d been secretly packing for her voyage. She whirled around, blinking with surprise at the swinging door and her aunts who now stood just inside her bedchamber.
Panting and wheezing, the two old women struggled to speak. Finally Aunt Letitia sucked air deep into her lungs and found her voice. “Grace—Grace is
missing!”
Aunt Viola began to whimper and pace before the bed. “She isn’t in her bedchamber. We’ve searched the house, the grounds, the square. She isn’t to be found.”
Sliding her paisley mantle from her shoulders, Eliza tossed it in a backhanded motion atop her bulging case, hoping to conceal it from her aunts’ notice.
After what had happened at Lady Cowper’s ball two nights past, Eliza had a deep suspicion where her sister might be found. “Perhaps not. Follow me.” Eliza passed by her aunts on her way down the hallway. “I suspect her abigail will confirm Grace’s whereabouts.”
Aunt Letitia and Aunt Viola anxiously followed Eliza below stairs.
Sure enough, Mrs. Penny’s daughter, Jenny, had participated in Grace’s rushed departure. As the lady’s maid sat in a chair before the kitchen fire, surrounded by the mistresses of the house and Eliza, she was more than willing to confess all she knew.
“Miss Grace rang for me at first light. Needed some help, she did, getting ready for a journey of some sort.”
Eliza touched the maid’s shoulder. “A journey? Did she mention where she would be going?”
“No, miss, but Lord Hawksmoor was waiting for her in the parlor while she readied herself. If you ask me—”
“Well, we are!” both aunts blurted, startling the poor abigail near witless.
Eliza patted the lady’s maid’s shoulder. “Go on, Jenny.”
“Well, I think they were running off to be married,” she said, her eyes wide and fixed on her employers.
“Goodness!” Aunt Letitia shrieked. “What was she thinking, running off like this?”
“Indeed!” Aunt Viola pounded her heart. “Why, we could have gone along with her to arrange her nuptials. Organization is our strong suit.”
Eliza shot a smug glance at her aunts, before questioning Jenny further. “Did she say when she would return?”
“She didn’t say one word about that. Wait.. . she did mention something about showing them
all
at the masquerade.” Jenny looked up at Eliza. “Who do you suppose she meant by that, Miss Merriweather?”
"That she would show the ton, I would guess.”
Aunt Viola looked toward her sister. “The masquerade ball is in two weeks. You do not suppose she intends to remain in Scotland until then?”
“All alone on her wedding day, without her family to support her,” Aunt Letitia sniffed.
“One
of us must be there.” Then, her wayward eye found Eliza.
“Oh no, Auntie.” Eliza was astounded. “Surely you are not asking me to trail after her?”