“Who is it?” he called out.
A figure emerged from the dimness, another, smaller person right behind him, and Emery’s eyes grew wide as she realized, with mounting horror, who they had stumbled upon in the hedge maze, clearly meeting for a clandestine rendezvous.
It was Henry and Georgina.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Henry? What are you doing here?” Lucien spat, his eyes seeming to pop in his head as he took in his little brother, standing sheepishly in front of him, with a flustered-looking--and decidedly rumpled--Miss Georgina Holloway by his side. He couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Even as his mind knew what it was he was witnessing, his reason refused to believe it.
How could Henry be this foolish? Certainly I am misconstruing this scene!
But there was nothing to misconstrue. And from the gasp of horror his wife made--followed by the tears that filled Miss Holloway’s eyes as she turned scarlet and looked at the ground--he knew he wasn’t the only one who had reached such an incendiary conclusion.
“This cannot be,” he heard himself say aloud. “Henry, tell me I am not seeing what I think I am.”
“I-I can explain!” Henry stammered. “I promise, it isn’t what you think it is!”
“It isn’t that you are alone and unchaperoned with an unmarried young lady in a hedge maze known throughout thetonas being a scandalous location for illicit love affairs?”
Henry opened his mouth as if to argue, then shut it again. After several tense seconds, he stared down at the ground. “Well, I suppose it is that,” he mumbled. “But we weren’t having a love affair! We were just talking.”
“Do you think that matters?” Lucien roared, unable to contain his fury any longer. “Do you think the rest of thetonwill look the other way if they think you met Miss Holloway here simply to talk? Do you truly believe they will believe that? Do you truly believeIwill believe that?”
“It’s the truth!” Henry said, looking up defiantly and meeting Lucien’s gaze. His eyes were blazing, and there was a stubbornness to his look that Lucien recognized all too well. “And I will not have you implying anything otherwise and maligning Miss Holloway’s reputation.”
“You are the one maligning Miss Holloway’s reputation!” Lucien shouted, the hedges mercifully muffling the sound and keeping it from carrying to whomever might be listening. “You are the one who has compromised her!”
Miss Holloway looked up at this, her mouth falling open and her eyes widening to the size of saucers. Lucien felt little sympathyfor her.She should know better than this! My brother might be the one who is more at fault, but no lady is that innocent!
“Lucien…” Lucien became aware that his wife was tugging on his arm, and he looked down to see her anxious expression shining up at him. “I should escort Georgina back to the party now,” she murmured. “The longer she is gone, the more likely it becomes that she will be missed and questions will be asked. But if people see her coming back through the gardens with me, then that might head off any rumors.”
“Good thinking,” Lucien said, his mind already jumping to every possible scenario where this ended in ruin for them all. “Go at once and find Leah. We are leav--”
Lucien stopped cold.Leah. Where is Leah?
Rounding on his brother, he glared at him with such ferociousness that Henry actually shrank back. “What about Leah?” he murmured in such a deadly whisper that it seemed to freeze the air around them. “Did you leave her alone? Is she now unchaperoned at the O’Farrell’s garden party?”
Henry blinked, and a look of horror and dawning comprehension passed across his face.
Lucien closed his eyes as horror, anger, and even guilt all flooded through him.He left her alone unchaperoned. He abandoned his duty to his family to go off and have a tryst with an unmarried young lady. And it is all my fault. I am the one who has failed my family if this is how my younger brother acts.
When he opened his eyes again, no one was moving. All of them were watching him as if waiting for him to explode. But when Lucien spoke, he was careful to keep his voice calm and neutral. He didn’t want to upset the ladies, least of all his wife.
“Emery, please escort Miss Holloway back to the party and find Leah and make sure she is alright. If anything is amiss, then you are to leave at once. Otherwise, I think it best we stay a little bit longer just so that we do not arouse suspicion. No one, and I mean no one, can discover what has happened here today. You both must act as if everything is natural when you return to the party, that you were merely catching up in the gardens, as old friends often do. Do you understand me?”
He looked hard at Miss Holloway first, as it was her he didn’t trust. But she nodded quickly before looking back down at her feet.
“Yes of course,” Emery murmured, and she released his arm and held hers out to her friend. “Come, Georgina, let’s get you back to the party.”
His wife’s eyes slid to Henry, and for a moment, the two of them looked at each other. Lucien thought he saw disappointment in Emery’s eyes, and shame in Henry’s. It did little to ease the fury that was still simmering inside of him, ready to burst out to the surface.
Miss Holloway took Emery’s arm, and then Emery led her away, back down the path from which they’d come, turning right at the next fork instead of left. Lucien watched them. It was onlyafter they had disappeared from sight that he turned back to his brother.
Henry seemed to cower in front of him, but Lucien didn’t care.
“Do you have any idea what you have done?” he asked in a cold, furious whisper.
“Lucien, I promise, it isn’t as bad as you think. No one saw us!”
