Foxdale’s jaw dropped, the color draining from his face before he could catch it. “Have you lost your mind?”
“No,” Rowan said, stepping toward him. “But you seem to have mistaken my patience for tolerance.”
Foxdale swallowed and straightened, though less of his insolence remained now. “She means nothing to me.”
Rowan looked at him with cold contempt. “That is precisely why she deserves better than you.”
The words settled between them.
And with them came the final, unwelcome clarity of what had to happen next.
Foxdale would not be moved. The wedding would not be restored. The promise Rowan had made to Emmeline could now be fulfilled only one way.
He turned for the door.
Behind him, Foxdale said nothing more.
By the time Rowan stepped back into the pale afternoon and saw the last of the luggage being loaded onto the waiting carriage, his mind had already moved ahead, past Foxdale, past Juliet’s disgrace, past the whispering guests and the broken morning.
He would have to marry Emmeline.
The thought should have felt like another burden added to an already impossible day. Instead, to his own irritation, it did not.
Chapter Five
“Do not look at me like that, Margaret,” Emmeline sighed.
Margaret didn’t blink, her green eyes tracking every twitch of Emmeline’s jaw. Beside them, the tall grass hissed, whipping against their skirts with a restless, rhythmic snap.
“How else am I to look at you,” Margaret countered, “when you are walking about in yesterday’s disaster with your face composed as though nothing has happened at all?”
Emmeline turned her head to give her friend a weary look, though she lacked the strength for true annoyance. “I am not composed at all.”
Margaret’s brows lifted. “No? Then you hide your distress so well that I should recommend you to the stage.”
That might almost have drawn a smile from her under other circumstances. This morning it only tightened something in her chest.
A day after her canceled wedding, Emmeline had asked Margaret to walk with her because she could not bear another moment indoors. The morning was clear, painfully beautiful in its brightness, and it seemed almost cruel that the world could look so innocent when her own future had become so tangled.
“I do not know what to think,” she said at last, the admission leaving her more quietly than she intended.
Margaret made a small sound and slowed just enough to study her properly.
“You know very well what to think about Foxdale,” Margaret said. “The man is a coward.”
Emmeline let out a low breath. “Perhaps.”
“No perhaps about it. He heard one ugly story, decided it suited his pride to believe the worst, and fled before anyone could place the truth before him. That is cowardice.”
“My concern is not Foxdale’s character.” Emmeline turned her gaze back to the path because she could not bear to meet Margaret’s eyes just then. “It is what becomes of my father now.”
Margaret’s expression softened, though not enough to keep the edge from her voice. “Always your father. Must everything begin and end with what becomes of him?”
Emmeline stopped walking.
Margaret did too at once, her face changing with immediate caution, but Emmeline was not angry. She simply did not have the strength to.
“He is all I have,” she said quietly. “And I am all he has.”
