And she had ushered a considerable number of her guests to the improper display.
Her stomach dropped.
Miss Hawthorne spun around, her face white with shock, brows pulled in confusion.
“Lord Ambrose?” she asked. “What on Earth do you mean?”
But fast footsteps approached, and Lord Ambrose appeared, out of breath, too late to have gotten himself involved in the way Cassandra planned. Unable to shout at him as she wished, Cassandra held her tongue, her eyes flashing angrily. She yanked him aside.
“I thought I told you to go to the maze!” she hissed.
“I was about to but… well, Miss Angelica and I have not seen one another for some time, and I spotted her—”
Cassandra pushed him aside, whirling back to her group. Whispers were picking up among them, and more and more people were joining to see what the spectacle was about.
“Miss Hawthorne,” one lady called out, “what were you doing alone with His Grace, hidden away in here? You were standing awfully close.”
“Do you not hear what the scandal sheets call him, Miss Hawthorne?” Another asked.
Cassandra’s heart pounded as she realized just how much her plan had gone the wrong way.
Amelia appeared quite dismayed as she surveyed the crowd, likely coming to the unsettling realization of the predicament into which she had inadvertently thrust herself. She spun, looking at the duke, who only swallowed, anger hardening his eyes as he looked at Cassandra. Cassandra had aimed to ruin Miss Hawthorne; instead she only pushed her closer to the very man she herself wanted.
“Perhapsheis the true rake here!” another lady speculated, crying out the accusation.
Before anybody could say anything else, the Hawthornes pushed through the crowd.
***
“What is the meaning of this?” Amelia’s father shouted, his face full of shock.
Behind him, her mother was white with horror as she looked between Amelia and the duke. Stunned, she shook her head, a gloved handclasped over her mouth.
Amelia’s stomach was utter stone while she fought for breath, as the hedges turned into a blur behind her. She did not know when the Duke of Blackthorn had moved to stand in front of her protectively but suddenly she was shielded from the onlookers, as if that would take away the situation.
She wished to press her forehead to his back but she could not make matters worse.
This is it, she thought, her tea rising in her throat.I am utterly ruined.
She began to tremble when she realized her father would now have no choice but to marry her off to another man old enough to be her grandfather, a man whom would expect an heir, a man who would leer at her and—
“Breathe.”
The murmur came quietly, the duke’s voice low.
“I have been on the receiving end of many rumours and they always settle. Just breathe, Miss Hawthorne.”
She tried to but his consoling only made her question if anybody else heard, if they saw how his head tilted towards her. She moved back, utterly afraid.
“Amelia, come with me.”
She did not get a chance to answer to the voice of her father, for her arm was taken and she was whisked away, out of the maze, but not before she saw the duke’s alarmed, angered look, aimed right at her.
No, she tried to tell herself.Not at me. Surely not at me.
Yet she could not shake the uneasiness as her parents got her away from the duke, and the crowd, and the promise of rumors to bloom from such a scandal.
***
