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“She eloped?” she repeated, and then felt her face colour as he gave her a sardonic look. “I mean . . . at least she married for love. Even if it was unfortunate and . . . everything.”
She was making a fool of herself. His eyes had taken on a gleam, as if he wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but he was enjoying it all the same. “So you are a romantic after all,” he said, with a trace of mockery now.
“Just because I do not meddle in the lives of my neighbours does not mean I am not an advocate of happy endings,” she retorted, stung. “It’s just that not everyone can freely follow their heart.”
“Are you following your heart by marrying the curate, Miss Willoughby?”
She was no longer surprised he knew her intimate details—Monkstead knew everything. It was as if he could sniff gossip on the air. That didn’t mean she liked him knowing, and her voice was cool when she replied. “Would you call it romantic to marry someone you didn’t love and barely knew, just to please your father?”
He blinked. “How do you know I didn’t?”
Her mouth fell open. She was about to begin apologising again when he said, “Are you really going to make such a match, Miss Willoughby? I thought you made of sterner stuff.” His voice was almost tender and she felt tears sting her eyes.
This was not good, not good at all. If Monkstead could bring her to tears then she was truly in a bad way.
“The pressure placed upon me has grown too great,” she mumbled, not looking at him. “I have held out as long as I can but my excuses have all run dry. I have been commanded home. They feel it would be beneficial to keep me under their watchful gaze.”
He was frowning, flicking at something on his sleeve. “So there will be no reprieve?” he asked.
“None,” she admitted.
She had enjoyed her stay in Mockingbird Square more than she could ever have imagined, and she had imagined a great deal. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her home, for she did, but out from under her father’s autocratic rule and her mother’s sad looks, she’d blossomed. To return would be worse than if she had never left at all.
“Who is this paragon of virtue you are destined to marry?” Monkstead asked evenly, but his gaze was searching.
“What does it matter what he is called? It’s not as if he would ever be in your circle of acquaintances,” she said with spirit. “My parents are very fond of the man, which is enough for them and which bodes ill for me.” She tried to smile and make a joke of it, but her lips wouldn’t co-operate. Monkstead stared at her and she had the awful sense that he knew everything. Her misery and her hopelessness and her desperate longing not to leave. He stepped closer, looming over her—she’d forgotten how big he was.
“Margaret, I think I am going to have to save you,” he said. And then he bowed and walked away.
She stared after him idiotically, wondering if she had heard him right. Save her? How on earth was that possible? And how dare he presume she needed saving!
No, she must have misheard, or else he was joking with her. Monkstead wasn’t her friend, he had never been her friend. He was a man with a great deal of wealth and self-esteem, and although she enjoyed butting heads with him over his meddling in his neighbours’ lives, she was . . . well she was nothing.
And it was cruel of him to make her hope, because hope was her enemy. She would attend his supper and meet his scandalous sister, and then she would go home and never see him again.
Eleven
Autumn 1816, Mockingbird Square
Lavinia clasped her arms about her waist, feeling ill. Her brother Martin had just left and the scene between them had been so vile, so disturbing, she wasn’t sure she wanted to see him ever again.
At first he’d angrily refused to answer her questions, but she persisted, bringing up Mrs Chandler’s name. After that he’d begun to explain himself, making excuses, and finally he had admitted the truth. He had been spending her money, her son’s inheritance, because it was important to keep up appearances.
“You don’t understand,” he’d said bitterly. “You were Lady Richmond and you didn’t have to go without.”
As if marrying a fifty year old man at the age of seventeen was her good fortune.
In the end she had told him he was not to have anything more to do with her finances, and she was going to speak to Patrick’s bank so that he was unable to draw any more money.
“Martin,” she had said, as he turned to walk out, his shoulders rigid with fury. “When you came to me at the hospital and told me the rumours about Captain Longhurst. Was that true? Did you really believe that he had been responsible for Patrick’s death?”
He turned to glare at her, but she saw the triumph in his smile. “Longhurst didn’t deserve you. Are you such a fool that you didn’t realise he only wanted the money too? I was watching out for you, Lavinia.”
Was he, she asked herself bleakly when he had gone. Perhaps in his way he was, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t thinking of his own future too. That day in the hospital, rushing to Sebastian’s side, she’d believed she would lose him as she had just lost Patrick. If she had blurted out the truth then she and her son would have been socially ostracized. It was true that Martin had saved her from a terrible scandal.
She imagined people turning away from her, whispering behind their hands, telling tales. Being at the centre of such a maelstrom would not be a comfortable thing, it was true, and she had to think of her son. What would have happened when it was known he was not Patrick’s heir? How would Oliver make his way through life with such a burden hanging over him?
And then she remembered how she had abandoned Sebastian in the hospital, refusing to answer his letters, turning her back on him and treating him with cold contempt.
