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Sian puffed out her cheeks and shook her head. She could understand Martha’s sentiment.
“I don’t see why father shouldn’t marry the oaf seeing as he is so desperate for a wedding. I am not going to and neither are you. I have already told father that I am in love with Isambard.”
“Love doesn’t matter to father,” Sian countered flatly.
“Well, it matters to me, and to you.” Martha immediately looked contrite. “I am sorry.”
“For what?”
“Your situation with Ryan. I know you love him,” Martha whispered sadly. “If you cannot marry him because he is too blind and foolish to recognise your worth, what are you going to do? If you stay here, you know father is going to try to force you to wed Cedrick regardless of what you want.”
“I am going to have to go and stay with Cousin Sophia.”
“But that is miles away,” Martha cried.
“I have no choice. I need to get away and stay away until I know that Wilhelmina and Cedrick have given up and gone. Hopefully, by the time I do return it will all have blown over, and father will have gotten the message and given up trying to marry us off. With me not here he will at least be able to concentrate on getting this family out of the financial trouble we are in.”
“What happens if he can’t?” Martha whispered.
“Then I think my life is ruined before it has even truly begun. There is definitely one thing I do know and that is I am not going to marry anybody but Ryan, and he cannot ever contemplate someone like me as a wife.”
“Why not? There is nothing wrong with you. Why, you would make any man a wonderful wife.”
“But he lives in a different world to me, Martha,” Sian chided gently. “He is gentry whereas I am a nobody. I don’t have wealth. I don’t have a title. Soon, father won’t even be business associates with him. We will be quite impoverished. Marriage to someone like me would cause Ryan and his family a terrible scandal. I should have every door in society slammed in my face because of my situation. There is nothing I can do to change it. It is best that I do everything possible to forget Ryan Terrell ever existed.”
“To Cousin Sophia’s in Carlisle then?” Martha asked.
Sian nodded. She made her way over to the bureau and began to write a note to her distant cousin, the only member of her family apart from Martha who knew of her devotion to the handsome man next door.
Tucked away deep inside Terrell House, Ryan sat at a desk and was also scribbling a note. He folded it neatly and then held the dripping wax over the fold. Pressing a seal into the molten wax, he waited until the liquid solidified and then tucked it inside his pocket.
“Going to see her again, eh?” Norman called from across the room.
“I need to talk to her.”
“You are not going to let this go, are you?”
Ryan stopped and stared at the door before him for a few moments. “What is everyone saying?”
“That your heart is taken. Everyone is wondering who this lucky woman is. Names are being bandied about, but nobody really has a clue.” Norman removed a letter he had received from London and tossed it onto the low table he rested his boots on.
Ryan contemplated it with little interest.
“People will be curious.” Norman shrugged.
“You mean they are scandalised that my future wife is someone who doesn’t carry a title or has much in the way of wealth.”
“So, you have contemplated marrying her?” It wasn’t a question.
“I have no choice,” Ryan snapped. “She kissed me in front of her father.”
“But her father wants her to marry someone else.”
Ryan froze on his way to the door. “What? What do you know about that?”
Norman looked at his friend with a wariness that left Ryan without any doubt that what Norman was going to say was not good news. “Rumour has it that her father has already put it about that there is to be an engagement announcement soon, and it involves his oldest daughter. He has made it clear that there is a very special guest in the house who has captured her eye. Arthur has made it clear to everybody he has met that he won’t object to a union when he is approached, and that it is high time his daughters married.”
Ryan’s thoughts flew to Cedrick. He shook his head in disgust and studied the note in his hand.
