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“Really, Aunt, I think Violet could have found herself a much better catch than me.” He was embarrassed. Not only was he cheating his aunt, but he was also cheating Violet. Yes, she’d agreed with the terms. But that was then.
So much had changed.
“What a splendid looking young woman.”
Lord Granville accepted the tea Euphemia handed to him while she tried to keep her expression impassive before attempting to turn the topic. She was not quick enough.
But suddenly, there was Mabel making things a great deal worse.
“Did you see the way Max looked at her? He certainly never looked at me like that, Grandfather.” Mabel turned an appealing look towards the door as her grandfather entered the room. When Euphemia had been surprised by the unannounced arrival of the two elderly friends who’d had travelled down from the country together, she’d been right to fear the worst. Neighbours for more than fifty years, they had always been set upon a match between their respective grandchildren. She shifted in her seat, her expression combative. Mabel was docile so much of the time but when she dug in her heels, she was the most stubborn creature Euphemia had ever met. She both admired and abhorred this trait in the girl she’d known all her life. Sometimes Mabel was her own worst enemy.
“It’s why I refused him,” Mabel went on in a self-righteous tone that would set up the bristles of the two elderly gentlemen, Euphemia was certain. “I believe that in 1878 it’s not unreasonable to desire a love match. I think of Max more like a brother than a potential husband.”
If ever there was an occasion when Euphemia wished young Mabel was as discreet as she was usually in the presence of her elders, it was now.
“Admiration is one thing. Choosing a suitable mate requires a great deal more than that.”
It was Septimus who answered, and his look was not nearly as indulgent as it had been. His beetling grey eyebrows jutted over his bulbous pale-blue eyes as he turned towards his sister. “Tell me, Euphemia; what do you know of Miss Lilywhite?”
Euphemia began to shake under the glare of his scrutiny, though she tried hard not to let her usual fear show. Septimus had an uncanny knack of ferreting out her weak spots, making her gabble all sorts of indiscretions through pure terror.
She pressed her lips together. Not this time. No, she would not reveal anything that would jeopardise Max’s chance at happiness.
Unable to meet his eye, she said in a tone barely above a whisper, “It’s true she works for her living, but she is a good, honest young woman who has fallen on difficult times.” She forced herself to concentrate on her hands in her lap rather than his face. The hardness of his gaze would undo her; she knew. Her throat felt swollen as she tried to push out the words with a false lightness. “I don’t know that Max knows her at all.”
“But isn’t she—?” Mabel put her hands to her lips before the words were out, causing Septimus to narrow his eyes as he swivelled his head in her direction.
“Isn’t she what?”
Now it was Mabel’s grandfather who was demanding filial obedience. “What do you know that you’re not telling us, Mabel?” He was like Septimus. Uncompromising. Demanding. A man who expected a dutiful granddaughter as Septimus expected a dutiful sister.
And grandson.
And that’s why it was so important that Euphemia not be the faulty cog that consigned Max’s hopes of happiness to cinders.
“I’m sure I wasn’t going to say anything.” Mabel’s feigned innocence was even more jarring in the tense atmosphere. For Mabel knew not the first thing about lying, and it showed. “Max has said nothing, he’s only intimated…I mean, when he said he couldn’t marry me, it wasn’t because there was anyone else and certainly not Miss Lilywhite…”
She was gabbling now, making things worse, just as Euphemia might have had she lost her nerve. Mabel knew it, and Euphemia knew she knew it, but the girl was unpractised and as terrified of her male guardian as Euphemia was of hers.
“Euphemia.”
Septimus’s tone was low and quiet, but it reverberated around the drawing room like a foghorn in the horrified stillness broken only by the rattle of Euphemia’s teacup against the saucer in her trembling hands.
"Yes, Septimus." She could barely get the words out. She was cowering; she knew. And Mabel was looking on in horror as if Euphemia really was about to receive a lashing. Abject creature that she was. The self-loathing was like a living organism, slithering through her body, threatening to choke her.
"Miss Lilywhite is a friend of yours, she says? An unusual type of friend for someone such as you, Sister. I wonder if perhaps you have helped facilitate an even more unusual friendship between my grandson and the young lady?" He waited. And when Euphemia didn't answer, her silence seemed to corroborate his apparent suspicions. With chilling import, he went on, "And I wonder what else you might have facilitated between the young lady if Max is suddenly so anxious to separate himself from our worthy Mabel, whom he was to have married only three short weeks ago."
And now the moment was nearly upon her.
Her marriage.
Her sham marriage.
Violet stared miserably at her veiled reflection, immune to the gasps of admiration from the girls who gathered round her in Madame Chambon’s reception room.
Even Madame Chambon was suitably impressed.
“The first bride I’ve ever despatched to anyone better than the butcher’s boy, my girl. You’ve done well even if it is a sham wedding.” She rubbed her hands together, and Violet imagined her doing the same thing in the solitude of her study as she ran gold coins through her fingers.
