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“I must urge you, therefore, to stay away from Lord Hanbrooke. No matter what. I understand that it is important for you to be polite to him, but otherwise, you had best keep away from him. Otherwise, I shall be very disappointed in you,” Lady Rachel said.
“I am very sorry that you were so upset by my friendliness to Lord Hanbrooke. If any other guest had asked to sit with us, I would have allowed them, and I never imagined that it would have upset you. I ask that you forgive me because I was unaware that I had done anything wrong,” Mary said.
“Have I not made it clear to you that you must not engage with Lord Hanbrooke?” Lady Rachel asked.
“I thought that inviting him to the tea party was a matter of welcoming visitors. I had not realised that I was to keep my distance from him or any others when it was meant to be a time of showing how welcoming our family is,” Mary explained.
“Ha! You expect me to believe that you had no ill intention? Come now, Mary. We are both better than such lies. I expect you to do better than that. You must know that this sort of nonsense is utterly unacceptable.
You would do well to treat that gentleman as though he were your brother because that is all he shall ever be to you. I think you know by now that I have very clear intentions for him and Charlotte,” she said.
Mary inhaled deeply and straightened her posture, shifting with the discomfort but also trying to find her courage. She could say nothing to Lady Rachel about this, but at least she could maintain her own dignity.
“You are to keep out of the way of Lord Hanbrooke and Charlotte. It will be most disappointing if I have to remind you about this again. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Mary replied, sighing.
“Good. Now, for the next two hours, I would like for you to remain in here. You may organize the books as you see fit or you may read or do whatever you wish. But I cannot allow you to continually create a hostile environment towards my Charlotte, particularly around Lord Hanbrooke. Very well?”
“Yes, Lady Rachel. I shall remain here,” Mary said.
Without another word, Lady Rachel turned and departed out the door and closed it behind herself. Mary knew that by the end of her two hours in the room, all the guests would be gone—including Lord Hanbrooke.
She wondered what her stepmother would say to him if he bothered to ask where she had disappeared to. Would Lady Rachel be honest? Or would she make up an excuse? Perhaps she would claim that Mary needed to take care of another matter, or that she had gotten ill.
Those were certainly the sort of things her stepmother might claim to ensure that she was not caught in her efforts to keep Mary away from Lord Hanbrooke.
Mary tried to refrain from getting angry—she knew what sort of woman her stepmother was and none of this came as a surprise. After all, this was simply the life Mary had lived since her father married Lady Rachel. He didn’t understand what things were like when he was not around.
But when Mary looked out the window, she could see the garden and all the guests in the tea party. She quickly spotted Lord Hanbrooke walking with Charlotte, followed by Sarah and Lord Woodhall.
Lady Rachel did not even bother going over to offer an explanation as to Mary’s disappearance. Instead, she went and found other friends of hers with whom she could speak.
Charlotte leaned very close to Lord Hanbrooke. There was just enough distance to avoid accusations of impropriety. Mary grieved that she was not able to be so near to him, to express her own thoughts and feelings for whatever it was that he and Charlotte discussed.
After all, it seemed to Mary that she and Lord Hanbrooke were a good deal more alike than he and Charlotte.
But maybe that was only another reason for him to turn to Charlotte. After all, why would a man wish to court a woman so like himself? He would surely only view Mary as a friend in light of the experience she’d had with him thus far. Rather than having the delicacies of womanhood with which to woo him, Mary had only familiar interests.
In that regard, perhaps Charlotte really was a better match for him.
Mary sighed and continued to watch out the window for a moment. But when Lord Hanbrooke looked up and saw her there, she quickly vanished from sight, fearing that he might realise she had been watching them. She felt like such a fool.
And with that, Mary decided to do precisely what her stepmother had instructed.
She pulled the book she was reading from its space on the shelf and decided that if she could not speak with Lord Hanbrooke just now, she would ensure that she had something to speak with him about once they saw one another again. Until that moment, she would simply try to indulge in the literature at hand.
It was not long before the noise of laughter and conversation from below started to dissipate, and Mary knew that the guests were departing. She looked out the window once more and saw Lord Hanbrooke speaking with Charlotte and Lady Rachel. As they made their way out of the garden, he looked up in the window once more.
This time, Mary did not walk away.
