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“All right.” Lorraine smiled, her eyes glinting as she looked him over. “Maybe we'll bump into each other again. I’m sure we’ve got a lot to talk about.”
Nathan didn’t respond. He simply got into the carriage, slamming the door shut as he rested his rifle in the corner of the carriage. He glared at Simon as the cab began to move.
“Did you know she was going to be here?”
Simon snorted. “No, of course not. You know I don’t care for her, either.”
That was true enough. Simon and Lorraine didn’t get on well, either. Lorraine thought Simon was the worst possible choice for a friend and had kept urging Nathan to find someone else to be his closest friend when they had first met years ago. Nathan had told her, not too politely, where she could go. He wasn’t pushing away his oldest friend because she wanted him to. That was another reason why Nathan would not even consider Lorraine for marriage.
The problem was, she was a widow now, and she was going to see this as her opportunity to get a man she always wanted.
Nathan was not looking forward to that.
* * *
“Eleanor?”
Eleanor looked up. Marion was coming across the garden towards her. Eleanor had come out into the garden and sat herself under the beautiful elm tree that had been growing there since she was a little girl. It was her favourite place when it was a beautiful day, a place where she could curl up in the shade or a patch of sun and relax. A place to think. A place to try and get her head around her father’s news. Eleanor had been churning it over in her mind for a while, and she didn’t know what to think anymore. Everything was just so mixed up.
Marion settled on the grass beside her, smoothing out her skirts.
“Parsons said you would be out here. Are you all right?”
“I…” Eleanor sighed. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
“What’s happened? I heard that Lord Edward Heavenly was drunk again.”
“He was. He went out last night.”
“I thought he was supposed to stay inside and not go out.”
“He found a way.” Eleanor began to tug the pins out of her hair. They were making her head throb. “He said that he had something for me. A marriage.”
Marion’s eyes widened. “A what?”
“He’s organized for me to marry an Earl. Apparently, a friend of said Earl heard about his debt problems and said he would wipe it all out if Father agreed to give me to the Earl for marriage.”
“He traded you?” Marion gasped.
“Pretty much.” Eleanor dropped the pins in her lap, her hair starting to fall out of place. “I don’t know how to think – I’m being treated like a piece of furniture - after Father said he would never do that to me.”
Edward Heavenly had promised he would always go with what his daughter wanted. While his insistence that she should marry had grown over recent months, he had never pushed her really, but now he had completely ignored her wishes.
“Maybe you should think of this as a good thing,” Marion said.
Eleanor stared at her. “Why do you say that?”
“You get a husband out of this. You won’t be considered a spinster anymore, someone on the shelf. You’ll be considered a Countess.”
There was that. But Eleanor still didn’t like how it had come about. She didn’t even know what the man she was meant to marry looked like. She tugged more pins out, all of them now in the blanket of her skirts.
“It means a lot of things once I’m married, though, Marion.” Eleanor ran her fingers through her hair and began to massage her scalp. “I’m going to have to follow proper duties. I won’t be able to work at the orphanage anymore. I’m sure the Earl won’t let me do that.”
“Oh, you will. You always manage to do whatever you want.”
“But that was when I had Father in charge of me. He understood.” Eleanor made a face. “My potential husband won’t understand.”
No man would and Eleanor would end up having to give up something she loved doing. Then the children wouldn’t have a champion. Eleanor wanted to be that champion.
