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“We thought you might have gone on ahead to the next town,” Hartford confirmed. He’d gotten down off his horse, unlike Hatchet, and was holding the leads to his and his wife’s horses. “The Camdens and Davies went ahead to look, and we stayed behind to search the paths, just in case.”
“If it had not been for the storm, I would have certainly made an attempt,” Nathan said, trying not to sound too grim. If they’d been able to make it to the next town, they could have found an inn and a woman to tend to Miss Davies, and he would not have to marry her.
Or if Hatchet had not shown up with the search party, that was likely the story they would have concocted.
Unfortunately, his presence made everything much more dire. And he’d told the Davies. Of course, he had. It was the right thing to do, but… damn.
Nathan was well and truly trapped.
* * *
Lily
“What do you mean there’s no other option?” Lily’s voice was shrill even to her own ears as she stared at her mother in the mirror. Her mother had insisted on tending to Lily, which in her mother’s world meant brushing out Lily’s hair. It was rather soothing if not very helpful to her situation. “Surely, we can come up with… something.”
“You do not know the Hatchets well enough to understand,” her mother replied grimly. “If you do not marry Captain Jones, they will not only bandy about bits of the truth, they will add in all sorts of embellishments and speculation about why the wedding did not happen.”
“They’re awful,” Mary confirmed from her seat on Lily’s bed. She was there, along with Josie and Evie—who was dressed for her station and not as a maid for once. Thankfully, Uncle Oliver was recovering, though he’d been gravely injured. Evie had announced she would take care of him, which meant retaking her place in the family.
“If Captain Jones had not stepped up, they would have told everyone they know, written to every acquaintance they have, and your reputation would be in tatters. As it is, Captain Jones and Rex managed to convince Hatchet he was part of a rescue party for the captain’s fiancée. Now he gets to proclaim himself a hero rather than focus on you.”
Since Lily had seen the man’s disappointment for herself, she could hardly argue with their assessment. The little she had seen of him had shown him to be one of the worst of Society.
“It will also keep him from focusing on anything else he hears about,” Evie murmured. She was staring off into the distance, her dark eyes worried, but she’d insisted on staying with Lily. Her cousins currently had care of her uncle, and Captain Jones was giving his report, which had rendered her presence there unnecessary for now. “The servants know not to gossip, but…”
Keeping an attack on a Marquess quiet was not an easy endeavor. Especially since it happened at the same time as an attack on another Marquess, though it was unlikely anyone would know about the assassin who had attempted to breach the Hartford’s house. The man had not been prepared for Cormack, Hartford’s butler, unlike the man who had been sent to Camden House. Cormack had dealt with the intruder’s attack with lethal resistance, something Mary said he now regretted since he blamed himself for not leaving the man alive to question. Unfortunately, Camden House had not fared quite as well, and they had lost both a footman and their butler.
Surprisingly, Josie was silent, which was not her normal state. She was on the bed, sandwiched between Mary and Evie, hands twisting on her lap. The three of them in a row were a rather devastating combination of beauty—Josie’s blonde ringlets and bright blue eyes, Mary’s quieter, paler auburn beauty, and Evie’s dramatic contrast of dark hair and green eyes. Unfortunately, the momentary thoughts did little to distract her from the issue at hand.
“I do not want to marry Captain Jones,” Lily half-wailed. She shot her friends a look. She could not talk about it in front of her mother, but her friends knew she suspected his family.
“Do you think you have another option?” her mother asked matter-of-factly. It was a pragmatic question. If Lily could come up with an alternative that did not cast the family into shame, her mother would present it to her father, and the three of them would find a way to make it happen.
Lily knew the truth of that deep in her heart, which made her feel marginally better, even though it did not help the current situation since she could not think of a single other option.
“Give me some time,” she started, and Josie snorted.
“You do not have time, Lily.” The words were not unkind. Josie and Lily had always been blunt with each other, and this was no exception. “Lord Hatchet will have told his wife by now. Word will be spreading. If it was the beginning of the Season, perhaps we could do… something, but the best way to cut off any untoward gossip is for you to be married immediately before the rest of thetonleaves London. That way, when they go, they’ll carry the news of your last-minute wedding to Captain Jones with them, which will curb any gossip.” As Josie was a master at dealing with the social side of theton, including gossip, her opinion could not be easily discounted.
“Special licenses are not that easy to come by,” Lily argued, rubbing her forehead and ignoring the chorus of snorts that came from her friends.
“I believe your father, godfather, the Marquess of Hartford, and Lord Camden are planning to visit the Archbishop this afternoon when Captain Jones goes to make his petition,” her mother said mildly.
Lily groaned. With her godfather being the Duke of Frederick, it would have already been hard for the Archbishop to say no. With the Marquess there as well, along with the son of another Marquess who was currently injured, she thought it very unlikely Captain Jones would come away empty-handed.
Apparently, she would be getting married.
She stared at herself in the mirror.
This was not how she’d expected her Season to end.
ChapterNine
Nathan
Finally alone.
Nathan collapsed in his favorite chair in front of the fireplace in his library. His thinking chair. It was comfortable in all the right ways, well-worn without falling apart, like putting on a favorite pair of boots, except it cradled his entire body. The afternoon with the Archbishop, along with Lily’s godfather, Elijah, and Rex, had been necessary but exhausting.
