“Thank you for your time,” he said, tossing the paper back on the pillow. The same rage he’d felt at Constance’s disappearance—rage that had mellowed into a deep-seated worry that gnawed at him—rose in his chest again. “I’m afraid urgent business has come up.”
“Is it about your sister?” the prostitute dared ask.
He fixed her with a stern glare that had her shrinking back against the mattress. “No,” he said. “It is not about my sister.”
* * *
“What do you know about this?” Aaron demanded as he strode into the drawing room where his aunt Octavia was embroidering a cushion. “Did you arrange this behind my back?”
She glanced up with a frown. “Did I arrange what, dear?”
“You mean to say you haven’t read today’s paper?”
“Good heavens, Aaron, I’ve barely had breakfast.” Unlike his father, Octavia did not like to peruse a paper over her morning tea. “What can be the matter?”
“The matter,” Aaron said, the muscles in his jaw twitching, “is that apparently I am engaged to a Lady Charlotte Calore.”
Octavia laid down her cushion. “Engaged? But I thought you intended to pursue Lady Roberta?”
“I had,” he said grimly.
“Where can this misunderstanding have come from? Could she be a young lady you—”
“I do not,” he snapped, danger in his eyes, “dally with young ladies of honor and reputation.”
“Of course not,” Octavia murmured. Aaron paced the floor. This Lady Charlotte—no doubt one of the many ladies he danced with yesterday though he couldn’t recall the name—clearly fancied the attention attaching herself to him would bring. A conniving move indeed, perhaps thinking he would make no attempt to disentangle himself from the match. She thought wrong.
“What do you intend to do?” Octavia asked, fingering her beads. “I know the Dowager Countess well. She’ll be at the Haversham Ball on Wednesday. Perhaps we should speak with her first to get to the bottom of this. There’s no occasion to ruin a good family over a prank that hasn’t necessarily come from them.”
Aaron’s lips curved in a cruel smile. “Then, my dear aunt, we shall attend the Haversham Ball.”
* * *
Charlotte had not thought that the delivery of the paper to the breakfast table could have brought such havoc. Sebastian exclaimed, choked on his toast, and when Marcella snatched it from his hands and scanned the page, she screamed in vexation.
“How could you?” she demanded to Charlotte. “Howcouldyou? Youhussy!”
“Marcella,” Anastasia reprimanded.
“She went behind our backs and got herself engaged to him.” Marcella threw the paper at Charlotte, knocking over the jam as she did so. “She criticized him to our faces, but she’s been secretly designing to get him all this time.”
“Getwho?” Charlotte demanded.
Marcella sneered. “What, you mean you don’t know?”
“Marcella!” Anastasia chided, her tone sharp.
“How could you have hidden it from us?” Sebastian clenched his hand around his knife. “How could you have bypassed me like this?”
Anastasia possessed herself of the paper. “It appears you’re engaged to the Duke of Hexham,” she explained, her voice quiet. “At least, according to this announcement.”
“Engaged?” Mouth dry, Charlotte dropped her knife. It clanged off her plate. “What do you mean?”
“Precisely what I say, my dear,” Anastasia said dryly. “You and the Duke are announced to be engaged.”
“But—how can this have happened?” Charlotte’s stomach roiled, and she regretted eating so much. “I don’t want to marry him.”
Sebastian took her hand. “You mean you didn’t do this?”
