by Merry Farmer
Lavinia wasn’t entirely certain what he meant, but anxiety pooled in her gut all the same. Lord Dunsford and Lord Malcolm leapt to their feet, setting their pipes aside. The only one in the room who didn’t appear deeply alarmed was Lavinia’s mother.
“Missing?” Mr. Croydon asked. “What do you mean?”
“I had the letter when I left Winterberry Park, obviously,” Mr. Phillips said. “But when I arrived in London, it was gone.”
“Gone?” Lord Malcolm demanded, glowering so ferociously that Lavinia shrank away from him. Dr. Pearson edged closer to her, as if protecting her.
Mr. Phillips let out a wary breath. “I’m sorry, sir. I searched everywhere for it. Dr. Miller helped me search the train car as well.”
“Dr. Miller?” Mr. Croydon asked, his eyes narrowing and his voice hoarse with loathing.
“I know it wasn’t ideal,” Mr. Phillips went on. “But I figured any help would do. As near as I can figure, the letter must have fallen out of my case when I switched trains in Reading.”
“If that letter falls into the wrong hands, if the opposition learns what we’re planning or, God forbid, the press gets hold of it, we’re doomed,” Lord Dunsford said.
“It’s not as though the letter contained treason,” Lord Malcolm said, shaking his head as though his friend were overreacting.
“No?” Mr. Croydon stared at Lord Malcolm as though he were daft. “The letter is a point-by-point outline for the new government’s policies and instructions on how to best implement them. It proposes ways to bypass standard parliamentary procedure in a way that renders election results pointless.”
“It merely contains suggestions,” Lord Malcolm argued.
“It’s a blueprint for corruption,” Mr. Croydon insisted.
“I knew it was a bad idea to put our plans in writing,” Lord Dunsford said. “In the wrong hands, this could cast a shadow of corruption over our government before it’s begun. It could lead to Gladstone’s very first vote being a vote of no confidence.”
“Oh? Really?” Lavinia’s mother said as though she were watching a play. “How exciting.”
“Mama,” Lavinia hissed in an attempt to silence her. Her heart bled for her friends’ husbands. It seemed as though they were in real trouble.
“With any luck, the letter has already been soaked and crushed and relegated to the rubbish bin,” Lord Dunsford said, though his expression was still alarmed. “Did you have a chance to speak to Gladstone about its contents?” he asked Mr. Phillips.
“I did,” Mr. Phillips said. “I telegraphed right away, as soon as I reached Paddington, then headed straight to Gladstone’s house. He is aware of the situation.”
Mr. Croydon must have seen what Lavinia could plainly see, that Mr. Phillips was eating himself up inside with guilt over what had happened. “It’s all right, Gilbert,” he said, moving to clap Mr. Phillips on the back. “I know you would never be deliberately careless.”
“Which is why something feels wrong in this whole thing,” Dr. Pearson said. He spoke quietly, and Lavinia wasn’t sure if the others heard him.
“I was able to obtain the special license for Dr. Pearson, though,” Mr. Phillips went on, nodding to the envelope in Dr. Pearson’s hand.
“Which is all that mattered,” Lavinia’s mother said with a cheerful sigh. “You gentlemen can sort out your political knots later, but we have a wedding to see through now.”
“Now?” Lavinia gaped at her mother.
Her mother stared right back, as though Lavinia were the one being unreasonable. “Yes, of course now. I’ve had the local vicar on notice since the morning after the ball.” She turned to Dr. Pearson. “He’s ready to perform the ceremony immediately.”
Chapter 6
Armand was in the process of opening the letter Phillips had handed to him, but when Lady Prior spoke, his finger slipped on the edge of paper he was tearing, causing a short, painful cut. “I beg your pardon,” he said, blinking at the incomprehensible woman.
“Rev. Fallon is ready to perform the wedding immediately,” Lady Prior repeated, adding a self-satisfied giggle at the end.
Armand glanced to Lavinia, his nerves bristling. But rather than finding a hoped-for expression of outrage and a determination to put a stop to things, Lavinia’s initial expression of shock was fading quickly into morose acceptance.
She met his questioning gaze with a barely perceptible shrug. “When Mama sets her mind to something, it is impossible to get her to budge an inch.”
A swell of irritation turned Armand’s stomach. Shades of that moment he’d been told he was a viscount and his medical practice as he knew it was over gripped him once again. “Marriage is not something to be entered into lightly,” he said, trying to quell his anger by focusing on Lavinia alone and reminding himself she was as much a victim as he was. “Rev. Fallon will say as much when he performs the ceremony.”
“You can’t get out of things now, Lord Helm,” Lady Prior scolded him, using the title he hated.
“Might as well get it over with,” Malcolm said with a sly wink.
“Don’t worry, you won’t have to stand up alone,” Peter added.
Armand glared at his friends. The only glimmer of hope and help in the room came from Alex. “Our letter to Gladstone has gone missing and the telegram you send informing me of the fact never arrived?” he said to Phillips. “Something is terribly wrong here.”
“Yes,” Armand agreed. “We should get to the bottom of this foul play instead of worrying about weddings.”
“But if you take an hour to relocate to the church so that the ceremony will be performed, you will have one less thing to worry about,” Lady Prior argued. She stepped toward the door, gesturing for Lavinia and him to follow. “Come along.”
Armand didn’t move. “It’s most likely that Miller had something to do with the letter’s disappearance.” He tried in vain to focus the room on what really mattered.
“I half suspected as well,” Phillips said, clearly suffering with responsibility for everything that had gone wrong. “I attempted to search his belongings, but I found nothing. And once we reached London, he vanished before I could question him further.”
“Miller is certainly involved then,” Alex said in a menacing voice.
“Yes, well, Dr. Miller is not present,” Lady Prior said, growing annoyed. “Mr. Phillips has brought your special license, and Rev. Fallon is waiting. Hurry along.”
“Mama, please,” Lavinia hissed, marching to her mother’s side. “The gentlemen have matters of vital importance to deal with. This is no time to push your plots.”
“My plots?” Lady Prior burst with indignation. “Lavinia, do you not remember the way this horrid man desecrated your honor not three days ago?”
“My honor was not—”
“Are you willing to stand by and let the scoundrel get away with debauchery?”
“It was a misunderstanding. No one was—”
“Justice must be served, and it must be served immediately.”
“Mama, please stop.” Lavinia seemed near tears.
Armand sighed. He was cornered, captured, and conquered. The least he could do was to make things easier for his bride.
“Very well,” he said, sending a preemptive glare in Malcolm’s direction. Sure enough, his friend was grinning shamelessly over the scene. Armand crossed to Lavinia, offering his arm with an apologetic look. “Since your mother appears unwilling to give you a moment’s peace until we stand before the vicar, let’s get it over with.”
“How romantic,” Malcolm muttered behind him.
It wasn’t romantic, not in the least. Ladies as young and sweet as Lavinia deserved romance and sentiment in their marriages. He had barely begun, and already he was failing miserably. Worse still, Lavinia seemed resigned to her fate, and not in a contented way. She took his arm without looking at him and let him lead her into the hall, following her giddy mother as she practically sprinted for the front hall and th
e door.
“I’m sorry,” he said when her mother skipped far enough ahead of them not to hear.
“No, I’m sorry,” Lavinia answered in a hollow voice. “I’ll never forgive her.”
The comment stirred something completely unexpected in Armand’s chest. He was reminded of the brilliant ease with which she’d commented on their political machinations minutes ago, before things fell apart. Lavinia seemed so young and innocent by outward appearances. She was demure and perfectly behaved. But a few times now, Armand had seen flashes of something under the surface—backbone, intelligence, cleverness. Though everything else was out of his control, at least he might have the pleasure of discovering who his bride really was.
Word spread through the house like a flood that the wedding was about to take place. Though Lady Prior was so eager to see the thing done that she refused to let Lavinia escape to her room to change into a fancier gown, by the time they made it halfway down the path that led to the road into town, Marigold, Mariah, and Katya, Katya’s daughters, Rupert, and little James Croydon with his nursemaid caught up with them. As they reached the road, Marigold’s maid, Anne, sprinted to meet them with a bouquet of orange and gold flowers. They made such a scene walking into town that several of the people whom they passed on the road dropped what they were doing to follow.
By the time they reached the small parish church, a trail of two dozen people stretched behind them. As Armand suspected, Rev. Fallon wasn’t quite as ready to perform a wedding as Lady Prior had led them to believe. He was, in fact, up to his elbows in soil as he worked in the vicarage vegetable patch. His twin toddlers rolled around in the mud with him while his tall and decidedly pregnant wife hung the washing on a line nearby.
Rev. Fallon flinched at the sight of the mob that had invaded his lawn and pushed himself to his feet. “Good gracious, what’s all this?”
Lady Prior charged to the front of the pack before Armand could open his mouth to apologize. “We are ready for you to perform the wedding, Rev. Fallon.”
Rev. Fallon blinked, glancing from Lady Prior to Armand and Lavinia, and then to his wife. “When you said to be ready to perform the ceremony on a moment’s notice, I had no idea you meant a moment’s notice.”
“What else would you think I meant?” Lady Prior asked as though he were an idiot.
Armand clenched his jaw. Was there no end to the woman’s rudeness? He cleared his throat and addressed Rev. Fallon directly. “If it is too much trouble for you to throw together a marriage ceremony without preparation, we understand.”
To Armand’s disappointment, the man shook his head, still baffled, and said, “No, no. The particulars of the marriage ceremony are fairly standard.” He glanced to Lady Prior. “You said something about there being a special license?”
Armand held out the envelope that he still hadn’t fully opened. As Rev. Fallon took it, Armand, yet again, glanced toward Lavinia apologetically. She returned his look with a tiny shrug of her shoulders and an attempt at a smile.
Rev. Fallon opened the envelope and took out the certificate it contained. He glanced over it quickly, his brow shooting up. “Surprisingly, this is all in order, down to the parish and the priest. Well done, whoever obtained this.”
Of all the ways Gilbert Phillips could have sought to prove that he was, in fact, highly competent, in spite of losing their letter to Gladstone, it had to be this.
“Move along, then,” Lady Prior said, shooing Rev. Fallon toward his church.
It was ridiculous. The whole thing was a farce. Lady Prior barely gave Rev. Fallon time to wash his hands and don his vestments. Mrs. Fallon rushed to help him prepare, but that meant she had to bring their twins into the church so that someone could mind them. The twins weren’t happy about leaving their sunshine and mud, and cried during the entire thing. It didn’t help that Malcolm and Peter whispered back and forth throughout the entire ceremony, making jokes at Armand’s expense. In fact, the only time when the church fell completely silent was when Rev. Fallon asked if anyone knew of any impediment or reason why Armand and Lavinia shouldn’t be married. Not a soul said a word.
“Do you, Armand Nathaniel Pearson, Lord Helm, take this woman, Lavinia Charlotte Prior, to be your lawfully wedded wife?” Rev. Fallon asked at last.
Armand’s gut roiled. How had he landed in this position, stripped of his medical practice and everything he loved, punished with a title he had no idea what to do with, and maneuvered into a marriage with a beautiful but hapless younger woman that he’d never asked for by a woman with ambitions that outstripped his own by far? The only thing that stopped him from calling an end to the entire thing and marching out of the church and straight down to Exeter to find Dr. Maqsood and beg him to depart for India immediately was the sudden fear and tender hope in Lavinia’s eyes as she waited for his answer. He couldn’t let her down. This wasn’t her fault.
“I do,” he said with as much strength as he could manage.
Malcolm and Peter did a terrible job of hiding their school-boy-worthy sounds of glee. Katya made a sound of disgust, and Armand caught her rolling her eyes at Malcolm out of the corner of his eye.
Rev. Fallon smiled benignly and went on. “And do you, Lavinia Charlotte Prior, take this man, Armand Nathaniel Pearson, to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
“I do,” Lavinia answered, almost too softly to be heard. In fact, Rev. Fallon had to lean in and glance at her questioningly to make sure he heard. “I do,” Lavinia repeated with a little more strength.
“Good.” Rev. Fallon stood straight again, nodding. “Then by the power invested in me, I now pronounce you man and wife.”
It happened so quickly that Lavinia barely believed it had happened at all. She floated through the wedding ceremony as though she were watching someone else’s life from a distance. It certainly couldn’t have been her life. She was meant to be a woman who stood on her own two feet, who devoted her life to her friends and to the causes she believed in, not a wife.
The full truth of the situation came home to her when Rev. Fallon attempted to omit the first kiss and to end the ceremony.
“No, no, no,” her mother protested. “They must kiss to ensure the union is sealed properly.”
Lavinia snuck a sideways peek up at Dr. Pearson, her husband. He returned the look with a wry grin and, if she wasn’t mistaken, the slightest roll of his eyes. That ironic expression was all it took. A ghost of a laugh slipped out of her lungs, and with it, far more of the burden of misery she’d carried with her to the church than she would have expected. She might have been molded and twisted into the form of femininity that her mother approved of, she may have been manipulated into a marriage she didn’t want to a man she barely knew, but now that she was married, her mother couldn’t rule her anymore.
Dr. Pearson—she supposed she would have to get used to calling him Armand now—cleared his throat as she turned toward him. She did her best to meet his kiss bravely, tilting her head up to let him know she could bear it. To her surprise, his lips were soft on hers, and rather than feeling invaded and overrun, as she’d expected to, a thrill of promise swirled through her. It couldn’t be all bad if his kiss made her feel like that, could it?
“At last,” her mother breathed, far too loud to be anything but gauche. Lavinia jerked away from Armand, too angered by her mother’s declaration of victory to enjoy the moment. “My dearest daughter, married at last. And to a viscount, no less.” She added a squealing giggle to the end of her pronouncement and clapped her hands. “We must return to the house to celebrate.”
Lavinia glanced once more to Armand with an apologetic knot in her gut that was becoming far too familiar to her. How could a man who had been forced into marriage ever be happy with his wife? She let him escort her back through the church and outside, knowing she had her work cut out for her.
Much to her mother’s disappointment, once they reached Winterberry Park, Mr. Croydon refused to let the swollen crowd of curiosity-seekers w
ho had attended the wedding stay to have a party. He and Mr. Phillips had chosen to stay behind in an attempt to mentally retrace Phillips’s steps to figure out what happened to the letter to Gladstone. Both men were in a foul mood when the newlyweds returned. Lord Malcolm and Lord Dunsford seemed to put aside their high spirits and their teasing to focus on business, escorting Rupert Marlowe down the hall as though explaining the situation to him, and, unsurprisingly to Lavinia, Armand joined them.
“I’m probably the last person you want to waste your afternoon with anyhow,” he told her with a wry, tired grin as they paused in the hallway.
Marigold and Lady Stanhope had taken James out to the back lawn, the Marlowe girls had run off into the garden, and Mariah had gone to the nursery to fetch little Peter so he could join them. Her mother was attempting to bully Mrs. Musgrave into putting together a wedding feast. Lavinia felt at loose ends.
“Go on,” she said, trying to smile. “It’s far more important for you to deal with business right now.” She paused, then added. “I’m deeply concerned about this letter of yours. Did it contain anything that could be used against you or the Liberal Party?”
Armand sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I must confess, I didn’t see the final draft.”
“You didn’t?”
“I…I haven’t been paying as close attention as perhaps I should.” He shuffled his feet, making Lavinia wonder what was eating at his conscience. “I’ve had other things on my mind.”
“Then go,” she said, managing a smile at last. “We’ll see each other again at supper.”
He took her hand, raising her knuckles to his lips as a goodbye. A flutter hit her stomach at the sentimental gesture, and she turned to head out to the garden to join her friends, feeling as odd as though she’d slipped through Alice’s looking glass.
She had barely seated herself in one of the wicker chairs out where the children were playing when her mother barged into their midst, grabbing Lavinia’s wrist and attempting to wrench her out of the chair.