by Merry Farmer
Lavinia could have wept in relief. She hadn’t imagined it. Marigold had seen the flash of metal as well and had been confident enough about what she saw to tell Lady Stanhope.
“I…well…no,” Lord Malcolm said.
Rupert shook his head as well. “We were focused on the match.”
“Of course you were,” Lady Stanhope said. “And you didn’t think it at all suspicious that, after Dr. Maqsood’s injury, the wicketkeeper disappeared? Marigold said that was obvious too.”
“I was more concerned with winning the match and keeping the letter away from Shayles,” Lord Malcolm grumbled.
“The letter which Lavinia had already taken care of,” Lady Stanhope said.
Lord Malcolm flopped back in his chair and took a swig from his pint. “Point taken. Nothing can be done about it now.”
“Because Lavinia did everything that needed to be done. Quietly, efficiently, and effectively.” Lady Stanhope huffed and shook her head. “Will you men never see the value of the women who make your lives possible?”
“We do see your value,” Lord Malcolm protested. “We just like to feel as though we’re the ones looking out for you. Otherwise, what are we?”
“Useless clods?” Lady Stanhope suggested.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lavinia stopped them, rubbing her throbbing temples. “What’s done is done. Shayles has nothing to blackmail you with, and you can continue to push the new government in whatever direction you’d like. Everyone will return to London, and Armand will find a way to go back to being a doctor, even if it’s not in India.”
As soon as it was over, Lavinia was embarrassed by her outburst. She fully expected Lord Malcolm to scold her, and was surprised when he smirked and said, “Armand was never going to go to India.”
“He was,” Lavinia insisted. “He’s a physician. He wants to practice medicine again. And he won’t stop until he’s found a way.”
“Armand’s life took a turn that he didn’t expect, yes,” Lord Malcolm said, glancing across the table to her with a new frankness, the kind he used with his friends but had never used with her. “He loves medicine, it’s true. But I’ve been friends with the man for twenty years and more now. He knows where he’s needed, and right now he’s needed in Parliament.”
“But he wants to heal,” Lavinia argued. “It’s what he trained for. He told me that he doesn’t know anything about politics or government.”
“But you do.” Lord Malcolm nodded. Lavinia blinked at the surety of his statement. “You know more about politics and the government than most men in this country,” he went on. “I’ve seen you by Katya’s side these last few years. I’ve noted you attending parliamentary sessions and holding your own, when you’re brave enough to speak, at political events. You’d make a better minister than the rest of us combined.”
“I….” Lavinia shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Who was it who barged in on the rest of us at Winterberry Park not a fortnight ago and spelled out exactly the strategy we should employ to secure the extension of the franchise to working-class men before attempting to enact reform to the rights of women?” Lord Malcolm asked. “As if it were the most obvious thing in the world.” He lifted his glass. “If you ask me, Armand only feels out of his depth because he has had no one by his side to guide and educate him. But that’s all different now.”
Lavinia swallowed, overcome by the exceptional compliment Lord Malcolm had just paid her. It had never dawned on her that she might be able to play a more active role in government, that she might be able to do more than sit through sessions and share ideas with her friends.
A second idea grabbed hold of her. Armand needed her. She realized it with a suddenness that took her breath away. Not only did he need her to run his estate, as her mother had suggested from the beginning, or to guide him through politics, like Lord Malcolm was telling her, he needed her to ground him, to help him make sense of the changes in his life. Medicine had been everything to him, just as the duties of a peer were supposed to be everything to him now. But the only time she’d seen him smile in the past two weeks was when the two of them were alone together, in each other’s arms.
“Oh, no,” she said, pushing her teacup away and gripping the edges of the table.
“What is it, dear?” Lady Stanhope asked.
Lavinia gaped in silence for a few moments as her thoughts settled. “I think I’ve made a terrible mistake,” she said at last.
A wise and knowing grin spread across Lady Stanhope’s face, and even though Lavinia was sure she knew the answer, she asked, “What mistake is that?”
“I shouldn’t have left,” Lavinia said, sitting straighter, ready to push her chair back from the table. “I should have thrown the lot of you out instead, but I shouldn’t have left Armand like that.”
Lady Stanhope merely smiled, as if she’d known Lavinia would reach that conclusion all along.
“This whole time,” Lavinia went on, “I’ve been convinced that Armand and I were strangers and that we’d never be able to connect. I’ve told myself that he didn’t want me, that he wanted something else, another life. But that isn’t it at all.” She stood, bracing her hands on the table to stop them from shaking. “The problem isn’t the two of us, the problem is all of you. You threw us together, but then you wouldn’t leave us alone.”
“Technically, that’s not entirely our fault,” Lord Malcolm began. “Shayles was—”
“Shut up, Malcolm,” Lady Stanhope silenced him, standing along with Lavinia.
“I love him,” Lavinia said, the words billowing up like the warm light of sunrise on a summer’s day. “Or at least, I think I could very easily love him if the lot of you would give us two seconds alone together. Even earlier, as I was preparing to leave.” She took a breath and pressed a hand to her stomach as the realization of what had actually happened hit her. “Armand was on the verge of saying something to me. I think he was about to beg me not to go. But Mama blustered along and stopped him. It was as if he helped me into the carriage to prove she couldn’t order me, or him, about.”
She blinked, then looked around at her friends. “How dare you?” she demanded, though without as much anger as she’d felt just moments ago. There were more important things to focus on now. “How dare you interfere with my life and my marriage? And how dare you just sit there, drinking beer and eating stew, when I have to get back to Broadclyft Hall as quickly as possible?”
“That’s the spirit,” Lady Stanhope said, her grin spreading. “Rupert, tell the innkeeper to have a carriage prepared for Lady Helm immediately.”
“Yes, Mama,” Rupert said jumping to his feet.
“We may have to rent fresh horses to get you back to Armand, but it’s a small price to pay,” Lady Stanhope went on.
Rupert dashed off, but it was Malcolm’s turn to stand with a frown. “We can’t just trundle on back to Broadclyft Hall,” he said. “We have to get to Starcross Castle to tell Peter what’s happened. Now more than ever.”
“I can go alone,” Lavinia said. “You two head on to Starcross.”
Lady Stanhope considered, then said, “Rupert can accompany you. Better safe than sorry.”
“All right,” Lavinia conceded. She was willing to put up with anything if it would get her home to Armand as soon as possible.
Armand paced in front of the large fireplace in the library, wide awake, even though it was late at night. In a flagrant heedlessness of the rules of society, Marigold and the Marlowe girls had joined him and Alex for cigars and brandy after supper. Katya would probably murder him if she knew he’d allowed Bianca and Natalia to experiment with tobacco—something that had the two of them coughing and groaning in the corner while Marigold watched them with a disapproving, eagle eye…as she sipped a large glass of brandy. Then again, murder wasn’t something he wanted to think about. There was a fair chance he’d come close to it earlier in the day without even knowing.
“She can’t have
been wrong,” he said, knowing his comment would have come out of the blue to his friends.
“About what?” Alex asked, seemingly without the need to ask who.
“Shayles and Dr. Maqsood. Whatever plot they were hatching. Gatwick’s involvement.” He rattled off the things Lavinia had tried to tell them at the cricket match. “She’s not prone to flights of fancy that way, and she certainly isn’t a liar.”
“No one ever said she was,” Alex agreed.
Marigold blinked at the two of them in surprise. “Don’t tell me that after all that, after Lavinia’s warning and everything, you didn’t see how close you came to being killed this afternoon.”
Armand and Alex turned to her, both of them startled.
“What are you talking about, love?” Alex asked.
Marigold pursed her lips. “The knife?” Armand blinked and shook his head. “The one that the wicketkeeper had concealed in his pads?”
Armand exchanged a glance with Alex. “What knife?” Alex asked.
Marigold grunted in frustration. “The knife that the wicketkeeper almost drew on you while you were batting?” Armand stared blankly at her. Marigold clucked and shook her head. “Honestly. How could you not notice you were about to be attacked?”
“I was at bat,” Armand said, feeling like a fool as he did.
“The only reason you weren’t stuck like a pig at slaughter was because Dr. Maqsood was injured when you hit the ball.”
“No, he wasn’t,” Natalia said from across the room, coughing up a storm. Armand and the others turned to her. She handed the cigar over to Bianca, who grimaced and set it in the ashtray. “The ball didn’t hit Dr. Maqsood’s ankle. Lord Gatwick kicked him.”
“What?” Armand and Alex asked at the same time.
“You didn’t notice?” Bianca sat straighter, a proud look in her eyes, like she knew something the others didn’t. “I’m certain it looked like the ball hit his ankle, but right before it got there, Lord Gatwick kicked him square in his anklebone.”
“Hard,” Natalia agreed. “Or so it looked from where I was sitting.”
“Can you kick someone hard enough to break their ankle?” Marigold asked.
“It depends on the angle of impact and what sort of shoes the one doing the kicking was wearing,” Armand said, rubbing a hand over his face. “But it’s possible.” And if it were true, it meant that Lavinia had been right about everything. Gatwick had helped her prevent a disaster.
“Bloody hell,” Alex muttered.
Marigold cleared her throat and nodded to the Marlowe girls.
“Oh, don’t mind us,” Natalie said. “Mama says much worse things all the time.”
Armand would have chuckled at the odd dynamics of Katya’s family, but a deeper truth hit him. Lavinia had been right all along. She had tried to warn him, tried to advise him, and he’d chosen to share his friends’ doubts rather than believing his wife’s truths.
“I’ve let her down,” he said, sinking onto the sofa across from where Marigold and Alex sat. “I’ve been a terrible husband right from the start, a horrific disappointment.”
“Yes, you have been.” The comment came from none other than Lady Prior as she stepped into the door to the library. Judging by the look of exhausted fury on her pinched face, she’d been there longer than any of them had noticed. “You’re a bitter disappointment as a husband to my girl, Lord Helm,” she said, stomping into the room and over to Armand’s sofa. “If I’d known you would be so inadequate, I would have looked elsewhere for my Lavinia.”
Armand squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing his temples. “But you didn’t look elsewhere, Lady Prior. You shackled your daughter to a man she didn’t know, a man far older than her and utterly unequipped to be the husband she deserved, and why?” He was too weary to stand, but he stared hard at Lavinia’s mother. She gaped and blinked rapidly, so he answered his own question. “Because of your own social-climbing ambitions, that’s why.”
“It’s not true,” Lady Prior said, turning pink and wringing her hands. “I did it for my dear girl’s sake, to give her a chance to be somebody in this world.”
“She was already somebody,” Armand insisted. “She was and is a beautiful, intelligent woman. She is graceful and accomplished. She saw the truth of the situation we were faced with here far before the rest of us, and she tried to warn us all of the trap we were walking into, and we didn’t listen to her. And now she’s gone.” His chest squeezed with agony far more potent than he wanted it to be as guilt wracked him. “I let her go,” he said, shaking his head. “I let her step up into that carriage just to prove that you couldn’t push me around.”
“I told you not to do it,” Lady Prior said in the same scolding tone that would be used with a disobedient child. “I told you that a wife’s place was with her husband.”
“Yes, her husband,” he said, anger finally propelling him to stand. Lady Prior took a step back, her eyes going wide. “Not her mother, and not her meddling friends.” He glanced around at the others. “This all could have been prevented if the lot of you had left us alone.”
“Technically, it’s Shayles’s fault,” Alex said. The moment Armand twisted to glare at him, he put his hands up in surrender, looking contrite for making a joke at such a time.
“If we had left you alone,” Lady Prior argued, squirming as she did, “the two of you never would have married. I think you owe every one of us a sincere apology.” She tilted her chin up.
Armand had never come so close to wanting to strike a woman. He took a step away from Lady Prior for Lavinia’s sake. “I would lay the blame for Lavinia leaving me at your feet, except that I know I am the one ultimately at fault. I never should have let any of you darken my doorstep. I should have turned Shayles away, regardless of what blackmail he carried and in spite of the fact that Gatwick is technically family. This is all my fault.”
“Well,” Lady Prior started. “I’m glad you see that now.”
“Don’t,” Marigold stopped her from going on. “Don’t say another word, Lady Prior.”
For a moment, Lavinia’s mother looked like she would chastise Marigold for speaking to her that way, but, miraculously, she kept her mouth shut.
“It’s my fault,” Armand repeated, swaying into motion, “and I’m going to do something about it.”
“What are you going to do?” Alex called after him.
Armand paused in the door and turned back. “I’m going after them. All the way to Starcross Castle, if I don’t catch them sooner. I’m going to get down on my knees and beg Lavinia’s forgiveness. I’m going to tell her that she’s the most important thing in my life, that she matters more to me than politics or peerages or medicine. And then I’m going to spend the rest of my life doing whatever it takes to make up these last two weeks to her.”
“Wait,” Marigold called after him. “There’s something else you should know.”
Armand ignored her, marching on regardless of what his friends thought, although he heard Katya’s daughters explode with cheers and coughs as he left. The iron had entered his soul, and he was going to do whatever it took to live up to the words he’d just said.
“Bondar,” he called out to his butler as he crossed the front hall. “Have Dashiell prepare one of my fastest horses. And I’ll need to pack a saddlebag with a change of clothes.”
“My lord?” Bondar asked, following him as Armand began to climb the stairs.
“I’m heading to Starcross Castle to find my wife and bring her back,” he said.
Bondar smiled. “Excellent, my lord.”
The minutes seemed to take forever as Armand changed into attire suitable for tearing across the countryside on horseback at night. Maxwell came in with a saddlebag as he dressed and packed everything Armand would need. It wasn’t a job for a footman per se, which had Armand thinking that perhaps the time had come for him to elevate Maxwell to the position of valet. He would need a valet, at last, if he went through with what his heart was tell
ing him to do. He was a gentleman now, like it or lump it. He had a responsibility to his country, but more than that, to his wife and whatever family they would have together. Shayles was every bit the villain his friends had always told him he was, and the time had come for Armand to take up arms and fight alongside his friends once again.
He didn’t bother to check whether the others had gone to bed or stayed up in the library as he marched back through the house and out the front door. His horse was waiting in the drive, and in spite of the dark and the chill in the air, Armand mounted and was on his way within minutes.
The road from Broadclyft Hall to St. Austell was straight and well-maintained, and at the speed Armand rode, he was certain he would be there in no time. Katya had said they would wait for Malcolm and Rupert at an inn there, and if they had any sense, they would stay the night. The only traffic Armand encountered on the road that late at night was a single carriage racing in the other direction, but he didn’t give it any thought. His focus was on Lavinia and Lavinia alone. He had so much to say to her, so much to promise her.
It was well after midnight when he reached the inn. Thankfully a few sleepy souls were still awake, cleaning up.
“I’m looking for a woman,” he told the man he assumed was the innkeeper as soon as he marched into the public room. “Lady Helm. She’s traveling with an older woman, and possibly two men.”
The innkeeper stared at him, looking as though he were wavering between showing Armand the respect he was due or telling him off for arriving so late. At last, he said, “There’s been lots of folk through here tonight. There was two men and two women, but their party split up. One couple headed west and one east.”
Armand shook his head. “I’m looking for at least two women, possibly a party of four, who headed west.”
Again, the innkeeper shook his head. “Just the pair going west and the pair going east.”