by Julia Kelly
“Warthing will tell her we’re not at home,” said Asten.
The sound of the door shutting and the trill of Lady Laughlin’s voice drifted up the stairs and through the heavy oaken door of the library to them.
“Are you certain about that?” asked Eleanora.
Asten frowned. “Did she just let herself in?”
“Warthing can only be so forceful,” his daughter reminded him, smiling to herself as though she was getting a certain amount of satisfaction out of the situation unfolding before them.
And then it struck him. Mary had warned him about this. She’d told him that Lady Laughlin was presumptuous, forcing her way into his home and imposing her will on Eleanora. He’d watched Lady Laughlin spar with Mary with steel-sharpened words. This, however, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to believe. It was too much, a gross violation of decorum that couldn’t be tolerated. Eleanora was the mistress of this house and would be until Mary agreed to be his wife. Lady Laughlin had no power here.
“Right,” said Asten as he shot to his feet. “I’ll handle this.”
The rustle of his daughter’s skirts behind him was unmistakable as he traversed the library, yanked the door open, and stormed out into the hall. The carpet masked the clatter of his shoes against the stairs, but he made enough noise to announce himself, and when he reached the first-floor landing, Warthing and Lady Laughlin were both peering up at him.
“Lord Asten!” the woman cried. “There’s been some sort of mistake. Your butler tells me that you and Lady Eleanora are not at home to visitors, but I keep telling him that I’m not a visitor. Why, I’m practically family!”
That she most certainly was not.
“Lady Laughlin was quite insistent, my lord,” said Warthing with a look that told Asten exactly what the butler thought of the woman.
Asten crossed his arms and fixed the splendidly dressed woman with a searing look. “What is it that you require, madam?”
Lady Laughlin’s smile wavered. “Aren’t you going to invite me in for tea?”
“No.” His voice cut through the entryway, and he didn’t miss the sharp intake of breath from his daughter. Mary had been right. He’d needed to rid himself of the baroness for a long time. He regretted not seeing the signs before, but he’d fix this. He would fix all of it.
“Eric . . .” Lady Laughlin started.
“I understand that you were once friends with my wife, and I’m grateful that she had someone in this world who cared for her, but it has come to my attention that you and your daughters have been too free with my hospitality for too long, madam. You are not to enter my home when Warthing tells you that we are not at home. You are not to order my daughter around as though she’s a servant. And you are most certainly not to use my Christian name without my invitation. An invitation I have no intention of extending to you.”
Lady Laughlin gasped. “I’ve never been so insulted in my life! The things that I’ve done for you and your daughter—”
“Remind me what those things are. As far as I can tell, all you’ve done is belittle Eleanora to promote your own daughters’ marriage chances. I was blind to your bullying in the past, and I accept my part in that.” He turned to Eleanora. “I should have been a better father, and there will never be enough apologies.”
His daughter’s lip wobbled, but she hitched her chin up, proud and steadfast. “You’re the very best father, Papa.”
He shook his head. “You deserve more, and I intend to make sure that you get it.”
“I can’t believe this,” Lady Laughlin huffed. “I presented your daughter to the queen!”
He inclined his head to award a point to her. “A fact I am grateful for, but Eleanora is not a young lady without resources. She no long requires your assistance as a chaperone.”
Lady Laughlin’s mouth worked as though she was chewing on words she dared not say. Finally she spat, “If that fool of a girl can snag a man like Lord Blakeney, I’ll be damned.”
There it was, the admission that he’d been looking for to confirm everything he knew to be true.
“That governess has put you up to this,” Lady Laughlin continued to rail. “You heard her say herself that not even her own mother wanted her!”
“Out!”
The word had been on his lips, but it was Eleanora who said it. He looked at his daughter, but in place of the sweet seventeen-year-old girl was an empress, a woman so sure of her convictions that she seemed to radiate with power.
“You are no longer welcome in this home, Lady Laughlin,” said Eleanora in a clear, commanding voice. “I will no longer recognize you socially. If you wish to test me, you may try, but you’ll find yourself cut in the most public way.”
Lady Laughlin gasped and looked to him, but he shrugged. “As I said, my daughter is the mistress of this house. Her word is rule.”
The baroness paled. In a weak voice, she managed to murmur, “You’ll regret this.”
“No, Lady Laughlin, we won’t,” he said, placing a protective hand on his daughter’s shoulder.
The woman swallowed and turned on her heel for the door, pausing only while Warthing twisted the knob and expelled her onto the street.
When they were alone again, Asten looked on his daughter with admiration. “That was well done, my dear.”
Eleanora raised a brow, reached into her pocket, and withdrew a scrap of cloth to hand to him.
“I don’t need a handkerchief,” he said, frowning in confusion.
“Look at it, Papa.”
He unfolded the scrap of cloth, and shock hit him square in the chest. It was edged in ivy and topped with a single pink geranium.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, his hand flying to his waistcoat pocket. But the handkerchief he’d carried on him for a week wasn’t there. He hadn’t picked it up off of his dressing table that morning. It hadn’t seemed necessary to have the reminder of Miss Falsum in the garden and his desperation to wipe out his passion for Mary any longer. He wasn’t ashamed that he wanted Mary and everything that the future could be with her.
“It’s not the same as the one you have, but you can check if you like,” Eleanora said.
He didn’t want to think this meant she knew about his illicit activities in the garden. “How did you come to have this?”
She cocked her head as though wondering why her father was being a dolt. “It’s Miss Woodward’s. She’s my friend from the ball, Miss Falsum. That’s why I couldn’t tell you about her.”
His heart skipped a full two beats. The masked lady in the garden was Mary. His Mary.
He scrunched the cloth in his hand. “She must think—”
She must think the worst, most wretched things about him. That he went around seducing any woman who met his fancy. That he lifted a skirt wherever he could.
He needed to tell her that he’d fallen under her spell—and only her spell—twice. He’d sought solace from her the night of the masque, but he’d managed to find her in a crowd of anonymous revelers nonetheless.
“I have to find her,” he declared. “I have to explain.”
His daughter rolled her eyes. “Oh, Papa. You don’t have to explain. You have to tell her you love her.”
He looked up sharply. “I thought you wanted things to remain just the two of us.”
“When I thought that you were going to walk right into Lady Laughlin’s trap, I did,” said Eleanora, clearly no longer caring to hide her disgust for the baroness. “Do you know that when you weren’t looking she would tell men that my ankle was turned so that I couldn’t dance? If I did manage to have a conversation with anyone, she would talk about my deficiencies. I read too much. I was too interested in science. My hair is coarse and my skin is sallow. She would push her daughters in front of me at balls when you weren’t looking or send me on endless errands to fetch punch.”
It was everything Mary had warned him of, he’d just been too wrapped up in his own ideas of duty and honor to see it. “I’m so sorry, my dear.”
“I know, Papa. Besides . . .” She blushed and started picking at the fabric of her skirt. “Lord Blakeney intends to call on you today to ask if he might court me, so it may not be just the two of us for much longer.”
It was happening. His daughter was no longer a little girl but a woman with a prospective fiancé ready to bang down the door. “Is he good enough for you?” he asked, trying to choke down the emotion that had settled like a lump of India rubber behind his Adam’s apple.
His daughter beamed. “He is. But we can talk about that later. First you need to find Miss Woodward.”
And how the hell was he going to do that? London was a vast city and he didn’t have even the slightest idea of where she might be.
“She ran,” he said lamely. “I can’t blame her if she thought I was enamored of both her and Miss Falsum.”
“Good Lord, Papa. Are all men so self-centered?” She laughed when his brow furrowed. “I assume that you and Miss Woodward showed some sort of affection to one another?”
His cheeks burned with embarrassment hearing his daughter of seventeen allude to what he’d done with Mary behind his closed bedroom door.
“There was some exchange of sentiments,” he said, trying hard not to fidget in his awkwardness.
“She’s a governess,” she said as though explaining things to a child.
“I know that.” And if Mary had just waited a little longer she would have been a countess. She would have been his countess, his wife, the woman he wanted the entire world to know he loved.
His daughter shook her head. “Think about it from her perspective. Governesses aren’t supposed to fall in love with their employers. You’re an earl.”
“But I don’t care a whit about that,” he protested.
“Yes,” said his daughter with open exasperation, “but she does. Are men always this slow to catch the plot?”
He nudged her. “Don’t insult your father. He’s in a delicate state.”
Eleanora snorted, showing more than a little of her old childish spunk. “My father doesn’t seem to understand how the world works. If Miss Woodward were to harbor any feelings for her employer, she would run the risk of being thrown out without a reference. She wouldn’t be able to work. She’d find herself abandoned all over again.”
“But I would never do that.”
His daughter raised her eyebrows. “Does she know that?”
Oh, he was an idiot. Of course Mary didn’t. He’d never done anything to show her that he was any different from the men who had no doubt approached her before. How was she supposed to do anything but run?
He’d let her down by convincing himself that he had time to tell her all the things he felt, all the plans he’d begun dreaming up for them both.
“I’m a fool,” he groaned.
“I’m so glad you agree,” said his daughter cheerfully. “Now, I just might have an idea about how to bring Miss Woodward back.”
Chapter Twelve
“I’m a fool,” Mary groaned.
“You’re not,” said Jane, smoothing her brow. “You’re just in love.”
“With an earl!” she cried, lifting her head from her friend’s lap. “With a member of the peerage. His country house was built two centuries ago. He has more money than Croesus. He’s an earl.”
“And you’re Mary Woodward,” said Elizabeth, who draped a blanket over Mary’s feet. “What does it matter?”
Except it did matter and both of her friends knew it. She’d explained it all when she’d arrived—well, as soon as the tears dried up enough that she could form a complete sentence punctuated by undignified hiccups. Elizabeth had sat there, feeding her cups of tea, until her husband returned with Jane in tow. Then the three of them decamped to the drawing room, locked Edward out, and began to pick over the problem of Mary’s life.
It was an unequivocal mess.
“What was I thinking?” she asked no one in particular. “I knew the rules.”
“I broke the rules and I couldn’t be happier,” said Elizabeth with a smile.
“But you weren’t working for Edward when you two—” She cut herself off out of deference to Jane’s quite literally virgin ears.
“Elizabeth already corrupted me with her story of getting caught on the library sofa,” said her fair-haired friend with an exasperated sigh. “You can tell me that you had . . . relations with the earl.”
If she hadn’t been so miserable, Mary might have laughed at the little pause before Jane forced herself to say “relations.” Instead it just made her think about Eric and the way she’d felt when he held her against him, pushing her body to heights she’d never been able to see through the clouds.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said with a shake of her head. “What’s done is done.”
Elizabeth fixed her with a long look. “Tell me, what do you want to do next?”
What she wanted was to curl up in a ball and not see the light of day for a little while. She felt as though she’d ripped her own heart out, and that meant there was no one she could blame but herself.
“Can’t I just sit here on your sofa?” she asked.
Elizabeth nudged her with her elbow. “Of course you can for a spell, but then we need a plan.”
She didn’t want a plan. She wanted to be left alone to wallow, but she knew that her friend was right. Mary wasn’t the sort of woman who simply lay down and let life wash over her. She got back on her feet, checked her coiffure, and then forged ahead. Life would never be the same without Eric, but she would do what she could. With time and space she would soon be back to her normal self.
It was such an easy, convenient lie that she wanted to believe it even if her own heart broke a little more just thinking about it.
“What will you do?” asked Jane.
She took a deep breath and forced herself to think about the future. “I’ll find another position. Maybe this time I’ll look for a family on the Continent. I haven’t lived abroad.”
“That’s a fine idea,” said Elizabeth with a nod that conveyed more conviction than her voice held.
“I’ve always wanted to travel,” she said, pushing herself back up to sitting.
“Some good German air might be just the thing to make you forget the Earl of Asten,” said Elizabeth.
“But should she forget him?”
Jane’s question sliced through the false hope and optimism that propped up their conversation, and suddenly everything deflated again.
“I don’t think I could no matter how hard I tried, but I’ve got to. I can’t be with him, Jane,” Mary said quietly.
Her friend bit her lip. “I just think that if you love him, maybe you should give him a chance.”
“A chance to do what?” she asked. “I haven’t spent all of these years building up my reputation only to become some man’s mistress.”
The man she loved. The man who made her heart pound and her body ache. The man who challenged her very idea of what happiness was. The man who—if she was a very different woman with a very different story—she might have fallen into the arms of, a willing woman.
“I think that it’s time that I grow accustomed to the idea of being happy with my lot in life once again,” she said as somewhere in the house a bell rang.
“Already?” Elizabeth said with a glance at the clock. “I swear Edward’s patients call on him earlier and earlier.”
The bell rang again, clanging insistently.
“Maybe it’s urgent,” she said.
Elizabeth shook her head. “Mrs. Mitchell will take care of it. She’s better than a guard dog when it comes to managing the surgery.”
That might be the case, but rather
than accompanying a patient being led in to see the doctor, Mrs. Mitchell came into the drawing room bearing a letter.
“Thank you, Mrs. Mitchell,” said Elizabeth, holding out her hand.
“Pardon me, Mrs. Fellows, but it isn’t for you.” The housekeeper held the letter out to Mary. “It’s for Miss Woodward.”
Mary’s stomach dropped through the floor just as her heart soured. It couldn’t be from him, but at the same time how could it be from anyone else?
She took the letter printed on thick, luxurious paper and flipped it over. A wax seal closed it, but the stamp wasn’t legible, as though the letter writer had been too eager to post it.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
“The message boy was quite insistent that it make it into your hands directly,” said Mrs. Mitchell before she dipped into a little curtsy and slipped out of the room.
Mary slid her finger under the wax and broke the letter open. Her heart skipped when she saw the handwriting within. It was the sloping, elegant script of Lady Eleanora.
Miss Woodward,
I know that when you departed this morning I said I would keep your secret safe, but I must ask a very great favor of you. Please return to the house, if only for a half hour this morning. Something has happened with Lord Blakeney, and I must seek your advice, but I don’t dare write it down. The house will be empty, as my father has a vote on an agricultural bill today. I’ve instructed the carriage to collect you. Please come. I’m most desperate for your counsel.
—E
The thought of returning to No. 12 Belgrave Square filled her with dread, but how could she say no? One of her charges needed her help. Eric’s daughter needed her help.
“I need to go,” she announced. “Lady Eleanora’s in distress.”
“But what of all of this talk about cutting him from your life?” Elizabeth asked with raised brows.
Slowly, Mary pushed to her feet more than aware that she looked a fright. She’d been crying, she hadn’t changed her dress after her early morning flight from the house, and her hair was tucked in a hasty bun on top of her head, secured with a few pins she’d managed to jam into it. So be it. It didn’t matter what she looked like right now. She was about to break her own heart all over again by going back to the place she’d vowed to leave just hours before. To his home.