He had told her he’d been truthful about that much, that he’d never professed to love her when he did not. No—he said he’d not professed it until he meant it. Or did he simply want to believe it, too, now that they were wed until death did them part?
After lingering in the garden for quite some time, she returned to the main house. Mrs. Upton met her, cordial and patient, and they returned to the headmistress’s office.
She said only that she did not know what to do; that she was at a loss, and needed a place to think. Mrs. Upton didn’t press her—to pry would be rude. They talked of other things, trivial things, which had the soothing benefit of distracting Eliza. Gradually, subtly, Mrs. Upton’s questions led Eliza into talking of London. Soon she was describing the society events she now attended, which led to mentions of her new family, and finally to her marriage.
“What has made you unhappy, my dear?” asked Mrs. Upton at last. “I assume it was something quite serious for you to come to Kings Langley.”
Eliza stirred her tea. How to put it? “Yes, ma’am,” she murmured.
“Was it perhaps something your father did?”
She jerked at the perceptive question. “How—how did you know?”
Mrs. Upton made a soft tsk. “I always feared Mr. Cross would push you too hard. He was absolutely set upon you becoming a lady. I remember he asked that you be assigned to share a room with the most eligible girl here.” She smiled at Eliza’s aghast look. “I refused to promise any such thing. It was more important that you be exposed to young ladies who would be good influences but also good friends. I know the world of the ton is not always a kind one, but you had such a kind heart. A vain, proud girl would have crushed your spirit.” She sipped her own tea. “Your father, though, disagreed with me. He’s a very persistent man.”
“Yes.” Eliza frowned at this evidence that her father had been scheming to manipulate her since she was a child. “You were right to oppose him. Thank you.”
The headmistress smiled. “I insisted that I decide the rules of my own academy. I always believed that if I once gave way to a parent’s demands, I would eventually be buffeted on all sides by demands from every one of them until I couldn’t please any.”
Certainly her father would have done that. “How do you stand up to a parent?” she asked. “They must insist on certain things—they are paying the bill, after all . . .”
“But I retain the power to refuse them,” Mrs. Upton replied. “And I have.” She smiled. “But more frequently I try to hold my ground without denying a girl I wish to admit. I have quite a soft spot for young ladies who have lost their mothers. It is hard enough to be a woman in this world; to do so without a mother is a great pity.”
Yes, Eliza knew. She had often wondered how different her father would be if her mother were still alive. “My father interfered in my marriage.” She didn’t know how else to say it. “I fear it may be an unforgivable action.”
“That is grave indeed,” concurred Mrs. Upton. “I hope it was not to prevent an abuse by Lord Hastings.”
“No! Hastings would never do anything like that,” Eliza declared.
“But it has caused a rift with him,” murmured the older woman perceptively. “Otherwise you would not be here, I think.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Eliza admitted.
“And I cannot tell you,” said Mrs. Upton gently. “If I taught you anything in your time here, you know that.”
She did. Mrs. Upton wanted her young ladies to be self-assured and capable. It would have been lovely to be handed a solution, but Eliza knew she would have to find that herself. “But what would a lady do?”
Mrs. Upton smiled. “A lady conducts herself with grace and courage. However, every lady is also a woman, with passions and hopes and feelings. Only the woman can decide what her heart wants.” She made a delicate motion with one hand. “And then the lady will pursue that, gracefully and courageously.”
A knock at the door interrupted, and Mrs. Upton went to answer it. Eliza sipped her tea and thought as the headmistress engaged in a quiet conversation. She knew what her heart wanted—but how could she pursue it? How could she repair her marriage, founded on such a terrible deception, with both grace and courage?
“Lady Hastings,” said Mrs. Upton, breaking into her thoughts, “you have visitors. Shall I show them in?”
Eliza froze. “Who is it?”
“I daresay they’ll be welcome,” said the headmistress with a smile. “You always trusted their advice when you were younger, even when Miss Graham led you into misadventure.”
Sophie. Her friends had known where she would go. Her throat tight, Eliza nodded, and a moment later Sophie rushed into the room, Georgiana close on her heels. They flew into each other’s arms without a word, and Mrs. Upton quietly slipped out, closing the door behind her.
“I should have guessed you would find me,” said Eliza, trying to hide the sudden tears that had sprung into her eyes.
“We would have been here sooner if you’d mentioned it in your letter,” said Georgiana. She took out a handkerchief and gave it to Eliza.
Eliza gave a watery laugh, mopping her cheeks. “I didn’t even know I would come here until this morning! I’ve only been here a few hours.”
“A few hours we might have been here to support you,” said Georgiana pertly.
Eliza laughed again, weaker this time. “I’m astonished you’re here at all. Did Lady Sidlow come with you?”
“Bother her,” said Georgiana, but with a guilty flush. “I knew she wouldn’t approve, so I didn’t tell her.”
“You ran away?”
“I went right to Sophie.” Georgiana shook her head at Eliza’s horrified expression. “I’ve been perfectly well chaperoned ever since.”
“Oh no.” Eliza looked at Sophie in apology. “And you were rusticating with His Grace—”
“His Grace is downstairs with the coach,” Sophie told her. “Enough about us. What happened to you?”
That was Sophie—cut to the key point. Eliza’s spirits dropped again, after the sudden delight at her friends’ appearance. But . . . how was she to explain? It was too humiliating, too awful, too heartbreaking.
“What did Hastings do?” demanded Georgiana. “Why on earth would you leave him?”
“My father bribed him to court me,” Eliza heard herself say. “He pretended to admire me. He made me love him. But he—he didn’t feel anything for me.”
Georgiana gaped, but Sophie was frowning. “This requires far more explanation. And tea.” Ever the practical one, she rang for more tea, and soon they were settled around the tea table. Gradually Eliza managed to get out the whole story. Georgiana’s exclamations of outrage and shock spurred her on, as did Sophie’s direct questions.
“That’s intolerable!” Georgiana flung herself out of her chair when she reached the end.
Sophie shushed her, gaze fixed on Eliza. “Do you love Hastings?”
Eliza flushed in misery. “I do. Desperately.” Even after discovering the lies.
“You want to have a happy marriage with him.”
“Yes.” She’d never wanted anything else.
“Then you must trust him,” said Sophie gently. “At least until he proves he’s unworthy. Isn’t that what you told me?”
“That was different!” Eliza was uncomfortably shocked to hear her own words turned back on her. Before Sophie married her duke, she’d kept many closely guarded secrets from him, uncertain of his affection. Eliza had been sure Ware loved her—who could not fall in love with Sophie, so beautiful and clever and daring?—but Sophie hadn’t been as confident. Eliza had assured her that if she only trusted him with the truth, the duke would love her even more. “The duke was madly in love with you—”
“You thought so,” Sophie pointed out, “and I hoped so. But I didn’t know until I confided the whole, ugly truth. I thought he might exclaim in disgust and walk out the door without a word, never wanting to see me again.”<
br />
Eliza sat with her mouth open. That sounded almost like what she’d done to Hugh.
“Sophie, he pretended to love her when he did not!” interjected Georgiana. “Surely that deserves some punishment.”
“Did he pretend?” Sophie was watching Eliza. “He told her he never said he loved her until he truly did.”
Georgiana waved one hand. “He let her believe!”
I believed it because I wanted it to be true, Eliza thought with a pang.
“The way you let Lady Sidlow believe you’re sending Nadine out to buy the gossip papers instead of the latest Minerva Press novel?” Sophie and Georgiana were still arguing.
“She also buys the gossip papers,” Georgiana retorted. “I know how to sneak, Sophie. But no one is harmed by a few novels, while Hastings—”
“He didn’t break my heart,” said Eliza softly. “Hugh is not to blame for that.”
That silenced her friends. Sophie and Georgiana exchanged somber glances. They knew she meant her father, who had been almost like a father to both of them.
But Hugh hadn’t lied to her. He had held his tongue because he knew the truth would hurt her, but he hadn’t deliberately set out to deceive her. Her father had. Hugh felt he had no choice but to call on her—and he only married her because he thought they could be happy together. That suggested that if he’d not thought so, he wouldn’t have gone through with proposing and marrying her.
Perhaps she should have thought things through before she stormed out on him.
Even as she began to fear she’d made a terrible mistake, there was a knock on the door, just before Mrs. Upton came in. “I beg your pardon, my ladies, Your Grace, but you have another visitor. Lord Hastings is below, pleading to see you.”
Her heart leapt and swelled with longing, and Eliza nodded before she could think better of it.
She could tell from the echo of his footsteps on the uncarpeted stairs that he ran up them. Mrs. Upton had left the door open, and he lurched into the doorway, catching himself with both hands on the frame. “Eliza,” he said, his voice throbbing with relief. “Thank God.”
“Have you come to grovel, sir?” asked Georgiana coolly.
Eliza flushed. Hugh’s eyes never left her. “Yes.” His voice was rough, edged with exhaustion.
“Well,” began Georgiana, but Sophie cut her off.
“Come with me to see how Ware is getting on.” She took hold of Georgiana’s arm and pulled her out of the room.
Hugh stepped over the threshold and closed the door. He looked frightful, unshaven and with dark shadows under his eyes. She recognized the clothes he had worn the evening before. “Eliza. Are you . . . Are you well?”
She wanted to run to him and kiss him, comfort him and fuss over him, even after all that had happened. “Yes.” She cleared her throat. “You look dreadful.”
A faint smile crossed his face. He glanced down at himself. “I should have taken time to shave. Edith said so, but I could not wait.”
It pricked her heart. “How did you know to come here?” she asked instead.
“Henrietta.” His smile grew a little wider, a little rueful at her start of surprise. “You spoke so fondly of the place to her, and it made me recall our picnic, when you told me about it. You were not at your father’s house in Greenwich, so it was worth trying.”
“You went to Greenwich?” She tried to ask calmly, but her voice shook. What had Papa told him? What had he said to Papa?
“This morning.” He rubbed one hand over his jaw. “Your father and I will never be friendly.”
Her stomach knotted.
Hugh looked at her with yearning in his eyes. “He loves you—so much that he has no morals or compunction when it comes to doing what he thinks will make you happy.”
Papa had not apologized. “He was wrong,” she whispered. “What he did was terrible.”
Hugh nodded. “I am well aware. But he said something that almost made me want to forgive him.” Eliza tensed. “He said he only wanted me to look at you. That if I knew you, I would see what a treasure you are.” He paused. “In that, he was absolutely correct. And while I hate his methods, I cannot hate him for introducing you to me. For my actions after that . . . I take full responsibility. I was wrong to deceive you, no matter what he demanded from me. I was wrong to court you with such calculation.” He raised his hands and let them fall. “But I am not sorry I married you.”
She wanted to run to him so badly her toes curled inside her shoes from the effort of not moving. “You have my dowry, you know,” she said, striving for cold sense and logic. “No one can take it away. You don’t have to say anything you don’t mean.”
His jaw hardened and his eyes flashed dangerously. “Your father coerced me with eighty thousand pounds. I intend to pay him back, every damn farthing of his bloody bribery. He can leave the rest of his fortune to the Foundling Hospital for all I care. I didn’t come after you today for money. I did fall in love with you, in spite of your father and his schemes, and I don’t want to lose you because I was too stupid not to have fallen in love with you the first moment you landed at my feet, wet and dirty from Willy’s bath.”
Her heart pounded in hope and anxiety. “Is that true?”
“Every word,” he said in a low voice. “There is nothing but truth between us now, forever.”
Of their own volition her feet started walking. Hugh took two steps and caught her in his arms, clasping her to him. Eliza clung to him, burying her face in his neck, breathing deep of his familiar scent. Had it only been a day? The hours had stretched until it seemed an eternity since they’d gone to the Montgomery ball.
He took a paper from his pocket and pressed it into her hand. “Keep this,” he said raggedly. “Keep it until I have repaid all the debts your father bought and held over my head. Then you may give it back to me or rip it up and leave. But please . . . Give me a chance to prove myself to you.”
Her heart lodged in her throat as she recognized a copy of their marriage lines.
He tipped up her chin until her gaze met his. “I want you for you, my love. If you no longer want me—”
“I do,” she said, blinking back tears.
“Keep this,” he repeated, folding his hand over hers, still clutching the record of their marriage. “Until you are sure.”
Eliza thought she would always be sure, but she nodded. He rested his forehead against hers and exhaled. “Thank you,” he whispered.
She gathered him to her, sliding her hands into his hair, smiling at the way it curled around her fingers. Perhaps he was right. What her father did was inexcusable, but not unforgivable—some day. If Papa could be right about both of them—that Eliza would have hidden at home forever with her garden and her dogs, that Hugh would fall for her if only he got to know her—perhaps she could forgive him.
Not now, when her heart still ached from discovery, but some day. Perhaps.
“I’m glad you came after me,” she whispered. His head had come to rest on her shoulder, and she turned her face and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you.”
Hugh’s shoulders shook with silent laughter. “If I had been remotely hesitant in doing so, I would have been pursued from London by my furious family. They want you to come back, too—I daresay more than they want me back, after I confessed what I’d done.”
She blushed. “No, of course they want you . . .”
“Eliza.” He cupped her cheek. “I never told them how badly off my father left us. I thought I was protecting them, but really, I was only lying to them. You, on the other hand, never did. You were your kind, thoughtful, loving, considerate self, and—like me—once they knew you, they loved you.” He paused. “Well, not at all the same way that I love you, nor even as much, I’d wager, but they were adamant that I should do everything in my power to persuade you to come home.”
The wedding record crinkled between them.
“You’ve already said everything you needed to say to persuade me,” s
he told him.
His lips curved. “May I say it again?”
She nodded.
“I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you.” By the last time, her lips were forming the words in time with his. Hugh grinned, his dimple showing. “My lady. My beloved wife.”
“My beloved lord husband.” She went up on her toes and pressed her lips to his. “Take us home.”
Epilogue
Fourteen months later
Rosemere House
Cornwall
Sunlight crept through the draperies, stealing up the side of the bed and finally across her face. Eliza wrinkled her nose as the beam roused her from sleep.
“Shh,” came Hugh’s voice in her ear. His hand came to rest on her hip before stroking slowly up her side. “I was dreaming of a beautiful woman in my bed, and here I find one. My own sleeping beauty.”
She smiled without opening her eyes.
“My voluptuous sleeping beauty.” He cupped her breast with a low growl of approval.
“I’m not sleeping,” she whispered.
“Even better.” He kissed the nape of her neck. “I might persuade you to let me have my way with you.”
She laughed and twisted in his arms to face him. “I hope you will.”
His hands paused; his expression sharpened. “Yes?”
Eliza nodded. It had been a long time since he made love to her properly—too long. Hugh moaned, rolling over her and covering her face with kisses until she laughed again.
A sudden noise made them both freeze. Willy, in his basket by the hearth, raised his head. Eliza looked in concern toward the darkest corner of the room, but Hugh turned her face back to him. “Don’t make a sound,” he breathed. “Not one sound, Eliza.”
“Hugh! No—we can’t—oh my—” He put one hand over her mouth to stop her protest. His other hand had got under her nightdress and moved between her legs. She shook her head frantically, even as she spread her legs for him, but Hugh only gave her a wicked smile, and Eliza’s eyes rolled back in her head as he touched her in earnest.
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