An Inconvenient Beauty

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  Uncle Percy joined them in the middle of a debate over the current opera that was actually quite interesting.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Emerson. Come to brighten your day with my niece?” He glanced their way. “And daughter?”

  Freddie rolled her eyes and tipped up her teacup.

  Mr. Emerson rose. “It’s always a pleasure to visit with your family, my lord, even when it was not my original intention to do so. I merely came to bring you a piece of news. You’ve been so interested in how the House of Commons was viewing the Apothecary Act that I thought I would do you the courtesy of delivering the news myself.”

  Uncle Percy rocked up onto his toes and patted his midsection with a wide grin on his face. “Well, I have to say I appreciate that. Shall we adjourn to my study, then?”

  The two men exited and went up to her uncle’s study. Mr. Emerson was back down the stairs in less than ten minutes.

  “Good afternoon, ladies. Always a pleasure.”

  “That can’t be good.” Frederica set a half-eaten tart down on the tray.

  “Why not?” Isabella picked at her skirt.

  “Because he didn’t stay long. If it had been good news, Father would have convinced him to celebrate with a toast at the very least.”

  Isabella swallowed hard. “Perhaps they drank it quickly.”

  The girls waited, all but holding their breath.

  When the clock in the hall struck the hour, they both jumped, stunned to find they’d been sitting in silence for nearly half an hour.

  “Should we check on him?” Isabella whispered.

  Freddie turned wide eyes on her cousin. “Why would we do that? If it’s bad news he’ll take it out on us eventually. Probably by saying we’ve wandered down Bond Street a few too many times and then cutting my pin money for a month.”

  There was a good deal of truth to Freddie’s statement. If something had gone wrong with the Apothecary Act, Uncle Percy had no reason to keep Isabella in Town any longer. And no reason to let Freddie marry Arthur.

  Aside, of course, from that fact that it would make him a good father.

  Isabella stood and smoothed her skirt, finding comfort in the brightly patterned silk that was highly unfashionable here in London but was admired by many back home in Northumberland. “We’ll just walk by. If he calls us in to share his news, then we’ll know. If he’s drowning his sorrows, then we can just keep walking.”

  “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to walk up the stairs.” Freddie stood, though she was considerably slower to straighten. “Quietly.”

  “Of course.” Isabella agreed, though Freddie had no way of stopping her if she decided to stomp on the top two stairs to let her uncle know they were there.

  They moved toward the stairs as if a monster lurked at the top, waiting to devour them.

  As they neared the top of the stairs, Isabella elected to go with Frederica’s plan for quiet and placed her foot gently on the next tread. At the top of the stairs they walked through the passage, winding their way to the next staircase that led up to the bedchambers.

  Their feet had touched the first stair when a voice boomed out from the open study door they’d slipped past.

  “Isabella!”

  She swallowed, the bravery of downstairs drowned out by the panicked thudding of her heart.

  Dear Lord, give me strength.

  Her heart didn’t stop trying to pound its way out through her ears, but a calm came over her in other ways. She was still scared, but there was an innate sense that everything was going to work out. It was amazing how quickly God was willing to take her back after she’d spent months doing things her own way.

  She took a deep breath. “Yes, Uncle?”

  “Come in here. The Apothecary Act has been abandoned, and I need you to save it.”

  Chapter 29

  Was it unethical to sell jewelry that didn’t actually belong to her? Of course, she couldn’t risk doing so because her uncle had threatened to blame the loss of the jewelry on her father.

  Was anyone buying used gowns? Isabella hadn’t understood how very trapped she was until she realized that she didn’t even have enough money to buy a seat on the mail coach home.

  Of course, her mother would be livid if Isabella crossed the entire country by herself in a mail coach, but what else was Isabella going to do? She certainly couldn’t obey her uncle’s wishes.

  The Apothecary Act was dead. While Uncle Percy had been doing his best to gather votes in the House of Lords, the House of Commons had washed their hands of it. After the numerous small changes the House of Lords had made and the amount of time they’d delayed the vote, the elected men had given up on the bill. Uncle Percy was livid. He’d spent the past seven years of his life trying to change things, trying to restrict the power of the people he felt were at fault for the death of his wife and son.

  And now it was going to slip through his fingers.

  Isabella admitted to feeling a bit of sympathy for that, but it wasn’t enough to make her hurt Freddie, the one person she cared about that she hadn’t yet lied to or manipulated in some way.

  Freddie charged into Isabella’s room without knocking and closed the door behind her. “What did he say?”

  “The bill is dead. He said the only way to revive it would be for someone powerful to rewrite it and propose it again.”

  “Someone powerful?” Freddie sank onto Bella’s bed. “Someone like the Duke of Riverton?”

  “Someone exactly like the Duke of Riverton.” Isabella paced from the window to the bed and back again. “He wants me to convince Griffith to throw his weight behind a new bill. He’s even prepared to marry me off to him in order to make it happen.”

  Freddie’s brows drew together. “But don’t you want to marry the duke? You were just crying over—”

  “Not like this! Never like this. I can’t do it, Freddie. I can’t use him like that.”

  “Why not?” She twisted her fingers together in her lap. “You used everyone else.”

  Sometimes truth hurt. And Isabella was glad Freddie was willing to tell her the truth even as she resented the uttering of it. “It’s different.”

  There was silence for a moment as Isabella stopped her pacing and leaned her head against the window, the sun-warmed glass doing nothing to ease her frustration. “He’s different.”

  “Because you love him.”

  “Yes,” Isabella whispered. “I’ve hurt everyone I love over this business. I don’t want to hurt him too.”

  “Haven’t you already hurt him?”

  Freddie’s quiet voice called forth the memory Isabella had been repressing of Griffith rising to his feet, shock and pain on his face after she’d turned down his proposal. “Not like this would. He’d come to resent me, Freddie. I’d be the thing he traded his honor for.”

  “Unless he supports the bill.”

  “If he does, then he’ll revive it on his own. I won’t be the one to force him to make that choice.”

  Freddie crossed the room and wrapped her arms around Isabella, who dropped her head onto her cousin’s shoulder in abject defeat. She couldn’t even cry right now. It was as if she was so numb, so far removed from what was really happening, that she couldn’t call forth the tears in the midst of her misery.

  “Well, look at it this way, then,” Freddie said, rocking Isabella back and forth. “You haven’t hurt me yet. Did you know I’ve gone out to more events this year than the past two combined? I’ve been invited to absolutely everything.”

  Isabella sighed and buried her face in Frederica’s hair. “How could I have forgotten? Freddie, what am I going to do?”

  Freddie pulled back and tried to tilt her head to look Isabella in the eye. “What?”

  “He won’t let you marry Arthur.” Bella pushed away from Freddie and began to pace again, hands pressed over her cheeks and temples as if she could somehow reach in and calm the tumultuous thoughts in her head. “I can’t do this to Griffith, but if I don’t, your fa
ther won’t let you marry Arthur. He made it a condition when I threatened to go home after the house party.” The tears that had so far been absent rushed forth with a vengeance, sending a raw sob up Isabella’s throat. “Oh, Freddie, I’m so sorry!”

  Freddie laughed.

  It stunned Isabella into silence. She froze, hands falling limply to her side, tracks of pain still rolling slowly over her cheeks. Her voice was a raw whisper. “Freddie?”

  “Bella, I’m three-and-twenty. Father can’t stop me from marrying whomever I wish to.” She shrugged. “Arthur and I sent messages to our home parishes before he left. They’ve been read three times by now. We’ll be able to marry as soon as he comes home.”

  “You didn’t.” Isabella blinked. When Frederica decided to grow a backbone, she went for one made of iron. “But your dowry, your inheritance.”

  “All of it came from Mother. It was stipulated in her marriage contract, so there’s nothing Father can do about it. Not really. I’m sure he’ll bluster and fuss, but it’s not his to deny. He’s already told me the rest of it will go with the estate. He doesn’t want Godfrey, or whatever his name is, to have any trouble retaining the glory of the viscountcy.” Freddie rolled her eyes at the last bit, but her wide smile remained.

  “So I’m not ruining things for you?” A small ray of hope poked through the shadows crowding Isabella’s vision.

  “I won’t deny that it would be nice if Father supported my marriage, but I’ve lived the last ten years in this house, watching myself fade along with my mother’s memory and, quite possibly, my father’s grip on reality. I’ll not keep fading away until I’m nothing but a shell.”

  “I wish I had your courage, Freddie.”

  “Where do you think I got it from?” Freddie brushed a final tear from Bella’s face. “Anyone who comes clear across the country with the confidence that she can ensnare an entire population of powerful men isn’t lacking in courage. Even if it is a bit misplaced.”

  Both girls sank back onto the edge of the bed, the swirl of fast-changing emotions draining their energy.

  “I want to go home, Freddie.”

  Freddie frowned. “Are you sure that’s the best idea? Father can’t make you say anything to Griffith about the Apothecary Act, even if you do change your mind about the proposal. You could go be a duchess, and there isn’t a thing Father can do about it.”

  “You think Uncle Percy wouldn’t say anything? The moment he could lay claim to any family connection to Griffith, he would be on the doorstep, hat in hand. And Griffith would know that I’d come to him with another agenda, whether I wanted to or not. Not to mention I still have to tell him that everything he knows about me is a lie. That would be enough to convince anyone that I’m colluding with Uncle Percy on this business. But by then he’d be committed and he would feel obligated because that’s what he does. He’d do anything for his family.”

  A small wrinkle appeared across the bridge of Freddie’s nose as she allowed an impish grin to cut through the melancholy. “Except dance.”

  Isabella laughed. “Except dance.”

  And he’d even been willing to do that with her. Anxious to, even.

  With a sigh Isabella dropped her head onto Frederica’s shoulder. “That is probably my biggest regret, Freddie. He asked me so many times and I never said yes.”

  “Tell me again why I’m here?”

  Frederica straightened her glove and moved to join the flow of people entering Lady Farnsworth’s home. “Aside from saying yes to a dance should the duke ask again?” She grinned at Isabella over her shoulder. “You are here because I am not about to let you sit in the house until you become a piece of furniture. It’s bad enough that Father has hardly moved from the lounge in his room. I’ll not have you become a living ghost.”

  “I admit, getting dressed and leaving the house is a good thing. But did it have to be here?” Isabella trailed Frederica up the stairs and through the receiving line. She’d done her best to appear less ornate tonight, but there was only so much she could do without taking a set of shears and hacking off a few pounds of flounce and trim. Uncle Percy had bought her a wardrobe to be noticed, and leaving off the ostentatious jewelry and doing her hair up in a simple cluster of curls—all hers tonight, no fake hair or milled starch—wasn’t going to detract from a gown created to draw attention.

  They greeted their hostess and slid into the ballroom, Isabella doing her best to stay shielded behind Frederica.

  “If you wish to hide, my skirts would probably be the worst choice you can make. My nose is like a beacon pointing people in your direction. We’ve rarely been less than five feet apart all spring, unless you were on the dance floor.” Freddie nudged Isabella with her hip until she straightened and moved to stand next to her.

  “Your nose isn’t that big,” Isabella mumbled. It was a ridiculous, and rather untrue, thing to say, but Isabella couldn’t bring herself to address anything else around her this evening, so she might as well attempt to bolster Frederica’s courage. Although Frederica hadn’t seemed to need any such encouragement of late.

  “We both know it’s half the size of Yorkshire.” She shrugged. “It is what it is. It keeps me from drowning in the rain, and Arthur doesn’t seem to mind it, so why should I?”

  They stayed to the edges of the ballroom, working their way toward the corner where all the spinsters were gathering. Isabella doubted they’d welcome her into their circles. Ladies hadn’t been very excited to see Isabella in the past few weeks, but the spinster corner was the best place for a woman to hide if she didn’t want to be noticed.

  She never quite made it.

  “Miss Breckenridge! So nice to see you again.”

  Isabella smiled at Sir Richard. “And you as well.”

  “Would you care to dance?”

  No. Not unless it was Griffith asking her again.

  She opened her mouth to decline, but then thought back to when she’d finally faced her fears and opened her grandmother’s Bible this afternoon to read Psalm 23. It had been peaceful and comforting, but one thing she’d noticed was all but one of the verses talked about moving along with God. If she was going to leave the consequences of her bad decisions behind and move forward to whatever God had in store for her, she wasn’t going to be able to do it holding up the ballroom wall.

  It didn’t mean she had to accept everyone who asked her. Some of the men she’d been flirting with were rather unpleasant. At least Sir Richard was nice.

  She smiled and dipped her head. “The honor would be mine.”

  As they lined up with the other couples on the floor, Isabella had to make herself pay attention to the formations patterned by the couples at the top of the rows. Her mind kept wandering back to the idea of moving forward. Finding a future. She glanced at Sir Richard. He would be a good provider and spent most of his year in the country. If she remembered correctly, he lived in one of the northern counties, though not nearly as far north as her family. All things considered, there were considerably worse futures God could give her than the one Sir Richard could offer.

  But she couldn’t marry him.

  At least not any time soon. The very idea of giving serious contemplation to such a union made her skin feel too tight, and she’d never been so thankful for a dance pattern to have worked its way down to her before.

  They joined the formations, and Isabella’s smile came a bit easier as they chasséd across the line and changed places with the couple above them. There was something freeing in learning what one wouldn’t do. It was almost as helpful as knowing what she would do with her future.

  Unease still settled heavy in her belly, because if she wasn’t going to marry . . . what was she going to do? Father was a businessman now, anticipating lowering the number of people in his house that he had to care for.

  And Sir Richard was saying something to her that she was missing completely.

  Isabella smiled. It had worked for her for nearly three months now. Smiling when
she didn’t know what to say or couldn’t say what she’d wanted to say.

  It worked again. Sir Richard smiled in answer and continued to speak.

  Isabella took a deep breath and let it out through her smiling teeth. Freddie was determined to keep dragging her to these things until she was sure Isabella was fine. Which meant Isabella was going to do everything in her power to make it look like she always had before or drive herself unconscious trying.

  Chapter 30

  When a man wanted information that he didn’t already have, he had to go to sources he had as of yet not visited. The problem was, when it came to learning more about Isabella, the only people Griffith hadn’t yet asked were her collection of doting suitors. To this point, he’d done everything he could to pretend the group of unattached, powerful young men hadn’t existed.

  But seeing as how that hadn’t aided his cause any, it was time to try a different strategy.

  “Tell me again what I’m doing here?” Colin McCrae, Georgina’s husband and a man who somehow seemed to know nearly everything about everyone in London, adjusted the sleeve of his jacket and looked around the edges of the ballroom. “I could be dancing with my wife.”

  “If you’d known the information I need, I’d have been happy to let you dance with your wife.” Griffith rubbed his forefinger against his thumb and angled his shoulders to avoid brushing into too many people as they made their way to their target.

  “My apologies for not seeing anything strange about a bunch of powerful men swarming around the most popular woman of the Season. It happens every year, you know.” Colin put a hand on Griffith’s arm and brought them to a halt. “Seriously, Griffith, what do you expect me to do?”

  Griffith lifted an eyebrow and tried not to look upset. When he’d realized that he had no way of finding out what he wanted to know without somehow becoming someone he’d never been, or at least hadn’t been in so many years that it no longer mattered, frustration like he’d never known had eaten away at his composure. Colin’s striding in the door with Georgina on his arm had been a godsend. “You’re going to gossip.”