He stepped back and away from her. She wanted to go with him—to find out what had happened. But a swarm of people still waited to be greeted and ushered inside, so she must stay put. But did he have to make whatever was happening sound so terribly ominous, like such a portent of evil and doom?
For only a moment, Aurora watched her husband stalk down the receiving line and out of sight before returning her attention to the guests before her. “Mrs. Poole, was it? So very nice to make your acquaintance, ma’am.”
“Oh, my lady,” the pretty red-headed woman before her gushed, “it is so very kind of you to issue an invitation to your home. Why, we haven’t ever been here other than to tour it once while his lordship was away on the continent. But to see it all alight with candles and adorned with flowers and fashionable people? I daresay I’ve died and gone to heaven.”
“Well, I hope you and your husband enjoy yourselves this evening,” Aurora responded. “Do be sure to come back for”
The crowd in line jostled forward, pushing into Mr. Poole’s back and cutting Aurora’s thoughts short. The young farmer protectively reached out his arms to encircle his wife.
“Outside!” Was that Quin’s voice? “Right this instant, Griffin. For that matter, you ought to join us too, Phoebe. I don’t recall inviting you into my home.”
Lord Griffin and Lady Phoebe? Aurora hadn’t sent them an invitation. She didn’t think Quin would feel too kindly about having his former fiancée in his home. And no matter what, Aurora didn’t want Griffin there. Not after what he’d put them through.
Oh, dear good Lord. Could he be the one behind these new stories that were surfacing? Of course he was. She ought to have known right from the start. She just hadn’t been thinking much about that, because of the baby and the house party, and so many other things going on in her mind.
She ought to have told Quin all along. To have trusted him to do what was right. But instead, she kept it quiet. To protect whom? Quin? Herself? The only person she had actually protected was Lord Griffin, the last person on earth who needed her protection.
Except he might just need it at the moment. The crowd convulsed toward her again, with dazed gasps and shouts mingling together in the cavernous hall. If they were to tussle, Quin was easily twice the man’s size. He could probably kill him with his bare hands, particularly after all those days spent boxing at Gentleman Jackson’s.
She had to put a stop to it. Right this instant.
Aurora pushed her way through a crowd that seemed to be moving in the opposite direction. Even though she was somewhat tall for a lady, many of the men still towered above her, and she couldn’t see how much further she had to go.
“Come with me,” Quin ground out.
Oh, dear good Lord. He sounded positively murderous. No matter how large or small the previous scandals swirling around the two of them had been, no matter how truthful or filled with lies they may have been, there would be no stemming the flow of damage if Quin murdered a man in front of a ballroom full of people. In his own home, no less.
She couldn’t let that happen. She had to talk some sense into him. Surely this could all be resolved in a civilized manner.
Just when she thought she was finally making some headway in coming through the crowd, it shifted directions. Now, they were surging her forward, almost like she was caught in the tide and being pulled out to sea.
The front doors were open and wave upon wave of people unfurled out into the open night air. Having the murder take place outside instead of inside would do nothing to quell the rumor-mill, as long as the crowd did not disperse.
“I am an invited guest,” Lord Griffin shouted over the din of murmurs. “This is how you would treat me?”
Aurora continued to push through the crush of bodies in an attempt to see what was happening. She finally reached a point where, looking between the shoulders of the two gentlemen in front of her, she could see Quin and Lady Phoebe, and on occasion Lord Griffin, though he was moving around quite a bit in the midst of the circle.
“No one invited you,” Quin spat out. “Neither my wife nor I would ever invite you to do anything. Save perhaps go straight to the devil without looking back. Not after what you’ve done.” He was right, of course. Aurora hadn’t invited them. But how could Quin know anything of what Griffin had done? She’d never mentioned a name, not even when her husband had begged of her to do so.
Griffin brandished a scrap of foolscap and thrust it toward Quin. “Have a look at it yourself. You’ll clearly see that you are wrong.”
Quin took the paper and frowned. As he read its contents, however, his frown turned to the sternest scowl Aurora had ever seen upon his face. He turned to the crowd and bellowed, “Rotheby! Explain yourself, you arse.”
Gracious. This could not be good. What did Lord Rotheby have to do with anything? Oh, how she wished her husband would stop cursing so very much. There were ladies present—rather young ones, for that matter.
The crowd behind her shoved forward again, and Lord Rotheby’s voice came through the muddled whispers and gasps. “Let me by. I am a very old man, and I am not above using this cane as a weapon.” When he passed Aurora, he turned to her and winked—surely he had and it wasn’t simply a figment of her imagination—before continuing through the crowd.
What was his ruse?
“Would you care to explain,” Quin asked with a deadly calm tone after his grandfather emerged into the center of the clearing, “why you took it upon yourself to invite guests into my home? Particularly guests whom you know very well that I have no desire to step foot anywhere near my property?” He indicated Lady Phoebe.
A pain assaulted Aurora’s abdomen, much stronger than before. She bit her lip to keep from calling out. Now was certainly not an appropriate time.
“If you will recall,” Rotheby said, “technically, this is still my home. I will invite whomever I see fit. I saw fit to invite this piece of garbage” he waved toward Griffin “because you have yet to put a stop to his treachery. His sister was invited in case she has also played a part in it,” he added as an afterthought.
Griffin’s treachery. So Lord Rotheby knew about the scandalous new gossip rags, and he thought Griffin responsible?
Another pain gripped Aurora. She doubled over with a whimper. But she couldn’t allow herself to indulge in such self-possession for long. As soon as the clenching pain passed, she straightened.
“I hadn’t handled it yet because I wanted to avoid a scene just such as this one. The fact that he has dragged my wife and her good name through the mud, spreading his vicious lies about her has hardly passed unnoticed by me, I can assure you.”
“This is slander, all of it,” Griffin said. “I’ve done nothing against your wife. Certainly nothing that would hurt her reputation worse than you already have, Quinton. A blackguard with your history could hardly help her, but then to force her into an impromptu marriage by ruining her in the middle of a ballroom? To allow gossip about her and her writings go without any attempt at a denial of their veracity, running away to hide in the country? What else could the good people of the ton think but that it was an admission of truth?”
Quin stepped toward Griffin, grasping him by the starched points of his collar. “You and I both know that the first was hers. I don’t know how you got the pages. That is beside the point. But the fact remains that you took from my wife”
“And that is somehow worse than what you took from my sister?” Griffin interrupted. “You offered for her. You signed the contracts with my father. And then you disappeared on the morning of your wedding, not to return until just before you dragged poor Lady Quinton into your sordid affairs. You couldn’t even be bothered to take the time to inform either your intended or anyone in her family that you were crying off, so we could not have the opportunity to call you out for your cowardice. For that matter, the staff of your own home did not learn of your whereabouts for months.”
Quin tightened his grip, his lips forming a
snarl. “So you decided to gain your revenge through attacking my wife. Do you even realize what your sister is? Why I could not marry her, or even why I would never wish her upon my greatest enemy?”
Yet again, pain coursed through Aurora’s center, nearly blinding her this time with its intensity.
“My lady,” said a vaguely familiar voice from behind her with a great deal of insistence. Someone she’d met only that evening, surely. Aurora turned to see who it was, still caught in the grips of her pain. Oh, the sweet, young woman from just before this all started. What was her name again?
“Mrs. Poole?” Aurora finally said when the name came to her.
Quin’s voice ripped through her pain. “She beat a stable boy with a horsewhip,” he bellowed to the entire crowd. “For the sin of placing her saddle upon the very horse she had him saddle for her the previous day. She whipped him until blood seeped through every inch of his clothing, until he was passed out on the ground in the stables, until he could no longer cry from his pain.”
Oh, dear good Lord. The pain. Aurora couldn’t handle the pain much longer.
“My lady, please,” Mrs. Poole insisted, placing a hand upon Aurora’s arm and tugging gently. “The blood. You must come away at once, ma’am.”
She couldn’t concentrate. Her mind wouldn’t cooperate. “This all happened years ago, Mrs. Poole. There is no blood now.”
“The boy likely deserved a good whipping,” Lord Griffin said. “If Phoebe hadn’t delivered it, rest assured he would have received worse from someone else—someone stronger. Are you afraid of a lady? Were you afraid that she would beat you?”
“Not the boy, ma’am,” Mrs. Poole said. “You. You’re bleeding, all down the back of your lovely gown.”
Aurora looked down at her gown. Bleeding. She was bleeding.
The baby.
Her child was gone. Their chance at appeasing Lord Rotheby was gone. Her chance to make Quin happy…to be what he needed her to be…
“No child deserves such treatment,” Quin said, so softly Aurora almost couldn’t hear it. “No boy or girl. No man or woman. And I would not spend the rest of my days aligned to someone who would think it appropriate to mete out such punishments. I’ve lived enough of my life in such a manner. Never again.”
“Mrs. Poole, I…” Aurora didn’t know what to say. What could one say at such a moment?
But the young woman looked on her with kind eyes and took her hand into her own. “Come with me,” she said, and then she pushed her way through the throng watching the spectacle in the courtyard.
“And a lady deserves to be left at the altar without a backward glance? Without a by-your-leave, or even a letter of explanation?” Griffin hollered. “You ruined my sister’s chance at making a respectable match, so I decided to ruin your wife’s chance of upholding a place in society. After the things she’s supposedly written, she’ll never step foot inside the grand ballrooms of London again.”
“And you’ll never step foot on my property again.” A loud thud sounded. The crowd let out a collective gasp.
Then all went silent.
Chapter Twenty-Six
26 June, 1811
It’s all over now.
~From the journal of Lady Quinton
Mrs. Poole helped Aurora back into the house. Thankfully, the entire ballroom had emptied. No one, save Mrs. Poole and the servants, would see her in such a state of distress. Indeed, tears had been pouring down her cheeks the entire way through the crush. Her only saving grace had been that Quin and the scene he was causing held everyone’s attention rapt.
Once inside, she thanked the young woman for her assistance, then found Mrs. Marshall to take her up to her chamber.
Rose helped her to clean herself and change clothes. She tried to dry Aurora’s eyes, as well, despite the pointlessness of such an endeavor. The tears would not cease. For that matter, they might never dry up again. Aurora waved her maid off. She needed to be alone. She needed time to think. To write.
Now, for the first time in her life, Aurora understood her mother. She’d always loved her mother. She had often felt pity for her—which might have something to do with why she abhorred pity coming from anyone else. Aurora never wanted to be bleak, full of grief and sorrow and pain. She never wanted to be in an empty marriage, one without love.
One with love, but too much hurt to bridge the gap to where love could matter more than pain. Yet here she was. Married to a man she loved more than breath itself, yet unable to be the wife he needed. Full of all the heartaches of life and devoid of the joys.
Aurora took a candle from the mantle and sat down at her escritoire. She ought to go back down to the ballroom. Surely by now, Quin had sent Lord Griffin and Lady Phoebe off, and the revelers had returned to their evening of mirth. Surely she would be missed. It just wasn’t done, for a hostess to abandon her own guests at a ball, to leave them to their own devices while she wallowed above stairs in her misery.
But she couldn’t face them. Not tonight. Not now.
Not Quin.
Though she feared she might never be able to face him again, he needed to know. He deserved to know.
So Aurora picked up her quill and dipped it into the inkwell.
And she wrote.
She wrote their story—their true story, and not the fantasy she had imagined. She wrote her parents’ story. She wrote until she could write no more. Tears splattered the pages of foolscap, but taking the time to rewrite it would only instigate more tears. The tears would have to stay.
But Aurora could not.
She took her journal into Quin’s chamber, placing it upon the pillow of his bed.
And she left.
~ * ~
“I don’t believe a single one of your guests has left,” Jonas said to Quin as they stood off to the side of the ballroom.
Quin scanned the room, taking in a mental count of the people. Amazingly enough, it seemed Jonas was right. The scene between himself and Griffin and Phoebe had been badly done on his part (on theirs, too), but all indications pointed to it being one of those moments the townspeople would talk about for years to come—but only in derision when it came to speaking of Griffin.
Somehow, Quin came up aces on this one. He’d never understand it in all his life.
But when he had returned, he wanted Aurora. He wanted to hold her, to kiss her, to tell her again that he loved her. He wanted to see the sly smile she always gave him and to hear the sassy tone of her voice.
She was nowhere to be found.
Mrs. Marshall informed him that her ladyship was feeling rather under the weather and had gone up to her bed early. She begged his forgiveness for deserting him with a ballroom full of guests.
It was probably best that he allow her to rest. She was carrying his child, after all. Their child. And he was not so oblivious to not recognize that she was having difficulties with it.
So he carried on with the ball without her, entertaining their guests, dancing with the wallflowers, charming everyone in sight. Without flirting, of course. To be honest, it felt rather odd to not even have the inclination to flirt with a young lady or three. The only one he wanted to flirt with was Aurora.
Instead, he went through the night as though nothing was amiss. Now, after much dancing and discussion and a supper suited for a king, followed by still more dancing, the final set of the night was upon them.
“Have you put your name on anyone’s dance card yet?” Quin asked his friend. Jonas had already danced the opening quadrille with Nia, and the supper dance too—a waltz. Quin ought to have voiced a complaint about Nia dancing a waltz, since she wasn’t out yet. She didn’t yet have permission to dance the waltz from one of the patronesses of Almack’s. But his mother had reminded him that they were not in Town. The rules of propriety need not be adhered to quite so strictly in the country. The remainder of the sets he had spread out amongst various ladies from the house party and a few from the town.
Nia hadn’t managed
to be quite the wallflower she would have liked, either, with a partner for every set but one, when she instead chose to go for a walk around the kitchen gardens with her father. Quin barely managed to get his name on her card before it was filled, and he knew Aurora would never forgive him if he had not acted the part of the older brother.
Jonas looked across the floor at a grouping of young ladies, refusing to meet Quin’s eyes. “Yes, I’ve made arrangements.”
On the dais, the violinist tapped his bow against the floor, signaling their readiness to begin the final dance. Odd, that Jonas was avoiding giving more answer than that. “I suppose we ought to go and fetch our partners then,” Quin said.
“Indeed we should.” With that, Jonas turned from him and walked away.
There was no time to ponder Jonas’s reaction at the moment, however. Quin must fetch his mother. He’d requested that she waltz with him—something he had never in all his life done.
With her on his arm, they took up their positions on the ballroom floor. Quin looked around to find Nia, to be certain she had a partner for the final dance of the evening. “What the devil?” he said when he finally found her. “Mother, why have you allowed Nia to dance a third set with Jonas tonight? It isn’t proper. They’ll think her fast.”
“I see nothing improper or fast about it. And you really can’t say anything about impropriety, since abandoning me without a word and not writing to me to tell me you were alive for years is hardly proper. Being married for months, without a brief note to inform me of such is hardly proper.” His mother frowned up at him as the music started and they began to dance. “A third dance with a gentleman who is virtually family, at a country ball no less, is perfectly fine.”
As usual, Mother’s tone brooked no argument. Quin had to chuckle. Despite his thirty-two years, she could put him in his place in the span of a moment—without even batting an eye. “You are right, of course.”
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