Chapter Twenty-Three

As four days passed, Lucy withdrew from Henry hour by hour, turning her interest instead to the suitors. Now, the day he most dreaded had arrived. Lucy would choose a husband before the night was done to allow sufficient time for the reading of the banns. All his efforts, training, and tutoring had led her to this day. And he could not have been more miserable.

Owing to comfortable cloud cover, the house party had elected for an outing on the moderate but lush lawn behind Ardmoore. Manicured shrubbery, lacy trees, and bursts of flowers lined three sides. Henry found himself relegated to the margins while watching Lucy hold court with the suitors, all under Charlotte’s watchful eye. Not one to accept overshadowing, Isabella insinuated herself into the fray, dragging Miss Braye and Miss Wharton along for support. Even then, Henry chose to hover near enough to listen but far enough away to remain outside the conversation. The suitors peppered Lucy with questions, some more personal than others.

“What is your favorite dish? I prefer roast pheasant and cabbage myself.”

“Might you favor us with a poem in Italian?”

“What manner of man was your father?”

Most of these questions she answered as diligently as she could without betraying the more sordid details of her past. Some she brushed aside with a grace Henry did not recall noticing when he first met her. He nodded approval for her handling of the stressful interview, even though it crumbled his heart moment by moment. Isabella soon resumed her efforts to humiliate Lucy.

“Lady Margaret.” Isabella waited until she commanded all eyes. “I heard a most unbelievable rumor about you that I cannot imagine to be true.”

Henry tensed and watched Lucy do the same.

“Is that so?” Her response sounded calm, but he sensed the underlying anxiety. Isabella smiled, knowing she had touched upon a secret.

“A little bird told me…” She paused dramatically. “That you fence. That you handle a foil in the manner of some dastardly pirate. Imagine that!”

Henry craned his neck, wondering how Lucy would escape such a direct question.

“Imagination is unnecessary, for the rumor is true.”

While Henry smiled at her equally direct response, most jaws went slack with surprise. Not Isabella’s, though. He realized, then, that she had set a trap for Lucy and her prey had jumped directly into the snare.

“Good for you,” said Isabella. Her measured intonation hinted sarcasm. “I admire your admitting to playing with swords despite every man despising such a masculine pursuit in a wife.”

Lucy’s eyes went wide with surprise, and Isabella seemed to take pleasure in the expected reaction. However, a smile began to tug Henry’s lips. He had come to know Lucy’s many expressions well. Her response was an act. She was preparing to counterattack.

“Every man?” she said. “Is that true?”

Still unaware of impending insult, Isabella fell into Lucy’s superior snare. “Well, nearly every man, I suppose.”

“Once again, I must thank you for your generous guidance on such matters.” Lucy spoke with all the earnestness of a child hoping for more pudding. “As a show of my gratitude, I will be sure to limit my interests to those who are man enough to disarm me and leave the rest for your consideration.”

Most of the suitors smiled at the retort. Charlotte stifled a giggle while Miss Braye and Miss Wharton exchanged a mirthful glance. Realizing her mistake, Isabella rallied.

“Worry not over me, for I do not lack male attention. As your time in London was brief, you would not have known such information. Just as you would not have known the popular fashions of the haute ton these days. For that reason, I would not fret over your odd dress. You are not to blame for it.”

All eyes swung from Isabella to Lucy while Henry drifted near the conversation with fascination. Once again, Lucy simply smiled and dipped her head with gratitude. “Thank you again, Lady Isabella. When I return to London, I shall have a word with my French dressmakers about this. They assured me this style was all the rage in Paris these days and favored by the finest young ladies of the belle monde.”

Miss Wharton blundered into the exchange with unabashed curiosity. “In Paris? The belle monde?”

“That is what the Archambeau brothers claim. I am inclined to believe them, as they have always proved both trustworthy and fully representative of French style.”

Henry grunted with understanding. Of course. With the recent end of hostilities between Britain and France, interest in French fashion had erupted madly over the summer. The Archambeaus’ empty shop had begun humming with business no more than a week after Lucy’s second visit, driven in part by the news that a duchess had commissioned dresses there. Lucy knew this and played the noblewomen like stringed instruments, despite only recently having been introduced to their complicated game.

Miss Braye elbowed past Isabella to reach Lucy. “Tell us what else the dressmakers said. What are the fashionable young women wearing in Paris?”

“Let us not bore the gentlemen with talk of feminine pursuits. Later, I will be most happy to share the direction of their shop. When next we are in London, I will take you there for a personal introduction to these undiscovered geniuses.”

Miss Wharton and Miss Braye smiled broadly. “Paris! What it must be like these days! So filled with culture!”

Lucy and Isabella locked glares just then, and Henry sensed the latter would launch one final attempt to denigrate her rival. Lucy forestalled the attack by casually looping her wrist around the crook of James’s elbow. “I would be pleased, sir, if you would take me for a stroll about the lawn for a bit of private conversation.”

Henry’s brother smiled even while the faces of the other suitors fell. “With pleasure, Lady Margaret.”

The couple sauntered away in hushed conversation. Henry watched with his mind a cloud of disappointment. Lucy’s transformation was complete. She was now the granddaughter of a duke and had left him behind as one beneath her station. No thanks to him. A wounded Isabella approached and stood beside him.

“You appear as glum as I am,” she said softly.

“It would seem so.”

She leaned near. “I suppose we have another thing in common.”

Henry turned his face away from the receding Lucy to look at Isabella. “And what is that?”

“We underestimated your pupil. And she apparently has bested us both.”

He chuckled sadly. “Yes, I believe she has. Now, if you will excuse me.”

Henry walked away from the lawn, not caring where his feet took him. Lucy’s slipping away from him was the very outcome he required to avoid the disastrous trail of his ancestry. But it was killing him. Unwelcome desperation rose within him, generating a desire to recapture the connection between them. No matter how dangerous. His mind eventually fell upon a way to approach her again. The time had finally come to show Lucy his wet nurse medal.

…

While Lucy strolled the edges of the lawn with James, her attention remained divided between the man with whom she walked and the one for whom she yearned. Henry’s kiss had left her adrift amid a sea of dire options, battling against herself. She had asked James to walk with her for one purpose—to rouse Henry’s jealousy. However, she also knew he did not qualify as a suitor and was clearly hiding something important. Her every path forward seemed to offer only pain.

“I thank you for the conversation,” she finally said to James, interrupting his diatribe about the brute qualities of the common class. “However, I am feeling a bit unwell. I ask your permission to take my leave.”

Uncertainty rippled across his features. “As you wish.”

She practically fled to her quarters, closed the door, and slumped to the floor against a wall. Try as she might, her thoughts refused to leave Henry. As the minutes passed, her resolve to speak to him grew. Too much remained unsaid.

She rose from the floor, smoothed her rumpled dress, and exited the room. Where had Henry gone? To his bedchamber in the south wing? She pointed her feet in that direction, willing herself not to falter. Just before she arrived at the intersection between the west and south hallways, she halted at the sound of James’s voice calling to Henry just around the corner.

“I must speak to you in here.”

She peeked through a plant to find Henry approaching with a grim demeanor and an assemblage of metal draped around his neck. His Portuguese medal? The two men stepped into an alcove, clearly unaware that anyone was eavesdropping.

“What do you want?” Ice lined Henry’s question.

“What is that Godforsaken ornament around your neck?”

“It is nothing. Again, what do you want?”

James chuckled condescendingly. “As if you did not know. However, if you require blunt force, then I will oblige. You left for London rather quickly after our previous conversation. I must know which option you chose so I may respond accordingly.”

Lucy wished she could better view Henry’s face to see his reaction, and whether it was as baffled as hers. Though she could glimpse only the back of his head through the foliage, the crossing of his arms shed some light on the unseen.

“Does it matter?”

James growled. “Immensely. I had hoped you would convince Lady Margaret of the merits of selecting me. However, the presence of your Bow Street colleague tells me that you chose to hand her over to the law. Am I wrong?”

Lucy’s head spun and she nearly collapsed as her knees weakened. She clutched the plant to remain upright. Bow Street? The world paused in its spin as she waited for Henry’s response.

“I did tell Sir Hugh and the magistrate what happened at Shooter’s Hill, if for no other reason than to preserve her from you.”

She backed away from the corner in a daze. Henry had informed Bow Street of her actions at Shooter’s Hill? And brought Sir Hugh here to…to what?

“You would rather her hang than marry your brother? What a pity.”

Unable to stomach another word, she raced to her room and retched into the chamber pot before collapsing onto the floor in a heap. Henry had betrayed her! His every word of promise had been a lie. His every expression of faith in her success had been a fabrication. If he had stabbed her through the heart and left her for scavengers, he could not have inflicted a more fatal wound.