All seven freckles, too. God, he loved her freckles.
“I love you,” he whispered.
She laid her cheek against his chest, and her voice was hoarse, almost choked as she said, “I love you, too.”
“Are you certain you will not come with me now?” He knew her answer, but he asked, anyway.
As expected, she nodded. “I must do this myself.”
“How will your uncle react?”
“I’m…not sure.”
He stepped back, taking her by the shoulders and even bending at the knees so that his eyes would not lose contact with hers. “Will he hurt you?”
“No,” she said, quickly enough so that he believed her. “No. I promise you.”
“Will he try to force you to marry Haselby? Lock you in your room? Because I could stay. If you think you will need me, I could remain right here.” It would create an even worse scandal than what currently lay ahead for them, but if it was a question of her safety…
There was nothing he would not do.
“Gregory—”
He silenced her with a shake of his head. “Do you understand,” he began, “how completely and utterly this goes against my every instinct, leaving you here to face this by yourself?”
Her lips parted and her eyes—
They filled with tears.
“I have sworn in my heart to protect you,” he said, his voice passionate and fierce and maybe even a little bit revelatory. Because today, he realized, was the day he truly became a man. After twenty-six years of an amiable and, yes, aimless existence, he had finally found his purpose.
He finally knew why he had been born.
“I have sworn it in my heart,” he said, “and I will swear it before God just as soon as we are able. And it is like acid in my chest to leave you alone.”
His hand found hers, and their fingers twined.
“It is not right,” he said, his words low but fierce.
Slowly, she nodded her agreement. “But it is what must be done.”
“If there is a problem,” he said, “if you sense danger, you must promise to signal. I will come for you. You can take refuge with my mother. Or any one of my sisters. They won’t mind the scandal. They would care only for your happiness.”
She swallowed, and then she smiled, and her eyes grew wistful. “Your family must be lovely.”
He took her hands and squeezed them. “They are your family now.” He waited for her to say something, but she did not. He brought her hands to his lips and kissed them each in turn. “Soon,” he whispered, “this will all be behind us.”
She nodded, then glanced over her shoulder at the door. “The servants will be waking shortly.”
And he left. He slipped out the door, boots in hand, and crept out the way he’d come in.
It was still dark when he reached the small park that filled the square across from her home. There were hours yet before the wedding, and surely he had enough time to return home to change his clothing.
But he was not prepared to chance it. He had told her he would protect her, and he would never break that promise.
But then it occurred to him—he did not need to do this alone. In fact, he should not do it alone. If Lucy needed him, she would need him well and full. If Gregory had to resort to force, he could certainly use an extra set of hands.
He had never gone to his brothers for help, never begged them to extricate him from a tight spot. He was a relatively young man. He had drunk spirits, gambled, dallied with women.
But he had never drunk too much, or gambled more than he had, or, until the previous night, dallied with a woman who risked her reputation to be with him.
He had not sought responsibility, but neither had he chased trouble.
His brothers had always seen him as a boy. Even now, in his twenty-sixth year, he suspected they did not view him as quite fully grown. And so he did not ask for help. He did not place himself in any position where he might need it.
Until now.
One of his older brothers lived not very far away. Less than a quarter of a mile, certainly, maybe even closer to an eighth. Gregory could be there and back in twenty minutes, including the time it took to yank Colin from his bed.
Gregory had just rolled his shoulders back and forth, loosening up in preparation for a sprint, when he spied a chimney sweep, walking across the street. He was young—twelve, maybe thirteen—and certainly eager for a guinea.
And the promise of another, should he deliver Gregory’s message to his brother.
Gregory watched him tear around the corner, then he crossed back to the public garden. There was no place to sit, no place even to stand where he might not be immediately visible from Fennsworth House.
And so he climbed a tree. He sat on a low, thick branch, leaned against the trunk, and waited.
Someday, he told himself, he would laugh about this. Someday they would tell this tale to their grandchildren, and it would all sound very romantic and exciting.
As for now…
Romantic, yes. Exciting, not so much.
He rubbed his hands together.
Most of all, it was cold.
He shrugged, waiting for himself to stop noticing it. He never did, but he didn’t care. What were a few blue fingertips against the rest of his life?
He smiled, lifting his gaze to her window. There she was, he thought. Right there, behind that curtain. And he loved her.
He loved her.
He thought of his friends, most of them cynics, always casting a bored eye over the latest selection of debutantes, sighing that marriage was such a chore, that ladies were interchangeable, and that love was best left to the poets.
Fools, the lot of them.
Love existed.
It was right there, in the air, in the wind, in the water. One only had to wait for it.
To watch for it.
And fight for it.
And he would. As God was his witness, he would. Lucy had only to signal, and he would retrieve her.
He was a man in love.
Nothing could stop him.
“This is not, you realize, how I had intended to spend my Saturday morning.”
Gregory answered only with a nod. His brother had arrived four hours earlier, greeting him with a characteristically understated “This is interesting.”
Gregory had told Colin everything, even down to the events of the night before. He did not like telling tales of Lucy, but one really could not ask one’s brother to sit in a tree for hours without explaining why. And Gregory had found a certain comfort in unburdening himself to Colin. He had not lectured. He had not judged.
In fact, he had understood.
When Gregory had finished his tale, tersely explaining why he was waiting outside Fennsworth House, Colin had simply nodded and said, “I don’t suppose you have something to eat.”
Gregory shook his head and grinned.
It was good to have a brother.
“Rather poor planning on your part,” Colin muttered. But he was smiling, too.
They turned back to the house, which had long since begun to show signs of life. Curtains had been pulled back, candles lit and then snuffed as dawn had given way to morning.
“Shouldn’t she have come out by now?” Colin asked, squinting at the door.
Gregory frowned. He had been wondering the same thing. He had been telling himself that her absence boded well. If her uncle were going to force her to marry Haselby, wouldn’t she have left for the church by now? By his pocket watch, which admittedly wasn’t the most accurate of timepieces, the ceremony was due to begin in less than an hour.
But she had not signaled for his help, either.
And that did not sit well with him.
Suddenly Colin perked up.
“What is it?”
Colin motioned to the right with his head. “A carriage,” he said, “being brought ’round from the mews.”
Gregory’s eyes widened with horror as the front
door to Fennsworth House opened. Servants spilled out, laughing and cheering as the vehicle came to a stop in front of Fennsworth House.
It was white, open, and festooned with perfectly pink flowers and wide rosy ribbons, trailing behind, fluttering in the light breeze.
It was a wedding carriage.
And no one seemed to find that odd.
Gregory’s skin began to tingle. His muscles burned.
“Not yet,” Colin said, placing a restraining hand on Gregory’s arm.
Gregory shook his head. His peripheral vision was beginning to fade from view, and all he could see was that damned carriage.
“I have to get her,” he said. “I have to go.”
“Wait,” Colin instructed. “Wait to see what happens. She might not come out. She might—”
But she did come out.
Not first. That was her brother, his new wife on his arm.
Then came an older man—her uncle, most probably—and that ancient woman Gregory had met at his sister’s ball.
And then…
Lucy.
In a wedding dress.
“Dear God,” he whispered.
She was walking freely. No one was forcing her.
Hermione said something to her, whispered in her ear.
And Lucy smiled.
She smiled.
Gregory began to gasp.
The pain was palpable. Real. It shot through his gut, squeezed at his organs until he could no longer move.
He could only stare.
And think.
“Did she tell you she wasn’t going to go through with it?” Colin whispered.
Gregory tried to say yes, but the word strangled him. He tried to recall their last conversation, every last word of it. She had said she must behave with honor. She had said she must do what was right. She had said that she loved him.
But she had never said that she would not marry Haselby.
“Oh my God,” he whispered.
His brother laid his hand over his own. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Gregory watched as Lucy stepped up into the open carriage. The servants were still cheering. Hermione was fussing with her hair, adjusting the veil, then laughing when the wind lifted the gauzy fabric in the air.
This could not be happening.
There had to be an explanation.
“No,” Gregory said, because it was the only word he could think to say. “No.”
Then he remembered. The hand signal. The wave. She would do it. She would signal to him. Whatever had transpired in the house, she had not been able to halt the proceedings. But now, out in the open, where he could see, she would signal.
She had to. She knew he could see her.
She knew he was out there.
Watching her.
He swallowed convulsively, never taking his eyes off her right hand.
“Is everyone here?” he heard Lucy’s brother call out.
He did not hear Lucy’s voice in the chorus of replies, but no one was questioning her presence.
She was the bride.
And he was a fool, watching her ride away.
“I’m sorry,” Colin said quietly, as they watched the carriage disappear around the corner.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Gregory whispered.
Colin jumped down out of the tree and silently held out his hand to Gregory.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Gregory said again, too bewildered to do anything but let his brother help him down. “She wouldn’t do this. She loves me.”
He looked at Colin. His eyes were kind, but pitying.
“No,” Gregory said. “No. You don’t know her. She would not—No. You don’t know her.”
And Colin, whose only experience with Lady Lucinda Abernathy was the moment in which she had broken his brother’s heart, asked, “Do you know her?”
Gregory stepped back as if struck. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”
Colin didn’t say anything, but his brows rose, as if to ask, Well, then?
Gregory turned, his eyes moving to the corner around which Lucy had so recently disappeared. For a moment he stood absolutely still, his only movement a deliberate, thoughtful blink of his eyes.
He turned back around, looked his brother in the face. “I know her,” he said. “I do.”
Colin’s lips drew together, as if trying to form a question, but Gregory had already turned away.
He was looking at that corner again.
And then he began to run.
Twenty-one
In which Our Hero risks everything.
“Are you ready?”
Lucy regarded the splendid interior of St. George’s—the bright stained glass, the elegant arches, the piles and piles of flowers brought in to celebrate her marriage.
She thought about Lord Haselby, standing with the priest at the altar.
She thought about the guests, all more-than-three-hundred of them, all waiting for her to enter on her brother’s arm.
And she thought about Gregory, who had surely seen her climb up into the bridal carriage, dressed in her wedding finery.
“Lucy,” Hermione repeated, “are you ready?”
Lucy wondered what Hermione might do if she said no.
Hermione was a romantic.
Impractical.
She would probably tell Lucy that she did not have to go through with it, that it did not matter that they were standing just outside the doors to the church sanctuary, or that the prime minister himself was seated inside.
Hermione would tell her that it did not matter that papers had been signed and banns had been read, in three different parishes. It did not matter that by fleeing the church Lucy would create the scandal of the decade. She would tell Lucy that she did not have to do it, that she should not settle for a marriage of convenience when she could have one of passion and love. She would say—
“Lucy?”
(Is what she actually said.)
Lucy turned, blinking in confusion, because the Hermione of her imagination had been giving quite an impassioned speech.
Hermione smiled gently. “Are you ready?”
And Lucy, because she was Lucy, because she would always be Lucy, nodded.
She could do nothing else.
Richard joined them. “I cannot believe you are getting married,” he said to Lucy, but not before gazing warmly at his wife.
“I am not so very much younger than you are, Richard,” Lucy reminded him. She tilted her head toward the new Lady Fennsworth. “And I am two months older than Hermione.”
Richard grinned boyishly. “Yes, but she is not my sister.”
Lucy smiled at that, and she was grateful for it. She needed smiles. Every last one she could manage.
It was her wedding day. She had been bathed and perfumed and dressed in what had to be the most luxurious gown she had ever laid eyes upon, and she felt…
Empty.
She could not imagine what Gregory thought of her. She had deliberately allowed him to think that she planned to call off the wedding. It was terrible of her, cruel and dishonest, but she did not know what else to do. She was a coward, and she could not bear to see his face when she told him she still intended to marry Haselby.
Good God, how could she have explained it? He would have insisted that there was another way, but he was an idealist, and he had never faced true adversity. There wasn’t another way. Not this time. Not without sacrificing her family.
She let out a long breath. She could do this. Truly. She could. She could.
She closed her eyes, her head bobbing a half inch or so as the words echoed in her mind.
I can do this. I can. I can.
“Lucy?” came Hermione’s concerned voice. “Are you unwell?”
Lucy opened her eyes, and said the only thing Hermione would possibly believe. “Just doing sums in my head.”
Hermione shook her head. “I hope Lord Haselby likes maths, because I vow, Lucy, you are mad.”
&nb
sp; “Perhaps.”
Hermione looked at her quizzically.
“What is it?” Lucy asked.
Hermione blinked several times before finally replying. “It is nothing, really,” she said. “Just that that sounded quite unlike you.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“To agree with me when I call you mad? That’s not at all what you would say.”
“Well, it’s obviously what I did say,” Lucy grumbled, “so I don’t know what—”
“Oh, pish. The Lucy I know would say something like, ‘Mathematics is a very extremely important endeavor, and really, Hermione, you ought to consider practicing sums yourself.’”
Lucy winced. “Am I truly so officious?”
“Yes,” Hermione replied, as if she were mad even to question it. “But it’s what I love best about you.”
And Lucy managed another smile.
Maybe everything would be all right. Maybe she would be happy. If she could manage two smiles in one morning, then surely it couldn’t be that bad. She needed only to keep moving forward, in her mind and her body. She needed to have this thing done, to make it permanent, so she could place Gregory in her past and at least pretend to embrace her new life as Lord Haselby’s wife.
But Hermione was asking Richard if she might have a moment alone with Lucy, and then she was taking her hands, leaning in and whispering, “Lucy, are you certain you wish to do this?”
Lucy looked up at her in surprise. Why was Hermione asking her this? Right at the moment when she most wanted to run.
Hadn’t she been smiling? Hadn’t Hermione seen her smiling?
Lucy swallowed. She tried to straighten her shoulders. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course. Why would you ask such a thing?”
Hermione did not answer right away. But her eyes—those huge, green eyes that rendered grown men senseless—they answered for her.
Lucy swallowed and turned away, unable to bear what she saw there.
And Hermione whispered, “Lucy.”
That was all. Just Lucy.
Lucy turned back. She wanted to ask Hermione what she meant. She wanted to ask why she said her name as if it were a tragedy. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. And so she hoped Hermione saw her questions in her eyes.
She did. Hermione touched her cheek, smiling sadly. “You look like the saddest bride I’ve ever seen.”