Chapter 3
Chapter Three
“Hazel, will you please tell us what’s happening?” Chastity demanded as she wrestled with a bonnet box nearly twice the size of her head.
Hazel did not look up. “Pass me that trunk.”
“It’s heavy,” Patience warned.
“So am I,” Hazel snapped. “Give it here.”
The middle of the night was hardly the ideal time to cram three young ladies’ entire wardrobes into one hired carriage, and Hazel was sweating through her cloak trying to make it work. Every creak of the carriage felt like a judgment.
“Hazel,” Chastity whined, “you still have not told us why we must flee before dawn like criminals.”
“We are not criminals.” Hazel heaved the trunk upward, wedging it between two hatboxes with a grunt. “We are simply… departing early.”
Patience crossed her arms. “In the middle of the night.”
“Yes.”
“Without saying goodbye to anyone.”
“Correct.”
“With the carriage piled like Noah’s ark.”
Hazel glanced up. “The ship that carried Jonah, perhaps. And if you do not hurry I shall sacrifice one of your trunks to the sea.”
“Without a single servant to assist.”
Hazel shut the carriage door with more force than necessary. “Girls, get in.”
Her sisters exchanged glances that were worried, confused, and far too awake for this hour.
“But Hazel,” Chastity insisted, “why must we leave so urgently?”
Hazel adjusted her gloves, refusing to look at either of them. “Because I have made a mistake.”
And that mistake had dark hair, kept in careful order, and framed features that seemed to have been made thoughtful by habit rather than severity. That mistake had a manner about him that sought no attention, yet at the same time, it was difficult not to notice the impression he left.
“You?” Patience gasped. “You never make mistakes.”
Hazel flinched. “Well, I have managed one now.”
“What kind of mistake?” Chastity leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner. “Did you insult someone? Break something? Offend the hostess?”
“Worse,” Hazel muttered.
“Worse than that?” Patience blinked rapidly. “Did you… you did not… Hazel, you didn’t murder anyone, did you?”
“No!” Hazel nearly choked. “Of course not!”
Patience exhaled. “Well, that is a relief.”
Hazel rubbed her temples. She felt the humiliation all over again: the doorway, the gossips’ faces, Greyson Thornhill’s impossible expression. It was a nightmare wearing a duke’s coat.
“I was part of a… situation,” she said at last.
“A situation?” Patience echoed. “What kind of situation?”
“A scandalous one,” Hazel said through clenched teeth. “There. Are you satisfied?”
Chastity gasped dramatically. “Hazel! What did you do?”
“Nothing!” Hazel declared. “Well, not nothing. But nothing wrong, nothing intentional. It is simply… oh, saints preserve me, it is simply a mess, and the less we discuss it, the better.”
Patience nudged her. “Does this have something to do with us sneaking into the duke’s—”
“Patience Thorne, if you finish that sentence, I will personally toss you into this carriage headfirst.”
Patience pressed her lips together.
Hazel took a steadying breath and straightened her cloak. “Listen carefully. We are returning to London, packing our essentials, and going directly to Bath for the remainder of the Season.”
Chastity blinked. “Bath? But, why Bath?”
“Because,” Hazel said, “I believe it wise to avoid the next few weeks of gossip. And Bath is full of respectable families and hopefully, decent bachelors. Perhaps you might even meet young men who enjoy sanity, which seems rare in this family.”
Chastity and Patience exchanged another glance.
Patience asked softly. “Is it that bad?”
Hazel shut her eyes. “Yes.”
Chastity touched her arm. “Hazel… what exactly happened with the Duke of Callbury?”
Hazel made a strangled sound and nearly tripped over a valise. “We are not discussing him.”
“Oh,” Chastity breathed. “So, it is about him.”
Hazel groaned. “Girls, if you value my health, my dignity, or your own chances of marriage, you will sit down, remain quiet, and let me pretend the last six hours never occurred.”
Patience reached to climb the carriage, then halted. “Do you think the rumors will fade by next year?”
Hazel wrapped her arms around herself. “I can only hope.”
Patience squeezed Hazel’s hand. “Well… at least we are together.”
Hazel looked at her little sisters: so utterly chaotic, exasperating and always beloved.
“Yes,” she whispered. “We are.”
Hazel stood outside the carriage, watching her sisters climb in, settle themselves, and tug blankets over their laps. They looked small in the dim lantern light. They looked like little girls, still innocent enough to sleep soundly after a disaster.
If only she could.
She reached for the carriage step, determined to put this cursed night behind her, but then a deep voice made her halt.
“You are not going anywhere.”
She closed her eyes for half a heartbeat before turning. Greyson Thornhill, the Duke of Callbury, stood several paces away, tall and dark as the night behind him. His silver eyes fixed on her with irritating certainty, as though he had all the right in the world to interfere.
She drew herself up. “We should not be seen together,” she whispered fiercely. “Ever again. Or do you want even more rumors?”
He didn’t flinch. “There is a different option,” he said calmly, “to killing the rumors besides you fleeing the city.”
Hazel let out a breathless, humorless snort. “What? And what option is that, me changing my name and becoming someone else?”
Greyson tilted his head, studying her with that maddening, unreadable gaze. “Well, yes… in a way.”
Hazel frowned. “What do you mean?”
His answer was astoundingly casual for a statement that cleaved her world clean in two.
“You marry me.”
Hazel stared at him. The words hung between them, shimmering with absurdity. Her lips parted, but nothing emerged. She was too stunned to breathe, let alone move.
When she finally blurted her response, it was resounding. “That is the last thing I want to do!”
“Why?” he asked, as though she were refusing an extra biscuit with her tea rather than a proposal that could ruin both their lives.
Hazel’s heart careened about her chest like a loose carriage wheel. She could not tell him the real reasons, the vulnerable ones. So she grasped for anything else.
“Well, for one,” she began, hands fluttering before she caught them, “my aunt once told me that marriage gives a woman wrinkles. Immediate wrinkles… overnight.”
He blinked. “Wrinkles.”
“Yes,” Hazel said firmly. “Deep ones, across the forehead. Very tragic.”
He stared at her, his silver eyes narrowing as though trying to determine whether she was suffering from heatstroke.
“And,” she hurried on, “I have it on excellent authority that dukes snore.”
Greyson’s lips parted. “I do not—”
She cut him off with a raised finger. “I will take no chances.”
His expression was priceless.
“And furthermore,” she pressed, warming to her own nonsense, “I have recently developed an aversion to… large houses.”
His jaw tightened. “An aversion.”
“Yes. The bigger the house, the more I… sneeze.” She nodded sagely. “It’s a medical condition.”
“A medical—”
“And then,” Hazel added, voice rising, “there is the matter of your horses.”
“My horses.”
“They are enormous,” she declared. “And I do not trust anything taller than myself.”
“You do realize,” he said slowly, “that includes nearly every man in London.”
“Exactly!” Hazel exclaimed, delighted to have accidentally strengthened her point. “Which is why I avoid them, all of them… entirely.”
The duke looked as though he were reconsidering every decision that had brought him to this moment.
Hazel crossed her arms, deciding she had committed enough foolishness to make her case unassailable. “So, you see, Your Grace, marriage between us would be thoroughly impractical. Wrinkles, sneezing, snoring, terrifying horses… simply impossible, I’m afraid.”
He studied her for a long, strained moment.
“I can tell.”
Hazel’s jaw dropped. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“That you’ve given this a considerable amount of thought,” he said dryly. “Far more than one would expect from someone who claims marrying me is the last thing she wants.”
Greyson exhaled slowly, as if she were a puzzle he was almost enjoying solving.
“Miss Thorne,” he said, revealing that although she did not tell him her name, he had managed to find it out, “although you have thoroughly entertained me with your… soliloquy…”
Hazel winced. She had sounded like a madwoman.
“We both know the truth. This kind of scandal does not simply disappear.”
Her stomach twisted. She refused to let it show.
He stepped closer, continuing to make sense in that infuriatingly rational tone of voice. “Not only will it cling to you, but it will cling to your sisters as well. Their prospects will suffer. And you will find yourself… shall we say, less than welcome in many drawing rooms.”
Hazel’s throat tightened. He was right. She hated that he was right. She hated more that he had said it without cruelty, simply as a fact of their society.
He continued. “But if you were to marry me, you would be a duchess. And while there might still be whispers, no one would dare speak them aloud, not about my wife.” His gaze hardened. “No one risks my displeasure so lightly.”
She felt cold air rush into her lungs, though she hadn’t meant to breathe in at all. He was offering her protection. He was offering her sisters protection. And she knew that a duke’s shield could silence a thousand rumors.
But she could not admit he was right. She would rather swallow stones.
So instead, she asked. “Why? Why on earth would a duke try to save a woman he has never even met?”
His expression did not shift. “It is your reputation at stake, Miss Thorne. Not mine. This was your mistake, not mine. I am not suffering for it. You are.”
Hazel clenched her jaw. “Then why involve yourself? If you are so unaffected, why offer marriage at all?”