Chapter 4
In the late afternoon sunlight, Watley Hall, with its honey-colored stone and rows of mullioned windows, looked as pleasing as ever.
The same abode that, through a stroke of unexpected good luck, had welcomed Violet and her sister when they were at their lowest and caused them to believe things could turn bright again.
Curse the place, anyway, Violet inwardly grumbled as she climbed the steps leading to the stately front door. Curse the mutton-headed gentlemen who reside within.
She took a moment before reaching for the door knocker to give her skirts a few hasty swipes and push back the errant curls that refused to stay contained in her chignon. As for the redness she felt marring her face—both from exertion and her unrelenting indignation—there wasn’t much she could do.
She’d hoped the walk to Watley would help clear her head and bring her a sense of tranquility before she approached George, but it instead seemed to have the opposite effect. Each step she took, each little jolt that shot through her wrenched ankle, reminded her just how unfair life could be.
The first disappointment of the year—her father’s scandal, which had caused the viscountess to take her daughters and flee from London in humiliation a full three months before the Season ended—had been bad enough.
Violet found it no easy feat to sit in the country while everyone else remained in town enjoying parties and entertainments, and Arabella, whose debut Season had been ruined, felt the loss even more deeply.
However, this second disappointment—this blunder, this setback, this calamity—proved worse again. Perhaps because in the time directly preceding it, they’d allowed themselves to feel so much joy. To garner so many expectations and hopes.
They hadn’t been wrong to do so, had they?
What was it, if not a cause for hope, when their dashing neighbor, Lord Frederick Denham, tired of London before the Season’s end and brought a group of like-minded friends to his estate for a spring house party?
Why would they consider themselves anything other than fortunate when Frederick—and for propriety’s sake, his widowed older sister, Lady Kingsland—invited Violet and Arabella to join the merriment?
Arabella, who’d developed quite a tendre for Frederick during the Season, had delighted at their reunion.
As for Violet, she’d been beyond pleased to encounter George Metcalfe, one of her favorite dance partners who never lacked a witty remark.
Their lonely days had suddenly become full, their bleak prospects once more filled with promise.
All until Violet had been foolish enough to agree to a private rendezvous with George, thinking it would solidify their relationship.
Imagining he took the risk of being caught alone with her because he planned to propose.
Believing he valued their time together more than a blasted archery tournament.
Stupid.
She slammed the knocker against the door, her fingers tight around the cool brass. No sooner had metal hit wood than the door flew open, causing her to stagger backward beneath the butler’s stony regard.
“Miss Collingwood.” The butler, Andrews, spoke her name as though it left a vile taste in his mouth. “The household is not currently accepting visitors.”
“Please.” She rushed forward, wedging her foot in the doorway before he could slam the sturdy slab of oak in her face. “This isn’t merely a social call but a matter of grave importance. I must speak with Mr. Metcalfe, just for a minute.”
“As I said, Miss Collingwood, the household isn’t accepting visitors.” He glanced at her slipper in distaste, and she wondered if he meant to shut the door on her regardless of the obstacle she presented.
She huffed out a breath, planting her feet more securely against the ground and drawing her spine tall. “And as I said, Andrews, this is a matter of grave importance!”
They stared at one another icily, neither of them willing to move.
She may be forced to resort to desperate measures.
What if she were to take inspiration from her mother and fall into a swoon?
Or what if she feigned a sudden burst of weakness in her ankle?
Andrews couldn’t be so cold that he would allow a viscount’s ailing daughter to languish on the doorstep.
She was just about to throw a hand to her forehead and start trembling when a male voice rang out from the entrance hall. “What’s going on, Andrews? I thought I heard shouting.”
Violet popped onto her tiptoes to peek around the butler’s shoulder, and she was met with the sight of Lord Frederick coming down the stairs. Oh, thank heavens.
She’d spent many years with a finishing governess and had been raised to exhibit genteel manners and feminine grace.
Yet the moment had come when she could afford to display neither.
Instead, she used Andrews’s brief distractedness as an opportunity to push her way into the entrance hall and reveal herself to its owner.
“Lord Frederick,” she said, trying to ignore every bit of her trepidation, her outrage, her shame. Trying to ignore how beneath her skirts, her knees really had started quaking. “Might I have a minute of your time?”
“Miss Collingwood.” He bounded down the last few steps to meet her, his lips curving into a frown. “I thought my sister made it clear that this evening’s entertainments are canceled.” At least for the likes of you. He didn’t need to utter the last part to make her understand it as plain as day.
“I haven’t come looking for dinner or dancing.” All the steps she’d run suddenly seemed to catch up with her, and she took a few quick breaths, willing her voice not to falter. “I must speak with Geo—Mr. Metcalfe.”
Lord Frederick’s scowl deepened. “That’s impossible. Metcalfe is upstairs seeing that his bags are packed. He’ll return to London on the morrow and has no wish for an audience with you in the meantime.”
“I …” A thousand different words and emotions rushed through her head, but none of them would fully materialize. Was she sorry? Angry? Heartbroken?
She couldn’t claim to love George in the way Arabella loved Frederick.
Couldn’t claim to have wanted a betrothal at all during her first two years on the marriage mart.
Most gentlemen, in her estimation, were ne’er-do-wells.
Faithless. She’d do much better to enjoy her time in society without being tied down to anything so cumbersome as a husband.
But in the midst of her third Season—when both her father’s scandalous antics and her mother’s fretful hypochondria worsened—she’d begun to view the matter differently.
While sitting in isolation in Wiltshire, she’d started to think of how a husband, if chosen wisely, could be beneficial.
As a married lady, she’d acquire her own household, where never again would she be forced to the country because of her father’s poor behavior and her mother’s frayed nerves.
A husband would give her a new name, a new start.
A husband such as George, who was a respectable second son with no rumors of mistresses or other vices attached to his name.
But that future was gone now, and she couldn’t deny it: the loss of him stung. Yet if he was so willing to doubt her, to cast her aside without another word … well, perhaps that was every bit as bad as parading about London and causing scandals with a paramour.
“I regret that his visit to Watley ended so abruptly, especially if today’s misunderstanding is the reason for it,” she said at last, her tone coated in ice. “I wish he were more inclined to listen to the truth, but if his mind is made up, I won’t beg him to change it.”
A deep line formed in Lord Frederick’s brow. The lone imperfection on a countenance that had known little hardship, for the man’s greatest sorrow in life was being born a third son instead of a first. “If that’s all, Miss Collingwood,” he said, matching her frostiness, “I’ll bid you good day.”
He pivoted away from her in a single beat, leaving her with a view of the back of his coat.
“Wait.” She scrambled forward, rushing to catch up with him at the bottom stair. “You must see that Arabella is blameless in all this.”
He did her the courtesy of stopping and turning to her, but the groove in his forehead deepened, and his gray eyes were like steel. “Blameless, perhaps, although by sullying your own good name, you’ve also defiled hers.”
The retort jabbed her chest, but she refused to back down. Refused to shy away from the truth, no matter how uncomfortable. “You were willing to overlook our father’s scandal.”
He scowled at her gaucheness. “That’s different.”
“How so?” She looked him up and down, glaring at the pursed lips and foppish wheat-colored locks that were often the subject of Arabella’s poetry.
Except without him saying a word, she knew.
Her father’s misdeeds could be swept under the rug.
After all, carrying on with mistresses was what peers did.
Violet, however, was a woman. Therefore, she was automatically hauled over the coals for every slight misstep, every hint of a rumor attached to her name. It was so blasted unjust!
“My father is the Duke of Hawkesbury,” he said levelly, as if he hadn’t already declared that fact a good three dozen times throughout the course of the house party. “I can hardly stay involved with a woman whose unwedded sister has behaved so shamelessly. Our family must remain above reproach.”
How could Arabella stand kissing that mouth? Violet was more of a mind to slap it. Yet this was whom Arabella had chosen. The man to whom she’d devoted countless diary entries. The man she’d sought before all others at every London soiree because he made her smiles brighter.
“Do you love my sister, Lord Frederick?” Violet blurted out the question, then fixed him with another hard stare.
He started, his face taking on a reddish tinge and his eyes pointing to the floor. Good. She was glad she’d unsettled him. However, he recovered himself quickly, angling his chin high and meeting her gaze. “My affections for her run very deep, indeed.”
“Yet you’re willing to let a situation in which Arabella is in no way at fault keep you apart?” It took every bit of restraint Violet had left not to stomp her foot in aggravation.
“Alas. I can do nothing else while scandal taints your name, as much as it may pain me.”
Her hands became tight fists, shaking at her sides. It wouldn’t pain him nearly so much as a knee to the—
No. Once more, what would she accomplish if she let ire get the better of her? Nothing. She’d best leave while she still had a few shreds of dignity intact.
“Good day, Lord Frederick.” She folded herself into a curtsy that was almost ridiculously low. “I thank you for your time.”
And then, she spun on her heels and flounced out of the entrance hall, not daring to slow or look back until she was far away from Watley Hall.
Only when she’d reached a solitary field on her own land, and the lone oak tree that grew within, did she allow herself to stop to catch her breath. She leaned against the rough bark, chest heaving, eyes stinging at the corners.
She’d tried to set things right, but she’d failed. Would her mother and sister ever forgive her? Or would the viscountess’s anxieties and woefulness grow by the day? Would Arabella’s heart break?
She swiped at her eyes, refusing to let tears fall. Sorrow would do her no more good than fury. She needed to keep a level head, for if everyone cared more for appearances than the truth, she required another plan.
She took the rest of the journey back to Meadowleigh slowly, and once there, she claimed a severe headache and fled to her bedchamber. Her mother, who considered health complaints with the utmost seriousness, postponed her torrent of questions and admonitions and left Violet alone to rest.
She didn’t rest, though. Instead, she noiselessly paced the floor until the sun sank below the horizon, a collection of faces flashing through her mind. George, shocked and offended. Frederick, contemptuous and smug. Arabella, tearful and distraught.
And then … then, another visage stared at her, the eyes dark and solemn. The mouth set in a straight line that showed no trace of good humor. I’ve come to do the honorable thing and make you an offer of marriage.
She crawled into bed, wishing she could push every one of those images away. But as she tossed and turned beneath the bedclothes, his was the face that wouldn’t disappear. His words were the ones that rang through her head.
Had he meant them sincerely? Would he still mean them now after the reaction she’d given him? He seemed so measured and reserved, yet his proposal was nothing short of rash. But if rashness wasn’t a typical part of his character … did that mean honor was?
A lady could do worse.
Oh, how ridiculous. Why did she pay so much heed to a man she didn’t even know? To an offer spoken out of obligation, in haste? Because he could provide the solution you need. As much as she didn’t want it to, the idea kept sparking to life, a tiny flame nurtured by the winds of desperation.
There was no salvaging her relationship with George—and she no longer wished to salvage it. But what if there was still a chance for Arabella and Frederick?
Somewhere in the blackest hours between dusk and dawn, she made up her mind about what she needed to do. She’d hoped that planning a new path forward would give her even a tiny scrap of comfort, but instead, she grew more restless than ever, and sleep wouldn’t come.
Her stomach ached. Bitterness flooded her throat.
The taste of humble pie was unpleasant, indeed.