Chapter Sixteen #2
“What—but—it will be a lovely wedding,” Wilfred said helplessly, utterly lost.
He turned, as he always did when the ground underneath him was shifting and the world was most confusing, to his true north. Irene.
Her face was white and there was anger in her expression. Actual anger. Wilfred could not recall the time he had ever seen such a countenance in Irene’s face.
Panic, something he had dampened down and ignored for the last few minutes, rose up in force.
What on earth had happened? He loved this woman, he had told this woman he loved her—multiple times—and last night, she had seemed to welcome his affection.
Surely, she had understood that he meant to marry her?
Had he not been clear, just now, that he would organize the wedding as soon as possible?
“Irene,” Wilfred began.
He halted as Viscount Pernrith slowly rose from his seat. The man’s presence was uncanny; he was not a large man, nor a violent one. No hands were bunched into fists and there was no suggestion of vehemence.
Yet Wilfred took a step back. It did not matter whether or not Viscount Pernrith was a violent man. He clearly believed his daughter had been wronged in some way, and there was no telling what a man in that position would do.
“I think,” the Viscount Pernrith said quietly, “you have a serious conversation to have with my daughter. I will be just outside, and if she calls for me, I tell you, by God, even after seeing you grow from a boy to a man—”
“Papa,” Irene said softly.
A bullet, a bull, a raging beast could not have slowed the Viscount Pernrith in his path, yet two softly spoken syllables from his daughter did.
Wilfred swallowed, throat dry, as father and daughter exchanged a silent look before the elder departed the room. The door closed. They were, to all intents and purposes, alone.
Right.
“What in blazes is going on?” Wilfred hissed as he strode toward Irene, not angry with her, merely desperate to be near her.
She shied away. His Irene. She stepped back.
Wilfred halted, his feet unable to continue. Desperation filled his lungs. Something had gone wrong here, but it was something small, something simple, surely? Something they would sort out swiftly and explain to her family easily and laugh about, in years to come?
It had to be. He couldn’t face the alternative.
“I don’t understand why your family had to know,” he said quietly.
There was no petulance in his voice, but Irene glared as though he had no right to say such a thing.
“That’s a strange position to take,” she said coldly. “I don’t see you keeping it to yourself.”
Wilfred swallowed. He hadn’t exactly told many people about his feelings for Irene, but perhaps telling her own brother had her nettled. Yes, perhaps that was it—she was miffed Michael had known before her.
Was that it?
“The wedding will take place soon,” he said soothingly. Surely, that would calm her nerves? She was worried that she was ruined, yes? “Whom else do you think we should invite? Besides your entire family—Irene. You’re crying.”
His beloved was crying. Just a few tears, but they were sufficient to tear his heart out.
Wilfred swallowed. “We don’t have to invite the rest of the ton. We don’t have to invite anyone.”
“I cannot believe you are asking me about whom to invite to your wedding!” Irene choked out, striding to the window. “After—After everything! After all we shared!”
Something was wrong here. Wilfred was not the brightest button in the box, he knew that, but he knew they were talking at cross purposes, weren’t they?
“Why wouldn’t I ask your opinion about whom to invite to the wedding?” he asked, his head tilted.
Irene strode past him, picked up the newspaper, and thrust it against his chest with enough force to leave a mark. “Because I never thought I would be helping you organize your wedding to another woman!”
Wilfred stared. The words rang in his ears as though a large elephant had attempted to whisper a secret.
“I don’t understand,” he said quietly.
Another few tears had escaped Irene’s beautiful eyes. “Neither do I! And y-yesterday, you said—”
“I know what I said and I meant it—what is this talk of another woman?” Wilfred asked, bewildered.
For some reason, the question appeared only to aggrieve. “You cannot seriously think I would not see it! That I would not notice when it happened, whether I’m invited or not!”
“See what?” Wilfred had not intended to raise his voice, but dear God, he was being pushed to it. “Make sense, woman!”
“Oh, you are a fine one to tell me to make sense!” Irene shot back, cheeks pink and eyes sparkling. “After all the talk of love last night, you had placed the notice in the newspaper already, you absolute cad!”
Silence fell in the Chances’ drawing room.
Wilfred tried to speak. Tried to move his mouth, move his mind, but nothing was working.
Notice? Newspaper? Other woman?
‘Flabbergasted’ was insufficient. ‘Utterly daggled’ was insufficient. There was no word that could sufficiently describe his whirling thoughts.
“I… I don’t—”
“Page forty-six,” Irene said, blinking rapidly as though to force her tears back. “You cad.”
‘Cad’ was perhaps a tad strong. There was evidently some mistake, Wilfred reassured himself as his scrabbling fingers attempted to rush through the newspaper. Perhaps the gossip rags had finally mentioned him and Irene, not naming her and only calling her ‘a lady,’ and they had presumed—
Oh. Oh, dear God.
“We have discovered that there will soon be an engagement announced between Wilfred Zouch, Duke of Aynor, and a Miss Fletcher, daughter of a Mr. Thomas Fletcher.”
Well, that was him. And that was…
Wilfred’s stomach surged, its nausea growing, and it was a damned good thing he hadn’t come down in time for breakfast, for it would certainly have been making a return visit.
“Ah,” he said weakly.
“So, you admit it, you are engaged!” Irene shot at him, pacing away and turning from the window to glare, presumably from a safe distance.
It was such a shame her position made her perfectly outlined by the Christmas Day sunshine. She positively glowed.
Damn it, man, this is not the time to—
Holding the newspaper carefully before his thickening manhood, Wilfred attempted to gather his thoughts. “There is a very simple explanation to all of this.”
“Yes, you have been courting this woman—and I saw you with her, I cannot believe I have been so stupid!” Irene snapped, glaring.
“I don’t know when you’ve been courting her, seeing as how I see you so often, but you certainly have been busy!
And now you are engaged and clearly not satisfied with one woman, you—”
Her eyes darted to the door, which Wilfred only now realized had been pushed ajar. Ah, yes. Her father.
“Well,” continued Irene, and her cheeks were flushed when he looked back at her. “My point is, you are engaged to another woman! And all this time, I thought—”
“Not all this time. You didn’t seem to love me like that until recently. And you only realized that I loved you yesterday,” pointed out Wilfred fairly—or what he thought was fairly. “It hasn’t even been four and twenty hours!”
It was completely the wrong thing to say.
“Oh!” said Irene, markedly nettled. “So there is a time limit, is there, from you announcing your affections—which were clearly false—and me securing you before you wander off with another woman, is that it?”
Wilfred groaned, though he was careful not to move the newspaper.
How could this have gone so wrong?
Well, the whole misadventure had been a mistake from the start. He should have realized, right from the beginning, that asking Miss Fletcher to pretend to be a woman he was courting would only lead to trouble—but he had wanted to pique Irene’s interest!
And wait a minute, didn’t Michael know all this? And he had gotten angry alongside Irene, as if entirely ignorant of the affair? He didn’t… He didn’t honestly think Wilfred had fallen in love with the woman he’d suggested Wilfred use to make Irene jealous, did he?
He risked a glance and winced. And he had made her jealous.
Even so, he had been out with Miss Fletcher once.
He hadn’t even introduced her to anyone during the walk.
Who could have run this piece of gossip, naming her and her supposed father, and why this, so soon after he and Irene had been called out, instead of a piece about him and Irene instead?
He had not checked that Miss Fletcher had received his note, calling off the whole pretense, but he could not imagine the woman would go this far without his permission or further payment.
Unless…she hoped to blackmail him into additional payment.
He hardly knew the woman to judge if that was possible.
There had never been a more embarrassing moment in his life—but Wilfred was not going to lose the only woman he had ever loved merely because he was a dolt. He had always been a dolt. He had not always had the affections of Miss Irene Chance.
“Look, it’s quite simple,” Wilfred began cheerfully. “I paid Miss Fletcher—”
“You paid a—I do not want to know about your nighttime harlots!” hissed Irene, scarlet blotches now appearing in her cheeks.
Wilfred almost fell over his own feet in his haste to rush toward her. “No, I meant—”
“And you said, last night,” Irene whispered, then she lowered her voice even further, her gaze darting to the door to the hall, “you said you had never—with anyone before!”
Oh, hell. “I hadn’t,” Wilfred said in a whisper. “Miss Fletcher was only paid to—”
“I do not want to know the sordid details of your connection!” Irene snapped. “And now you’re engaged to her! Well, I suppose I should be grateful that you are acting honorably to at least one woman, though how you expect Society not to gossip about the low origins of your new bride, I cannot say!”
“Irene, you’ve completely misunderstood. This is gossip. Mere gossip. Miss Fletcher and I are not like that.”
“Gossip has its origins in something! It reads like a proper engagement announcement! And to think you have manipulated me into—well, you know!”
Wilfred tried to grasp her hands, but Irene pulled away as though scalded. “Reeny, it’s not—”
“Don’t you dare.”
He stopped, his lungs tight. He had never heard Irene speak like that before.
She was panting heavily, scowling as though…
as though she did not know him. “You have manipulated me and you have lied to me, telling me you have been in love with me for years and yet never saying anything, and all this time—and what if, because you were not free, I had wanted to marry another?” She whispered again. “And he found out you had ruined me?”
And now Wilfred had never heard himself speak like this before. “I would not have let that happen, Irene. You are mine.”
“No, I’m not.” And she was crying again now, angrily and fiercely, dashing away the tears with the back of her hand as she maintained a direct stare.
“I cannot be yours, not now. Wilfred, you fool, this engagement, you cannot just back out of it! It’s been announced, it’s in the newspapers, I can never—we can never—”
“It’s not an official announcement!” Panic stifled every breath. “She’s just a—it’s not real. It’s not serious. It’s all a misunderstanding—”
“You are a duke. You think you can just break an engagement now that it has been alluded to in the papers, whatever her origins?” Irene’s tears only made her more beautiful as she stood erect, calm and yet raging at him, and Wilfred had never wanted to hold her, comfort her, more than he did now, when she would recoil at his touch.
“You lied to me. You betrayed me. You took everything from me and now I can never have you?”
Wilfred tried to think, but the sight of Irene before him in such distress was untangling his thoughts swifter than he could catch hold of them. “I love you—”
“Well, you have a very strange way of showing it,” snapped Irene, crossing her arms. “I want you to leave, Your Grace.”
He inhaled deeply. Yes, perhaps it would be best if we calmed down separately and—
His mind finally caught up with him. “‘Your—Your Grace’?”
“I think you should leave this house, Your Grace,” Irene repeated, a strange sort of detachment in her tone that Wilfred did not like. “You are not welcome here, and I presume you will have much preparations to do. After all, you will soon be welcoming Miss Fletcher to your home as your bride.”
No. No, this could not be happening.
“Irene—Irene, it’s you I want to welcome as my bride!”
“Well, then, perhaps you shouldn’t have led the world to believe that you will soon be announcing your engagement to another woman,” Irene said coldly, stepping past him to the door, which she opened.
The Viscount Pernrith and his son were waiting outside. The elder had a face of stone. The younger had his arms crossed. How could Michael, the instigator of all of this, not even take his side? Did not one Chance trust him, after all?
He suddenly felt a cold, stabbing sensation inside him.
He’d thought they were family, but this was all it had taken for them to turn their backs on him.
The mere printed gossip of an unknown source—when Michael, at least, knew the circumstances of its origins and could help him make his case.
And still, even Irene’s brother believed that nonsense over Wilfred’s account of the matter.
“Goodbye, Your Grace,” Irene said coolly, as though…as though she had never known him, let alone loved him.
Wilfred did not know what to do. He could not think, could not breathe. All he could do under the triad of glares from the Chances was traipse past them, through the hall, out of the front door that a glaring Dempster had opened, and into the freezing Christmas Day sunshine.
He turned on his heels. “Irene—”
The door slammed in his face.