Chapter Nine
Determined to see Felicity if he had to sit on her doorstep each day from dawn to dusk, Drake banged the brass door knocker that he had come to hate.
He likened it to a death knell on the precious moments he had shared with his beloved Felicity.
Beloved? Yes, most definitely. He loved her and needed whatever had come between them to be resolved.
The door opened. Thankfully, it was Fipps. “Good day, my lord. Do come in.”
“Thank you, Fipps. Is my lady receiving today?” Drake was in no mood to dance around with niceties. He needed to see Felicity. Speak with her. Find out what had gone so terribly wrong.
Expressionless as always, Fipps paused and eyed him for a long moment before proffering a polite nod. “A moment, my lord. I shall confirm whether or not Lady Felicity is receiving.”
Drake resettled his footing, struggling to maintain a calm demeanor even though he didn’t feel calm at all. He wanted to bellow Felicity’s name until his lady love answered.
Fipps reappeared, ambling down the hallway and giving nothing away with his stoic mien. Damn his eyes. The butler could at least give a glimmer of hope. He halted and bowed. “Lady Felicity will see you in the garden, my lord. If you would be good enough to follow me.”
Drake would follow the man straight into the jaws of hell if it led him to Felicity. “Lead on, Fipps.”
Felicity was seated at the garden table where she had locked his jaws with her infamous bitter biscuits.
She stared off into the distance, not even bothering to look his way as he approached.
He glanced all around, searching for either Lady Merry or Lady Serendipity, but didn’t see them.
Surely, they had to be nearby. Never would they allow Felicity the impropriety of being alone with him.
“Felicity?” He waited for her to acknowledge his presence before he dared to take a seat.
Ever so slowly, she tore her gaze away from the garden and leveled it on him. The hurt and hunger for retribution in her expression shocked him.
“Have a seat, my lord,” she said with a coldness that sent a shiver through him. When he started to sit in the chair beside her, she stopped him. “No. Over there, if you please.” She nodded at the seat across the table.
“Felicity, please…” He settled into the chair she had indicated. “What is wrong? What have I done?”
Unsmiling and slightly pale, she barely narrowed her eyes, glaring at him with such intensity that it burned. “The scrapings you found at the bottom of the barrel deserve better, my lord. You might not think so. But I do.” Her delicate fist trembled as she thumped the table. “I deserve better.”
He slowly shook his head, utterly confused. “I fear you have me at a loss, my lady. I do not understand.”
“Did you have a list that you went through? Did you check off each name when it failed?”
“A list? What names? Felicity—” He reached across the table for her hand, but she yanked it away before he could take it. “Pray tell me what I have done that has angered you so?”
“I am not angry,” she said, her tone eerily calm. “I am enraged. Humiliated. Hurt. Heartbroken.” She jutted her chin higher. “Job well done, my lord. You obliterated my soul in flames, but like the phoenix, I have risen from the ashes. Thanks to my sisters.”
“What did I do, my darling? Please tell me so I might set things right between us.”
“You do not have permission to address me so intimately. Either observe common decency or leave.”
Heart sinking like a lead stone, Drake swallowed hard. A grievous wrong had been done here, but he had no idea what or how. “Forgive me, Lady Felicity. But again, I must ask what I did to fall from your impeccable graces.”
“Lady Nedia Stranserton,” she said, spitting the name as though it was poison.
Drake frowned, trying to match the woman with the name. “I seem to recall meeting a Lady Nedia Stranserton, but I am not certain. The name is familiar, but the face…” He shook his head. “I cannot bring her to memory.”
“So, you proposed to so many well-dowried ladies of the ton, you can hardly keep track. Is that what you are telling me?”
“Proposed?” This was madness. He hadn’t proposed to anyone. He had discreetly sniffed out information about dowries, but that was the extent of his efforts on the Marriage Mart.
Eyes glistening, Felicity blinked hard and fast, obviously struggling to maintain her unnaturally cold demeanor.
“No? You do not recall her? Then what about her friends, Lady Margaret Feathersby and Lady Delphia Morgbrouton? Both assured me you proposed to them as well after Lady Nedia spurned you, because you brought nothing to the union but a title and destitution.”
“I do not know what cruel game this is, my lady, but I swear to you upon my father’s grave, I have proposed to no one.” He leaned forward. “I have not even proposed to you, my lady, because you wished us to court for a while.”
“I do not believe you.”
He thumped the table. “Then bring those women here. I want the right to confront my accusers, whose faces I cannot even remember.” This was utter madness. Why would those women say such a thing? “Who told you this? Why in heaven’s name would they tell such lies?”
“Mrs. Caruthers and Mrs. Beatrice were warning me away from courting you when Lady Nedia came into the shop and swore you had proposed to every eligible woman of the ton possessing an ample dowry. She found it quite amusing that you had finally worked your way down to me.”
He leaned back in the chair, scrubbing his face with both hands.
“I have not proposed to anyone, my lady, and will swear that is the truth until my dying day. I did make discreet inquiries regarding dowries. Yes. I am guilty of that, and you are very well aware of why, but there was no list of women for me to work my way down.” With a heavy sigh, he let his hands drop to his lap.
“I do not even remember those women. Could you describe them?”
“Three waspish harpies,” Merry said as she emerged from the depths of the maze of roses, “none of them aging well as they approach their third Season.”
“Blonde, tall, and striking,” Serendipity said as she came out from behind the ivy arbor. “However, Lady Nedia does look remarkably like a goose with her overly long neck. Lady Margaret wears entirely too much rouge on her cheeks and lips, and Lady Delphia laughs like a braying donkey.”
Drake thought long and hard about the parties he had intended.
Indeed, he had come across three women fitting those descriptions, but as far as he could recall, he had steered clear of them.
Dowries or not, he couldn’t imagine marriage to any of them.
The very idea had made him shudder. “I do not believe I have ever spoken to those three. Why in heaven’s name would they claim I proposed to them? ”
The Broadmere sisters remained silent, all of them staring at him as if tearing into his soul.
“I think he is telling the truth,” Merry said, her eyes narrowing to critical squints.
“Perhaps,” Serendipity said while slowing drumming her fingers atop the table. She turned to Felicity. “Nedia is known to be the cruelest sort of liar.”
“And Margaret and Delphia are known to follow wherever she leads.” Merry arched a brow at Felicity. “It could be they are jealous of you.”
“Jealous of me, why?” Felicity kept her glare locked on Drake. He prayed she wouldn’t find him lacking.
“You said they are approaching their third Season out,” he said. “Perhaps they are jealous you have a man who adores you.”
“A man who adores my dowry. You know that is what everyone in Binnocksbourne believes.” She folded her hands on the table, clenching them so tightly her knuckles whitened.
She huffed a humorless laugh. “Apparently, I am so utterly unmatchable that no one could want me for any other reason than my dowry.”
“You are not unmatchable.” What in heaven’s name had this poor, gentle creature been told? “The only way you might be unmatchable, Lady Felicity, is that no one deserves you. I, especially, do not deserve you, but providence granted me the opportunity to meet you and give you my heart.”
“Pretty words,” she said, but the coldness in her eyes seemed less icy. She flinched as though battling pain. “I want to believe you.”
“Then do,” he said, debating whether to drop to his knees and beg. Then the most obvious answer of all came to him. “Keep your dowry.” He almost choked on the words, knowing how badly he needed the money. “If the dowry is all you think I want, then keep it.”
She sat back and frowned in disbelief. “The Wakefield estate cannot survive without it.”
“Oh, we can survive, but it will be just that,” he said, feeling the hope of their future slipping away with every word he uttered.
“It will take years and years to undo the damage my uncle left behind, and I have nearly ruined myself attempting to remedy it in a faster manner. I should have left it all alone and tended to what I knew best, taken care of my own land and holdings rather than risk them all because of a title that grows more meaningless each day.”
She stared at him, reminding him of a skittish deer, afraid and unsure whether to trust. Just as she seemed about to speak, Fipps hurried into the garden, clearing his throat to announce his presence.
“Forgive me for interrupting, but there is a messenger at the door who appears quite agitated.” He bowed to Drake.
“He has come to fetch you, my lord. It would appear there is a dire matter at Wakefield Manor that requires your immediate presence.”
Torn at ignoring the runner and staying to beg Felicity to believe his love for her, Drake held up a hand, waving Fipps away. “There is a dire matter here that requires my presence. Even if Wakefield is on fire, there is nothing I care about there as much as I care about Felicity.”