Chapter 6
Margaret sat in the carriage, Henry’s coat still draped over her knees, and tried to make sense of what had just happened.
She’d been caught with a man. Again. The familiar dread should have swallowed her whole. The memories of that first scandal—the balcony, Mrs. Winthrop’s accusatory stare, her father’s cold fury—should have crushed her.
But they didn’t.
Because this was different. This time, she’d actually kissed him; had wanted to kiss him. Had felt something real instead of performing politeness with a stranger.
Henry had offered for her because he wanted to before they’d been caught, not out of duty or to salvage her reputation. Before Lady Thornby appeared with her theatrical gasping and Schadenfreude in her eyes.
It was madness. She’d known the man for hours. A single evening of conversation and dancing and absurdly funny discussions about peas.
And yet…
Something in her chest felt settled. Certain. As if her heart recognized something her mind was still trying to understand.
She pressed her fingers to her lips, still tingling from his kiss. Her first real kiss.
Henry had followed her into the dark and had listened to her clumsy confession about never really being married in all the ways the word implied.
He was the first person to see her as extraordinary instead of ruined.
Moreover, he had promised to write her terrible poetry.
A smile tugged at her mouth despite everything.
The carriage door flew open, and she looked toward the house where her younger siblings were waiting. Matthew’s face appeared at the door, which was unlike him. He looked white with panic, eyes wild.
The warmth of the evening evaporated like smoke.
“Mags, come quick. Something’s wrong with Mr. Foley!”
Oh no, her elderly father-in-law!
Margaret didn’t wait for the footman. Gathering her skirts, Margaret scrambled out of the carriage. Her hand slammed against the front wall to signal the driver to stop and let her out.
“What happened?” Her voice came out sharp.
“After you left, we did exactly as you told us.” Matthew’s words tumbled over each other. “Supper was the same, but he started complaining about his stomach. Gripe, he said. So Tessie made him tea.”
Poor boy. They’d been so desperate to prove they could manage without her.
“What was in the tea?” Margaret’s mind raced through their meager supplies. Chamomile. Mint. Nothing that should cause—
“That’s just it.” Matthew’s voice cracked. “When Tessie came back with the cup, he’d already cast up his accounts. And he was shaking. Trembling something awful.”
His face flushed red even in the darkness. “I didn’t know what to do. I ran for Dr. Bromwell, but he wasn’t home. Then I tried Mrs. Manley, but she’s in the next village with a birth.” Tears pooled in his eyes. “I couldn’t find anyone, Mags. I tried, but I couldn’t—”
“You did exactly right.” Margaret gripped his hand. Squeezed hard. “That’s what you were supposed to do. I’m here now.”
Matthew stood barefoot in the yard—he must have run outside when he heard the gate—his nightshirt no match for the cold.
But inside, she was cursing herself. Oh no, no. This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have been gone for so long.
The one night in three years she’d taken for herself, and this happened.
It was foolish and selfish to let a duke woo her when her family needed her.
When Mr. Foley needed her. The house of cards she’d built for her life couldn’t withstand her absence and survive the disruption of wanting something for herself.
Thus, she mustn’t. Her family needed her.
She ran into the house, back to her old life. Dreams of the glittering ballroom and the tender kisses of the handsome duke fell away before she even entered. Their cottage door wasn’t locked. It never was. She shoved it open hard enough that it banged against the wall.
“Tessie?” she called for her younger sister.
“In here!”
Margaret rushed into the sitting room where Mr. Foley spent his evenings. The fire crackled cheerfully—obscene, given the circumstances. It cast dancing shadows across the old man’s face, making him look ghoulish. Wrong.
Tessie stood near his chair, wringing her hands, her face a mixture of shame and fear.
Anna, the youngest of her siblings, aged ten, clattered down the stairs with a clean nightshirt, eyes huge in her pale face.
Margaret dropped to her knees beside Mr. Foley’s chair.
His chest rose and fell, but the movement looked labored. He wheezed. His face had a strange droop that hadn’t been there this morning. His eyes were closed. His skin felt clammy under her fingers.
“Tell me everything,” she said.
Tessie’s words came out in a rush. The same story as Matthew. The stomach complaint. The tea. Coming back to find him violently ill. His face sagging on one side. His arm hanging useless. Water wouldn’t go down. They’d cleaned him as best they could. Kept him warm. Waited for Margaret.
Margaret pressed her fingers to his wrist. His pulse was thready but present.
She had no idea what to do. This was worse than before. She wasn’t a physician or a healer. She knew herbs for common ailments and how to tend fever, but this was beyond her.
“We need Dr. Bromwell,” she said, her mind already calculating. They had a few coins saved. The chickens. Perhaps they could barter—
Then she heard a man’s voice…
Henry had barely stepped out of the orangery after Margaret left, when one of the servants appeared.
“Your Grace, Lady Margaret’s family sent word. There’s an emergency at her home.” Ah, the gossips had spread the word that Margaret was with him in less than five minutes.
His stomach dropped. “What kind of emergency?”
“Medical, I believe. Her younger brother sounded quite distressed.”
Henry didn’t hesitate. “Get my carriage. Now.”
He'd already promised to court her. Already decided she was worth whatever scandal Lady Thornby tried to manufacture. The gossips could whisper all they wanted—he would marry Margaret Foley if she'd have him and put the matrons' fabrications to shame.
In private.
In the big bedroom at the castle.
With Maragaret… oh boy. Perhaps being a duke was worth it just to meet her this night.
But first, he needed to make sure she was all right.
“I’ll need her address,” he told the footman.
The man hesitated. “Your Grace, the family lives in… modest circumstances. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to—”
“The address. Please.”
Within minutes, he had it. At least the gossips were good for one thing: information.
They’d been more than happy to tell him exactly where the charity-case widow lived with her dependent siblings and invalid father-in-law.
Charity case. The words made his blood boil.
These people had no idea what they were talking about.
His carriage clattered through the darkening streets. Away from the grand houses and manicured gardens toward smaller cottages and narrower lanes.
Henry’s mind raced. Her father-in-law was ill, according the hastily recited information from Mrs. Thornby.
Not her father—the man was long dead, apparently.
But her late husband’s father. A man she had no blood obligation to care for, yet she’d taken him in and supported him along with three younger siblings. Four dependents on a widow’s pension.
The gossips had painted her as grasping. Opportunistic. A woman who’d set her cap at a duke to escape poverty.
They were fools. She wasn’t grasping but surviving and keeping her family together through sheer force of will. She was extraordinary.
The carriage stopped outside a small cottage. Modest didn’t begin to cover it, but Henry didn’t care. He’d lived in worse. The thatched roof needed repair. The garden was practical, not ornamental. A single window glowed with candlelight.
This was her home, where she’d returned every night after performing appropriate widowhood for people who had no idea what her life actually looked like.
Henry climbed out and strode to the door.
It wasn’t locked, so he pushed it open and stepped inside far enough to close the door so the heat didn’t escape. Firewood was expensive.
The scene that greeted him made his chest tighten.
In the small sitting room, a fire crackled cheerfully in the grate—the only source of warmth and light.
An elderly man slumped in a chair, face slack on one side, breathing labored.
A young girl—maybe ten—hovered with a blanket, while a teenage girl wrung her hands.
A boy who must be Matthew stood nearby, white-faced and terrified.
Margaret knelt on the floor beside the old man’s chair, still in her ballgown. Her hair had fallen down from her coiffure, and her pale face appeared fearful.
She looked up when he entered, and shock flashed across her face. Then something that looked like shame. “Your Grace.” She scrambled to her feet. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Every protective instinct he had roared to life. She thought he’d judge this. Judge her. Judge the poverty and the cramped cottage and the desperate circumstances? She had no idea.
“The footman informed me there is a medical emergency.” He kept his voice steady and calm. “How can I help?”
Her siblings stared at him like he’d grown a second head. A duke. In their cottage.
Margaret opened her mouth, closed it, clearly trying to find words that wouldn’t come.
Henry looked at the three young faces watching him.
The young girl with Margaret’s eyes. The boy, maybe fourteen, trying hard to be the man of the house.
The youngest, a girl of perhaps ten, clutching a crochet blanket like a lifeline.
They were terrified. Not of the medical emergency—though that was bad enough—but of him.
Of what a duke’s presence in their home might mean.
He crouched down. Made himself smaller. Less intimidating. “I’m Henry.” Not Your Grace. Not the Duke. Just Henry. “I’m a friend of your sister’s. And I’m here to help. Will you let me?”