Chapter 15 #2
“I still love you, Christina. I think that I have always loved you, even when the shadows washed over me, and my anger was a fury in the pit of my stomach. This is not what our intention was, I know. We thought to stay back from one another, to give the appearance of an interest in a connection for fear of what might come upon us – but now that it has come, I cannot and will not allow it to push itself between us. My heart is still yours. It shall never belong to any other.” His hand returned to her cheek, cupping it lightly as his eyes searched hers, an intensity there that stole away her breath.
“Say that you will fight this, Christina. Say that you have strength enough to battle against this unseen enemy, for the sake of our love.”
Her eyes closed. She knew what he was asking of her, asking her to set aside her fear and dread and to take hold of what her heart longed for.
Could she deny it? Could she truly deny that her heart loved him in return?
The fear of what might happen to her reputation – to her family’s standing – nipped at her as she opened her eyes to see him waiting there, saying nothing but his eyes yearning for her to answer.
“I trust you, Coventry.”
Something inside her cracked open as she spoke those words and, rather than pushing weakness into her, sent heat into her frame.
She was caught up with a fierce, desperate need to be close with him, to show him – and show herself – that this letter was not about to rip them apart again.
Pushing herself up onto her tiptoes, she put her hands about his neck and drew her lips to his.
The moment their lips touched, a rush of trembling relief swept through her.
Lord Coventry responded in an instant, his arms tightening around her waist as he held her close.
Christina leaned into it, her fingers threading through his hair as she poured all of her longing and fear and hope into the press of her lips against his.
Drawing back, her breathing unsteady, she held his gaze with a steadiness that had been absent from her before. His eyes were wide, the curve of his lips lifting in gentle hope.
“My love for you will remain steadfast,” she said, her voice shaking but her words determined. “I will not allow this letter to rip you from me.”
Lord Coventry let out a slow breath, his eyes closing briefly as he smiled. “The joy your words bring me is inexpressible, Christina.”
The sound of footsteps had them springing apart, with Christina hurriedly returning to her seat. Lord Coventry put his hands behind his back and shot Christina a twinkling smile which made her blush furiously, just as her sister came back into the room.
“I have spoken to the maid.” Sophie shook her head. “It seems as if a street child handed in the note to the butler, who then gave it to the maid. So we do not know who it is that has written it.”
“No, we do not.” Lord Coventry frowned as he glanced from Christina to Sophie. “But we need not wonder at who wrote this, Lady Wickton. It bears the same mark as the letters two years ago — and we know, now, whose hand shaped them.”
Sophie drew in a sharp breath. “You mean that he has — ”
“Dared to do it again. Yes.” Isaac’s jaw tightened.
“Lord Pennington was not content with separating us then. He is not content now. Only he has less patience this time, and less cover. George’s confession has cost him his eyes and ears in this household, and the shape of his desperation is beginning to show. ”
Christina watched her sister take this in.
She had told Sophie everything that morning, over the first pot of tea — George’s testimony, the forged letters, the bribe of thirty pounds, Pennington’s two years of patient calculation.
Sophie had wept with the anger of a sister who had believed the man a mere irritant and now knew him for what he was.
But reading the new letter aloud had set the knowledge alight again.
They were no longer speaking of past injury. They were looking at the present.
“He is bolder than I thought him,” Sophie said at last. Her fingers had gone to the fabric of her skirt, pleating it in a quiet, distracted rhythm. “To write this, to deliver it to your door — he must feel that his time is running short.”
“It is.” Isaac’s voice was low. “Lord Granton told me, some weeks ago, that Pennington is four thousand pounds in debt. His father left him with the title and a ruin beneath it. A man in his circumstance has only so many roads to solvency.”
“Marriage to an heiress,” Sophie said, quietly.
“Yes.” Isaac’s gaze shifted to Christina.
“And that is why one thing yet confounds me. George could tell us the what and the how, but he did not know the why. If Pennington has fixed himself upon you, Christina, there must be a reason beyond mere ill feeling toward me. What draws him to your hand specifically?”
Christina felt the question land. It was a thing she had not thought to tell him — it had seemed irrelevant, a private arrangement of no interest to the man she loved.
She had told her brother, only that morning in the carriage a week ago, that Lord Coventry was unaware of it, and she had felt nothing wrong in saying so.
Now, with the letter lying between them and Isaac’s eyes steady on her face, the withholding felt like a small omission that had grown into something larger.
“There is an inheritance,” she said. “From my mother’s father.
It was his wish that his estate be divided between his granddaughters upon their marriages.
Sophie received her portion when she wed Lord Wickton.
Mine waits for the day of my own wedding.
” She paused, watching him. “I did not think to mention it. It is not a great fortune by the standards of the ton — some twelve thousand pounds — but it is a sum.”
Isaac’s face went very still. He did not speak for a long moment. Then he ran one hand over his jaw, exhaled, and looked away toward the window, where the afternoon light was slanting low across the garden.
“Twelve thousand pounds,” he said. “Three times the sum that would clear his debts and leave him a respectable income beside.”
“I did not tell you because I did not want it to mean anything between us,” Christina said, a small edge of apology in her voice. “My father’s last instruction to me was that a suitor should be drawn to my person, not my portion. I have guarded the knowledge of it in silence ever since.”
“You owe me no explanation for a silence that protected you.” He turned back to her, his expression softened. “I am only sorry that the silence was wiser than either of us knew. If Pennington has been calculating toward your inheritance since before we were ever engaged — ”
“Then he has been patient for two years.” Sophie’s voice was small.
“Writing to us in the country with his solicitous questions, courting Bedford in town with his contrived errands, waiting for Christina to turn to him in her sorrow as a bereaved girl is supposed to turn to a helpful cousin. And when she did not — when she arrived in London this Season and looked past him toward you — ”
“He found his patience running out against his debts,” Isaac finished.
“He has grown desperate enough to write this.” Isaac laid the letter down on the table between them, as if the paper itself had become distasteful to touch. “The question is no longer who. The question is what he intends now, and how we answer it without giving him the scandal he has threatened.”
Christina felt her pulse quicken. For weeks, they had been groping through fog, piecing together fragments and hoping the picture would resolve.
Now the picture was plain before them, and she found, to her surprise, that plain terror was easier to bear than uncertainty.
She knew her enemy. She knew his reasons. What remained was to meet him.
“We must force his hand,” she said.
Isaac looked at her.
“He has made his threat in private,” she continued, her thoughts moving faster now than her speech, “because private is where he can still control the outcome. A letter delivered by a street child, no seal, no witnesses — if I were to tell the ton of it, there would be nothing to prove his hand in it. He has designed his cruelty to leave no trace.” Her chin lifted.
“But if we appear together in public — openly, visibly, without shame or hesitation — then he must either come forward and speak, or step back and let us be. Either way, he is drawn from the shadow.”
“And George’s testimony?” Sophie asked.
“Held in reserve.” Isaac’s eyes were fixed on Christina with a growing steadiness, the look of a man watching his partner think.
“The testimony is our proof, but it is a weapon we can only use once. If we wield it the moment Pennington makes his move, we can end him without the public spectacle he is counting on to ruin Christina.”
Sophie looked between them, and a slow, fierce smile touched her mouth. “Then you are to be seen. Tomorrow?”
“Gunters,” Isaac said. “An ice. The most public hour. Every eye upon us, every tongue wagging by evening. He will hear of it within the hour, I expect.”
Christina swallowed. The plan had the clean logic of inevitability, but it also meant setting herself deliberately in Pennington’s path — daring him, provoking him.
A week ago the thought would have frightened her into silence.
She felt that fear now, but beneath it, a steadier thing: the certainty that hiding had not protected her.
It had only given Pennington time to prepare.
“Then let us give him something he did not anticipate,” she said. “Two years ago, he expected me to turn to him in my sorrow. He shall find, instead, that I have turned fully to Lord Coventry, and that the ton shall see it before sunset tomorrow.”
Isaac took her hand. His thumb traced the arc across her knuckles — I am here — and she pressed his palm in answer.