Chapter 15
Floating from the pleasure she had just experienced with Crispin, Hermia re-entered the ballroom discreetly. They’d thought it best that they did not come back in together lest people get the wrong idea, which, of course, would actually be the right idea. Still, no one needed to actually know it. As Hermia walked in, she strode with her shoulders back, her head high, feeling more beautiful than she ever had before.
Her sister, Juliet, raced up to her and took her hand, but there was something amiss. Her sister’s face was tense, drained of color. Her usual dancing eyes shone with panic.
“Whatever is wrong?” Hermia asked at once. “Has someone been hurt? Is Mama all right?”
“That is not it. That is not it at all,” Juliet exclaimed. “You must come with me immediately. Come to the cloakroom.”
Hermia swallowed.
It had to be terrible indeed if Juliet was acting thus. Had her sister been caught in an indiscretion when she’d wandered off?
But as Hermia gazed around the room, she realized that everyone was staring at them, and not as they had been staring before. There was an animosity in the look, a devilish, self-satisfied, cruel look on the faces of the ladies, and a strange one on the men, as if they were sizing her up for something that they had never dared to size her up for before.
Her stomach churned at that look. There was a tension in the ballroom, a sort of thick coating in the air. The joy and lilt of it all was gone. Now, it seemed thick with something else, like a pack of wolves ready to go in for the kill. She swung her gaze back to Juliet.
Was a scandal brewing? And then, suddenly, her mouth dried and she felt sick. The stares. The stares were not for Juliet. All of those stares were for her.
“Take me away,” she rushed, half afraid she was going to cast up her accounts before the company.
Juliet took her by the arm and raced her out into the dark corridor. They made their way to the cloakroom. There were a few ladies inside. They took one look at Hermia, burst into laughter, and then darted out, leaving Hermia and Juliet alone in the small room.
“What has happened?” Hermia demanded, trying not give way to the hysteria brewing inside her.
Juliet’s face twisted with horror. “What do you think has happened, my dear? You were spotted.”
“Spotted? Impossible,” she spat out. And then she recalled the noise they had heard from the hall. But how could those people have seen anything? The door had been firmly closed.
“We heard laughter, but I never imagined that…” Hermia’s stomach dropped, and she feared she would sway and collapse. But she refused to give in. She clung to Juliet’s hand and gasped, “Oh, dear God.” Tears stung her eyes, and her body chilled to ice. “Oh, God. What a fool I have been. I never should have allowed it. This whole thing is a disaster. I’ve destroyed the family.”
“Of course not,” Juliet countered swiftly. “Our family has ridden many a scandal. We shall survive this too.”
“But I do not want this to be what I…” Her mind began whirling with pained thoughts. And then one hit her that nearly crushed her. “Everyone will think he is only marrying me because he has been at my skirts,” she exclaimed with horror.
Hermia staggered to a cushioned chair and gripped the back of it. The wood bit into her hands. She longed to cause herself pain, for the pain inside her was so deep that she needed to be distracted from it.
Just as tears began to leak out of her eyes and slip down her cheeks, her mother bustled into the room.
“Oh, my darling,” her mother soothed.
“I am…s-so very sorry, Mama,” she broke out. “I do not know how I allowed this to happen.”
Her mother tensed. “I do.”
“What?” Hermia sobbed.
Her mother’s face grew grim. “The room you were in? Someone saw you through a painting. That’s what the whispers are saying. You see, one of the paintings had spy holes. There were eyes in it.”
Her mother blew out a breath. “Some of these houses,” she explained, “are meant for watching. And unfortunately, someone spotted you and Crispin. They immediately ran out and began spreading the word like wildfire. I do not know who it was, but hopefully I shall find out by the end of the evening, and they shall be sorry for it.”
“But, Mama,” Hermia choked. “It is not a lie. Crispin and I were…”
She swallowed back the words. How was it possible? She had been the family’s most boring individual her entire life, and suddenly it was as if the Briarwood blood had gone through her veins, seized her, taken over, and thrust her into scandalous behavior.
Hermia shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut, trying to drive the image of all those judgmental stares from her mind. “Mama, I am so sorry.”
Her mother crossed to her and took her hands firmly in her own. “You are not to apologize, my darling. Though it was out of character for you, you were acting on your feelings. Do you love him, do you think? Is that why—”
“I can’t explain it,” Hermia bit out. “It is simply something that has overcome me with him. I feel so entirely different in his presence.”
Her mother smiled sadly. “I thought as much,” she said. “And he for you, I think, too.”
“But I cannot marry him like this,” Hermia exclaimed, her thoughts coming fast and hard and without sense. Yet, she felt utter conviction in her statement.
Her mother’s hands tensed about hers. “Whatever do you mean?”
Hermia met her mother’s gaze. “I do not want people thinking—”
“My dear,” her mother said gently but firmly, “we don’t care what people think.”
“Apparently, I do,” Hermia whispered.
There was a knock on the door. “Hermia,” a voice called.
His voice.
How she longed to disappear and never be seen again!
“Oh, dear heaven. It’s him,” Hermia rasped, throwing herself onto the chair. “Send him away, Mama.”
“I cannot do that,” her mother countered. “He has every right to speak to you, my dear. No doubt he is just as affected by this as you.”
Her mother stood slowly, crossed to the door, and opened it. “Come in, my lord,” she urged.
Crispin charged in, his face like thunder. “Can you forgive me?” he said.
“Forgive you?” she protested. “We did this together.”
He crossed to her and knelt. “Yes, but I should have known better. I’m a man of experience.”
“And I come from a family of scandal, sir,” she pointed out. “I know what can happen. And for a moment, I flirted with the disaster of it before marriage. I do not know what overcame me.”
“Your bloodline,” her mother said without apology. “We act as we feel, my love, and damn the rest.”
“Mama, please, may I speak with Crispin alone? We must decide what is to be done.”
Her mother looked as if she wished to argue, but then she acquiesced. She and Juliet slipped out into the corridor.
“You don’t have to do this,” Hermia declared passionately.
“Do what?” he asked, his brow furrowing.
She licked her lips, steeling herself against the pain of the words about to pass her lips. Not just because of scandal, but because she did not wish to lose him. “You do not have to marry me. I release you.”
His eyes flared. “Why in God’s name would you release me, teetering on the edge of ruin?”
“Because,” she said, “everyone is saying—”
“Briarwoods don’t care what people say,” he said, arching his brow. “It’s one of the reasons I like you.”
“One of them?” she said, wiping tears from her eyes, shocked that he would mirror her mother’s words so closely.
He paused for a long moment as if gathering his words and thoughts. “Hermia, this marriage will take place. I want you as my wife.”
His words should have been a balm, and yet the crack in her heart…widened. “But I cannot bear it, the way people are looking at me.”
“Let them look. Let them be vultures. Let them say what they will. We know the truth,” he ground out. “And we will not back down from this, not unless you wish to destroy Juliet’s chance for marriage too.”
“That is cruel,” she gasped.
“It might be cruel, but it’s true.” He drew in a long breath. “Please, Hermia. I want you as my wife more than ever. We will go through this together. Yes, people will whisper about you and say terrible things,” he said. “They will whisper about me too—”
“No, they won’t,” she cut in. “They will think highly of you for seducing me.”
A muscle tightened in his jaw before he reached out and gently cupped her cheek. “I wanted to seduce you,” he said, “my beautiful wallflower. And that… That was damned foolish of me. I knew the risk, and I threw you into the void because I wanted to have you so very much.”
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t say such things. I can scarce believe—”
“Well, believe,” he returned intensely. “The moment after we kissed? I could not wait to seduce you, Hermia. I wanted to make you mine. Whatever reason I possessed? It left me. And all I wanted was to claim you. And I’m not going to deny that. So let’s go and ask your brother if he still has that special license.”
“But I wanted to attend all those parties for you. I wanted to show you—”
“You already did,” he said gently. “You have shown me everything that you need to, and I think highly of you for it.”
“Oh, God,” she ground out.
“What?” he said, shaking his head.
She winced. “Your mother.”
He let out a grim noise. “Yes, my mother will not be very pleased about this, but she will learn to live with it. After all, soon she’ll have grandchildren, and that will be enough for her.”
She swallowed. “I feel like I’ve given her a great deal of power over me.”
Crispin pulled her into his arms, embracing her as if he could protect her from all the pain the world could bring, and stated, “You have not. I promise you that. She will not be able to wield this over you. I will not let her.”
“Society will wield it over me,” she pointed out, daring to at last rest her cheek along his broad, capable shoulder. “They will always see me as the unwanted young woman seduced by the earl. Only chosen because he was able to—”
“Unwanted?” He let out a slow laugh then. “You’ve bewitched me, Hermia.”
“What?” she gasped.
“Who cares, Hermia, if the reason why I chose to marry you is passion?” he ground out. “We can tell the entire world I was bewitched by you and could not resist your charms and your temptations. That you are a creature of magical quality. I can go about stating to everyone that I was led by passion for you. It does not bother me because it is also true.”
Her heart began to lift. “You don’t hate me for the scandal I’m bringing to your family?”
He leaned back, met her gaze, then cupped her face in his hands. “How could I hate you for being who you are?”
She lifted her own hands to his. “But scandal is not who I am. It is who my family is.”
He smiled softly at her. “True, but you did say that if I took you, I was taking your family. So I understood there would be scandal and notoriety involved, and I am not dismayed.”
And then she winced. “What about your sister? Her future—”
“My sister?” he mused before he shrugged. “Well, if we marry immediately, there will be no further scandal. Gossip, yes, but nothing ruinous” he said softly. “All will be made right. And I think you know that. I think these things you are saying are just an attempt to punish yourself. Please do not do that, my darling. Please let those thoughts go. We both shared in this. It was what we both wanted, wasn’t it?”
She let her gaze trail over his face, trying to study every line, looking for any hint of hidden disgust. There was none. No, quite the contrary. He looked upon her as if she was the most precious jewel. A jewel to be kept.
“Yes, I suppose it was,” she breathed.
He pulled her close to him again and murmured against her coiled hair, “No regrets. We shall not look back. We have our plan, our arrangement. It will simply happen a little sooner than either of us planned. And my mother will learn to cope. I made you mine tonight, Hermia, and now I shall make you mine before the eyes of society. And that is all there is to it. Do you understand?”
She nodded against his shoulder. “I do.”
“Good. Let’s go tell your brothers before they murder me.”
She laughed, though it was slightly pained. “Is that why you’re doing this?” she teased. “To avoid murder?”
“It’s a very good motivation,” he teased back. “But no, I’m doing this because you are the perfect partner for me, and I am never going to let you go.”
Perfect partner.
The words slipped through her and caused her a moment of agony because she knew… She knew after their lovemaking, after the way he had sought her out to soothe her pain and assure her, to assuage her fears and her pain, that she did not want to be his perfect partner.
She wanted to be the love of his life, as he was clearly the love of hers.