Chapter Eight
“I WAS FOOLISH AND HAVE learned since then.” Muriel focused on stoking the fire with another stick, but she knew she had lost Erik’s respect as she had that of so many others. She was an opportunist of the worst degree in his eyes. As well I should be, with the way I behaved. Foolish. Foolish girl!
“So you were a debutante when this happened?” Erik prompted as he cautiously leaned against the wall, testing his weight gradually with one shoulder.
Elena laughed. “She proposed three weeks ago—hardly enough time for all that learning from her mistakes nonsense.”
Tears stung Muriel’s eyes along with the wafting smoke. Why had she thought she could outstride her problems before word spread from Kent? Elena was right, again. Muriel had done little to learn from her error. She had only attempted to outrun her colossal blunder. The thought of the vicar’s sealed letter in her reticule flitted to mind. She had carried it with her as she promised him but had yet to summon the courage to read it. Perhaps if she had read it, she actually would have learned a lesson instead of simply running from her problems.
“So, tell us, what exactly did you learn?” Elena pressed, her smile too sweet.
Muriel dropped the stick into the fire and rose, dusting off her hands and shaking out the leaves clinging to her filthy hem. “It’s only drizzling now. I will go for help.”
Erik pushed off from the wall. “Miss Beau, you cannot possibly go out in this. You must allow me—”
She didn’t linger to hear the rest of his plea and ducked out of their shelter, Elena’s cruel giggles following. Erik may think her a vain, goosecap girl, but there was so much more to her than that one moment. In her desperation to start her family, had she sacrificed any chance of possessing one? Lord, help me. If this is my path, let me forget my dream of a husband and a family of my own. Her tears mingled with the rain as she gathered her skirts and hurried down the path, slipping here and there on a muddy patch. She steadied herself before she tumbled. She ran her hands over her face, plastering her hair out of her eyes and deciding to focus on the task at hand rather than the painful past.
“Miss Beau!” Erik called from too close behind.
Picking up her pace, she ducked under a branch to cut through the woods and broke into a run, the stretching of her muscles lessening her pain. She was from the country. She would be fine.
“There are bogs not far from the path! Muriel, do not stray.”
Grunting, she lessened her stride and pressed her hand to her waist, gasping for air. She had traveled over sixty miles to leave the past behind, yet here was Elena, ready to present it on a silver platter to anyone with a willing ear. The rain began again in earnest, and she wrapped her arms about herself, wishing she had her spencer jacket as Erik jogged up beside her, cradling his splint. Remorse flooded her. She hadn’t thought of his arm. She blinked away the raindrops, hoping he would mistake her tears for the rain. “Forgive me, Lord Draycott. I could not stand to be by her side another moment.”
“She was rather pointed in her attack,” he admitted and glanced over his shoulder toward the clearing. “And she was not pleased I left her behind. Perhaps that will teach her a lesson in refraining from being brazen-faced in the future so as not to drive away with her sharp tongue the people who would rescue her.”
Relief filled Muriel that he had not fallen under the spell of the heiress’s fair face and fortune. “Be that as it may, what she said is shamefully true.” She pushed back her bangs with both hands once more to better see him and assess his disappointment, shivering in her dread. “I made a horrid mistake before I came to London, and if I could take back that moment, I would.”
As the rain increased, he removed his sling and fine coat and draped it around her shoulders despite her protests. He slipped his arm back into the sling and used his good hand on her upper back to guide her under a massive ash tree. “Why did you do it?”
“I think I lost my senses.” She laughed, the weight of his coat comforting her. “I should have known better than to follow her advice.” She shook her head. “No. I cannot blame it on listening to bad counsel. I knew what I was doing was not acceptable. She merely pushed me over the edge of sanity.”
“Whose advice?”
She sighed as the rain coaxed the last tendril from her coiffure and her hair tumbled to her waist. “I will appear even more foolish to you if I admit to it. It was Elena who set the idea into motion. She mentioned that her cousin, Baron Deverell, did not have the courage to commit to me because he believed I was uncertain of my feelings and would jilt him as I had cried off his two acquaintances.”
“You jilted two other gentlemen?” His voice rose, confusion clouding his handsome features.
She waved him off. “It was not quite so dramatic as it sounds, and they were well compensated for my breech in promise—that is to say, my stepfather’s promise. Dear Mr. Fletcher arranged the marriages for me. There was no genuine warmth between us, as one gentleman was in love with another woman who lacked wealth, and the second, well, he had a certain taste for—” She looked away. She would not admit to her horrifying discovery that he frequented his mistress in Dover thrice a month. She was certain if her stepfather had been aware of Sir Josiah Montgomery’s well-kept secret ladybird, he would have never initiated the match in the first place. It was only by the grace of the Lord that her grandfather had discovered the cad with his doxy and wrote to her. “It was actually the baron who discovered me in tears after I followed my second fiancé, Sir Josiah Montgomery, to Dover on a suspicion that turned out to be true. Baron Deverell set aside all his business in Dover to drive me home as I was too watery-headed to drive the curricle myself.” She shivered despite the coat. “It was his kindness in that horrible moment that first drew my heart to him.”
Erik’s lips pressed into a deep line as he rested his good shoulder against the tree, cradling his injured arm. “I see. If I ever encounter this Sir Josiah Montgomery, I will have a difficult time not thrashing the man.”
“My stepfather saw to that already.” She dipped her head, determined to finish the tale. “Elena caught me on one of my walks back from the village and made a very compelling case for the baron. And I, who fancied myself very much in love with the baron, agreed with her and ignored my dearest friends. I do not know how Tess and Vivienne put up with me after that one. I am a pariah in my own village.” She rested the back of her head against the rough bark. “I don’t know why I am confessing the most humiliating part of my life to you instead of allowing us to simply part ways after Elena’s attempt to crush my spirit.” She sighed. “My birth will earn you no friends and neither will this tale once it circulates in London.”
He grasped her slender hand in his and threaded it around his soaked sleeve. “Thank you for trusting me with the whole truth. Now that we have that sorted, we best fetch help for our friend in the woods, lest she begin screaming again. The woman’s tongue can cut glass.”
She laughed, smothering it at once with her hand. “That is unkind of us, Erik.” She fought back a grimace at her lapse in etiquette. “I mean, Lord Draycott.”
“With the secrets shared between us, I’m just Erik when it is the two of us, Ariel.” He winked at the first name he had called her. “I fear I shall have a difficult time thinking of your name correctly after our memorable encounter.”
“As you should only be calling me Miss Beau in public, I don’t mind Ariel when we are alone.” Truly, the sobriquet warmed her soul.
He pushed himself off the trunk. “Are you ready to astonish my guests by our appearance? I hope the ruins were worth the gossip this little adventure will raise.”
“They are beautiful.” She sighed, looking back to where the ruins lay. “If it weren’t for Elena’s presence, I’d wish your party to be a house party so I might explore the grounds further.”
“As would I.”
They returned to find the servants had moved the garden party inside to the castle’s great hall. The walls were now lined with the tables from the gardens, the food seeming to have been spared the downpour. The pair of them stood dripping on the marble stones of the threshold where Erik directed four footmen to take a sedan chair to fetch Miss Whelan and sent another footman for the village doctor.
Someone caught sight of them, and word spread among the guests of the past two hours’ events, which explained the absence of the earl and the two ladies. The Widow Whelan at once required smelling salts, quickly supplied by Erik’s neighbor and member of the grocers’ guild, Viscount Sullivan. Muriel moved to the viscount’s side. As she whispered something to him, his eyes widened. Erik frowned. The viscount was a handsome fellow, but rather on the roguish side for Muriel. What does she want with the man?
The viscount moved to the widow’s side and grasped her hand. “If it will bring you comfort, Widow Whelan, I will join the footmen in the fetching of Miss Whelan.”
“You are a true nobleman,” she cried from behind the lace kerchief she pressed to her forehead, flicking narrowed eyes to Erik as if she blamed him for her daughter’s plight.
Erik bowed his head to Sullivan. “I thank you, Viscount. I would attend her, but my injury makes the trek difficult, and I would hate to slow the footmen in the rescue of Miss Whelan.”
“It is my honor, my lord.” Viscount Sullivan darted out the door, earning approving nods from the guests.
Erik felt a pang that it should have been him to follow the footmen. However, his arm was throbbing, and he had spent too much time away from the party as it was. He needed to mingle if he was to have a hope of catching a hint of any nefarious activity among the grocers’ guild. He joined the party in the great hall as Lady Ingram draped a shawl over Muriel’s shoulders and directed her to stand before the grand stone fireplace that was large enough to fit his bed within.
Guy Mayfield joined him, handing him a cup of tea. “Should I ask the doctor to see to your arm after he sees to the young lady, my lord?”
He rubbed his aching shoulder, angry he was healing so slowly. “Unless the stitches have torn, I should be well.”
Guy lifted his brows but did not press him. “I haven’t heard of anything suspicious from the merchants using the docks along the Thames nor around the dates we discussed.”
“And how, may I ask, did you weave such questions seamlessly into your conversations?”
He shrugged. “It was easier than you would think. I complimented the food and asked which dry goods they imported, as you likely had purchased their fine products, and I simply had to praise them properly for their part in today’s success. You would be surprised how much information one can obtain from flummery.”
“Brilliant.”
Guy grinned. “I thought so. Now, what’s this about you being caught in the rain with that pretty Miss Beau?”