Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
“Nathaniel Darington... the Duke of Greymoor?” Seraphina asked.
“Nathaniel Darington,” Seraphina said again, as though saying it a second time would make it make more sense than it had the first time. It did not. “The Duke of Greymoor.”
She stopped pacing for precisely the length of time it took to look at Euphemia, confirm that the situation was exactly as bad as it had sounded, and resume pacing.
“You are telling me that you slept in his room. That you were found. In the corridor. With your slippers in your hands. By two women and two maids.”
Euphemia gazed blankly into space, wondering when exactly everything had gone so thoroughly wrong.
She sat completely frozen in her chair, tuning out her sister’s hysterics as she reviewed her own life choices.
It was a mathematical marvel, really. Euphemia considered herself a rational woman, someone who believed in logic, cause and effect, and the proper alignment of household ledgers.
Yet, looking at the trajectory of her recent luck, she was forced to conclude that the universe had simply selected her as its personal source of entertainment.
First, Lord Finch had abandoned her at the altar. Now, a mere wrong turn in search for a warm bed had branded her a predatory huntress of dukes.
The sheer logistics of her ruin were completely devoid of grace.
If a woman was going to be thoroughly ruined, it ought to involve a midnight elopement on horseback or a dramatic confession in a rain-soaked garden.
It should look like the pages of Glenarvon.
It should not look like a woman tiptoeing past a guest suite looking like an untamed hedge-witch, arguing with a half-dressed Duke about who was more intoxicated.
“Oh, do stop drilling a hole into the floorboards, Seraphina,” Leonora chimed in from the chaise lounge.
The youngest Byron sister was currently spreading marmalade onto a piece of toast, composed.
“It is early yet. Surely we can find a way around it. Perhaps we can say Euphemia was simply sleepwalking? Or that she was looking for the library to study the architecture? People know she reads too much. They might believe she was confused by a particularly compelling shelf of history books.”
“They found her outside his bedroom door wearing the same dress she wore the night before, Leonora!” Seraphina shrieked, throwing her hands in the air. “Holding her slippers! There is no defense in the world that can save us!”
Euphemia wondered if the best decision she could make was to stop leaving the house.
She could go back to the country, and sit in the drawing room, read improving literature and never attend another party as long as she lived.
The ton could discuss that as enthusiastically as it liked because at least it couldn’t make things worse.
“Everyone needs to calm down,” Emily announced, her voice instantly cutting through the rising panic.
She was sat by Euphemia’s side, having followed her back to Mayfair after the incident.
“Seraphina, being agitated is not going to benefit anyone, least of all Effie. The best thing you can do right now, is for you to sit down, calm yourself, and allow us to work through this logically.”
Seraphina paused her pacing, though she looked entirely unconvinced.
“I truly do not see what the grand issue is,” Leonora said from the chaise lounge, completely unbothered.
“Sure, lots of people are currently talking about the fact that Effie was caught outside the Duke of Greymoor’s chambers.
But if we simply give it a bit of time, people will forget all about it and move on to the next big scandal. They always do.”
“That is not how the world works, Leonora, and you know it!” Seraphina retorted sharply, turning on her.
“The ton never forgets a disgrace like this. There is absolutely nothing we can do to scrub it clean. By this afternoon, people will be avoiding us like the plague. We will be completely isolated.”
“They might be talking...” Emily interrupted smoothly, trying to anchor the room before the sisters could descend into a shouting match, “...but my husband, Theodore, is already out working on laying the groundwork to handle the rumors. He is already working on delaying the scandal sheets.”
While Emily offered her assurances, Leonora stood up from the chaise lounge. She drifted across the room to Euphemia’s side. She reached down, gently patting Euphemia’s arm.
“Effie, you have not eaten a single thing since you arrived yesterday,” Leonora said softly, her charming smile entirely intact as she extended the half-eaten piece of marmalade toast in her hand. “You cannot face a social execution on an empty stomach. Eat something.”
It was typical behavior for Leonora, the youngest of the three Byron sisters.
While all three girls had grown up under the strict, intellectual roof of Lady Byron, Leonora was the one who loved books the absolute most. She swallowed romances and histories whole, yet the literature had cured her of any desire to participate in them.
Leonora did not believe in love, she did not believe in marriage, and she had zero intention of ever letting a man dictate her life.
She was incredibly charming, beautiful, and witty, but beneath that pleasant exterior lay a brilliant mind that was exceptionally difficult to trust. She viewed the marriage mart as a ridiculous game she had no interest in playing.
Seraphina, on the other hand, was a different creature entirely.
As the oldest of the Byron sisters, she was much stricter and more structured.
She took heavily after Lady Byron herself.
She was confident, sharp-tongued, and fiercely protective of the family unit.
Seraphina was an intellectual bookworm in her own right, but her refusal to marry came from a completely different place than Leonora’s.
The three of them were a strange collective.
Even Euphemia had no doubt about it. They called themselves the Byron sisters, which confused people at first and then made sense when explained.
They had been taken in by Lady Byron when they were young, at different ages but similar circumstances, with different surnames.
The name was not legal. It was not formal.
It was simply what they were. Sisters… raised by Lady Byron.
It began with their fathers, three friends who entered a business partnership that collapsed in the dead of winter.
On the night the financial ruin became undeniable, the three men went out together to escape the wreckage, or perhaps simply to breathe.
They stayed out too long. On the coldest night of that unforgiving winter, they froze to death.
As each household crumbled, Lady Byron took the girls in one by one. She gave them her name completely, determined that tragedy would not define them.
The Byron sisters.
Euphemia, sitting dead in the middle as the second daughter, had always been the pragmatist, the one who tried to balance Seraphina’s rigid standards with Leonora’s cynical detachment.
Yet, ironically, Euphemia was the only one who believed in love among them.
She was the only sister who had actually wanted the fairy tale, the true partnership, the grand romance written in the stars.
But after the public humiliation of being left at the altar by Finch, and now this current disaster, she had started to lose hope too.
Now, she was simply the sister who was ruined.
Euphemia looked from Leonora’s offered toast up to Emily’s face, and sighed. “I have no idea what to do,” she admitted.
She took the toast from Leonora and took a small bite. “I owe you both an apology,” she said.
“You do not,” said Leonora immediately.
“I do. I brought you here, I have made everything worse and —”
“Euphemia.” Emily’s voice stern. “We are not doing that today. Today we are solving the immediate problem.” She looked around at all three of them. “Are we agreed that we are solving the immediate problem?”
Euphemia sighed. “I don’t think there is any way we can come back from this, Emily.”
“There are always ways to save a situation,” Emily insisted, sitting up.
“We have options. Theodore can ensure the newspapers print nothing. We can bury the story entirely by keeping you out of the public eye for a few weeks, or we could perhaps create a distraction, a larger scandal involving someone else.”
“None of that will work,” Seraphina interjected. “The only definitive way to save this situation is if Euphemia marries the Duke.”
The room went completely silent. Leonora paused, her hand hovering near her mouth.
Euphemia looked at Seraphina as if her sister had lost her mind. Marry him? Marry the arrogant, cold, deeply selfish man? She knew she would never marry him. The very idea was absurd.
“No.” She said and shook her head. “Absolutely not.”
“Think about what it would mean,” Seraphina pressed.
“If you were to marry the Duke of Greymoor, the story changes entirely. No one spreads rumors about a duchess. No one whispers about a woman who has secured one of the most prominent titles in England. What people saw yesterday morning becomes, in retrospect, two people who were already developing an attachment. It becomes... romance, I think. It becomes exactly the kind of story the ton loves to tell, and they will tell it gladly, because it is a far better story than the alternative.”
Emily bit her lower lip. “She is not wrong, Effie,” she said, slowly, as though the words were being extracted from her against her better judgement.
“She is completely wrong,” said Euphemia.
“Euphemia, he is a duke,” Seraphina added. “A very wealthy one, and quite handsome from what I hear. There are worse fates.”