Chapter 26 #2
Duncan had planted himself a little in front of her with a twelve-year-old’s version of formidable posture. Jamie could not look for long without wanting to cross the room. He did not.
Beside the refreshments, Logan was stationed near Clara, who was wearing the ribbon from the carnival in her hair with a look that suggested she had been told it suited her and had chosen to resent the accuracy of that statement.
Logan looked far too pleased with himself to be harmless. Jamie caught his eye once. Logan gave the smallest nod, then turned back to Clara as though the world contained no danger at all. Jamie wished, not for the first time, that he had Logan’s ability to remain impossible in a room.
The moment came during a lull in the music, when the servants had begun circulating wine and the musicians were tuning for the next set.
Lawrence rose with a glass in hand. Jamie felt, rather than saw, the attention of the entire room turn toward him. The marquess smiled, seeming delighted to be the center of attention and raised his glass a little higher. “I must offer my congratulations once more. To the happy couple.”
Catriona dipped her head. Jamie did the same.
Lawrence smiled. “I feel I should speak plainly.”
The room hushed. Jamie felt the change immediately. Lawrence’s gaze moved over the assembled guests and paused on him with gentle seriousness. “The joy of the evening should not be built on omission. I would be failing as a friend and brother-in-law if I did not protect my family.”
The phrasing was careful and apologetic. Too much so. Jamie felt the first cold prickle of understanding.
Lawrence continued in the same precise tone. “The governess in this household, Miss Beauchamp, is in fact Miss Eloise Lawing, daughter of Baron Lawing.”
Silence swept through the room.
Lawrence looked pained to be the bearer of such news. “Her father’s gambling debts ruined six families in the south of England.”
The words landed like a dropped plate. No one breathed for well over a full minute.
Catriona withdrew her hand from Jamie’s arm as though the touch had burned her. She turned slowly toward him. Beautifully composed. A woman discovering betrayal in public. Jamie met her eyes and gave the smallest nod.
She looked at him for one silent second more and then stepped back.
“I had no knowledge of this.” Her voice carried clearly despite its softness.
“None.” Her gaze moved to the crowd and back to Jamie.
“The woman in my fiancé’s household, the woman whose presence I have tolerated as governess to children I have come to care for, is the daughter of Baron Lawing? ”
Jamie said nothing. Despite knowing that Catriona’s disgust and disdain was staged, he was struggling to suppress a severe urge to defend Eloise.
Catriona held his gaze with deliberate coolness. She had him now. Not because she hated him, but because the room expected it. She was doing what was necessary. Jamie held his breath. Her voice did not rise. It did not need to. “I cannot continue in an engagement built on such a grave concealment.”
A murmur went through the room. She looked at him again, and in her face, there was not anger so much as public pain. It was a masterful performance. He hated how much it hurt to watch.
She extended her hand. The ring was in her palm a second later. She placed it into his hand with enormous dignity.
Jamie did not stop her. He did not speak. The look on his face, as far as anyone in the room could tell, was crushed. That was no act. The cause was different from what they believed, but the effect was not.
Catriona’s face remained calm. Her eyes did not warm.
She turned slightly toward the room. “I shall leave for my aunt’s house in the morning.
” She looked over the gathering, the candles, the frozen faces, the musicians who had stopped half a measure too late.
“I apologize for the disturbance to your evening.”
A hush swept through the room, seemingly just as loud as the conversing and laughing had just been.
Lawrence stood at the heart of the disruption with his glass still raised. Satisfaction lingered around his mouth despite the concern he tried to project. He stepped forward just far enough to claim the room.
“Lady Catriona has been deeply distressed by what she has learned. She will require time to recover from the shock.”
His gaze swept across the guests.
“I regret the pain caused this evening. I had hoped the matter might be addressed with greater discretion.”
Jamie’s eyes narrowed. Lawrence had not merely exposed Eloise.
He had positioned himself as the savior of the room.
The friend who had warned them. The man who had brought the truth.
The one who had, in effect, rescued Catriona from a tainted engagement and Jamie from a hidden scandal.
And he had done it in a way that made Jamie look like a man who had engaged one woman while hiding another.
A family man in public. A liar in private.
Jamie understood it all in an instant.
He could not go to Eloise. Not while the room still watched. He passed her without a word. Her face was too composed. The look she gave him struck deeper than anger would have done. She thought he was ashamed of her.
The realization hit him like a blow. Lawrence had revealed something he believed Jamie did not know. He believed Jonathan had handed him a secret capable of shattering them. Jamie had known since the letter on his desk. He had known Eloise was Lawing before anyone else.
He had already decided what it meant to him.
And yet the room did not know that. The room only saw the silence.
She thinks that now that everyone knows and judges me, I want nothing to do with her.
It was suddenly all he could do to not scoop her up in his arms and show her just how proud he would be to show the world how much he loved her.
He altered course so subtly that no one noticed. He took Eloise’s hand. Just once. His fingers tightened around hers. The touch was brief enough to miss by anyone not looking for it. He leaned close enough that only she could hear. “Trust me.”
Her eyes flicked to his. He could feel the room around them still watching, whispering, and turning over what Lawrence had said.
“I misjudged him,” he said under his breath. “I was wrong to think Lawrence’s visit was only manipulation. But that was not all.” He thought he would step in and be the savior once I seemingly ruined both Catriona’s and Eloise’s life.
Her hand remained in his for a second too long. Then, she began to pull away. He let her, but only enough to keep the moment from becoming a clean break.
“If you cannot come back tonight, come back when you are ready.”
Her eyes widened, though he was sure only he had seen it. He released her hand at last. His gaze held hers. “You deserved better from me.”
The apology was incomplete, but honest.
The room was still full of people. The music had not yet resumed. Whispers were moving from one cluster to the next. Lawrence stood in the center of it like a man who had released a knife into the air and was watching to see where it landed.
Jamie straightened. Catriona stood a little apart, pale and collected, already becoming the subject of a hundred private conclusions. It was done. The party had become something else. And Jamie knew, with a cold and hard certainty, that the battle had just changed again.