Chapter 14
“The banns have been read.” Lady Brimsey set down her teacup and folded her hands in her lap with the quiet gravity of a woman delivering news she had been turning over in her mind all morning.
The breakfast room at Brimsey House was bright with June sunlight, and the scent of toast and marmalade hung in the warm air.
Lily looked up from her plate. “I beg your pardon?”
“The banns. Three Sundays now. The rector at St. George’s read them again yesterday.” Lady Brimsey’s gaze held something complicated. Hope and worry and the tenderness of a mother watching her daughter walk a path she could not follow. “The congregation expects a wedding, Lily.”
The toast in Lily’s hand suddenly felt like it weighed several pounds. She set it down.
Three Sundays. The banns had been read three times, which meant that in the eyes of the Church of England and everyone who attended St. George’s, Hanover Square, the Duke of Thornwaite and Lady Lily Readthorpe were authorized to marry.
The fiction had gained the weight of sacrament, and Lily was not sure when that had happened or how she had failed to notice.
“The banns are part of the arrangement, Mama. They had to be read to make the engagement appear genuine.”
“I understand that.” Lady Brimsey reached across the table and covered Lily’s hand with her own. “I simply want you to know that your father and I will support whatever decision you make. Whether the engagement ends as planned, or whether it becomes something else.”
“It will end as planned.”
Lady Brimsey squeezed her hand and said nothing further, which was, in its way, a response.
Lord Brimsey appeared in the doorway with his newspaper tucked under his arm and a piece of toast already in his mouth.
He surveyed the scene with the practiced instinct of a man who had learned to identify emotional conversations from across a room and to navigate them with the careful neutrality of a diplomat crossing hostile territory.
“Good morning,” he said through the toast.
“Good morning, Papa.”
He kissed the top of Lily’s head, squeezed his wife’s shoulder, and settled into his chair with the newspaper raised like a fortification.
Two days later, a parcel arrived at Brimsey House.
Lily found it on her bed when she returned from an afternoon walk with Aunt Margaret, who had spent the entire outing cataloging the shortcomings of every gentleman they passed on the street and comparing each one unfavorably to the late Marquess of Oldbarrow, who had apparently been the last man in England worth marrying.
The parcel was wrapped in cream paper and tied with a dark blue ribbon.
Inside, nestled in layers of tissue, lay three gowns.
The first was a rich burgundy velvet with a fitted bodice and sleeves that left the shoulders bare.
The second was ivory muslin, deceptively simple in its cut, with a neckline that dipped lower than anything Lily currently owned.
The third was a deep plum silk with a sash that cinched at the natural waist and fell in a waterfall of fabric that would move with every step.
A folded note rested on top.
For the house party. Wear them with your hair looser than you usually do. Let a few locks fall free around your face. You have a habit of pinning everything back as though you are preparing for battle.
Let the armor down. Just this once.
P.S. You have lovely collarbones. It would be a crime to keep hiding them.
— H.
Lily read the note three times. Her cheeks burned with each pass.
She held the burgundy velvet up to her reflection in the mirror. The color was striking against her skin, warm and rich, and the cut would follow the lines of her body in ways that made her stomach tighten. She reached up and pulled a pin from her hair. A curl fell against her cheek.
She stared at the woman in the mirror. She looked like someone she did not entirely recognize. Someone softer. Someone who might let a man see her collarbones and not feel as though she had surrendered something vital.
She tucked the curl behind her ear, set the gown down, and folded the note into the back of her journal where no one would find it.
She did not throw it away.
The investigation had stalled, and Lily could see the frustration in Hugo’s posture when she and Sophia arrived at the Heatherwell study three evenings later.
Edward sat behind his desk with a stack of papers and a glass of brandy, and Hugo stood at the window with his arms crossed and his jaw set in the way that meant he had received news he did not like.
“The printshop in Leipzig has been identified,” Edward said, spreading a letter across his desk. “One of my men traced the ink to a small operation run by a man named Brauer. But when his contacts arrived, the shop had been closed. Emptied overnight. No forwarding address. No records.”
“Someone warned them,” Hugo said without turning from the window.
“It appears so.” Edward rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Which means whoever commissioned the forgery has enough reach to monitor the investigation and enough resources to shut down a printshop on the Continent at short notice.”
Sophia sat beside Lily on the settee, her expression carrying the focused calm she wore when she was thinking several moves ahead. “Mr. Colborne has not received any further forgeries. Whoever did this has gone quiet.”
“Quiet is not the same as finished,” Hugo said. He turned from the window, and his gaze found Lily. Something softened behind the frustration, a quick, private reassurance meant only for her. “They will try again.”
“Then we need to be ready,” Lily said.
Hugo held her gaze for a beat. Then he nodded. “We will be.”
The certainty in his voice settled over her like a hand on her shoulder.
She believed him. She was not sure when she had started believing him, but the trust had taken root somewhere between the first scandal sheet and this moment, growing quietly in the spaces between their arguments and their lessons and their charged, complicated silences.
Edward poured brandy for Hugo and tea for Sophia and Lily, and they spent the next hour reviewing what they knew.
“The forgery required knowledge of my pen name, access to a Continental printshop, and a reason to target Lily,” Sophia said. “The first alone narrows our field to fewer than a dozen people.”
“What about motive?” Hugo leaned against the mantel. “Who benefits from damaging Lily’s reputation?”
“The pamphlet appeared the same evening Wilfrey showed Lily marked attention,” Edward said. “Someone may have wanted to drive him away.”
“Miss Graves has been circling Wilfrey all Season,” Sophia offered. “Her mother is ambitious enough.”
“Mrs. Graves can barely organize a dinner party,” Hugo said. “She does not have the reach to commission a Continental forgery.”
“What about Lady Stapleton?” Edward asked. “Her daughter has been positioned near Wilfrey at every event. And the Stapletons have business ties on the Continent.”
Hugo shook his head. “Lady Stapleton is calculating, but this would be extreme, even for her. Forging a scandal sheet to clear the field for a daughter’s courtship? The risk far outweighs the reward.”
“Then we are no closer than we were,” Lily said.
“We watch,” Sophia said. “If whoever did this moves again, they will make a mistake. They always do.”
The certainty in her sister’s voice settled over Lily, but it was Hugo’s gaze that steadied her. He held it for a beat, and the quiet reassurance in his eyes carried more weight than any strategy.
The morning of the house party dawned gray and soft.
Lily stood in front of her mirror in the ivory muslin gown.
The fabric was lighter than she was accustomed to, moving against her skin with every breath.
The neckline revealed the line of her throat and the curves of her collarbones in a way that felt exposed and elegant in equal measure.
Her lady’s maid had pulled most of her hair into a loose arrangement, but she left two curls free at her temples, the way Hugo’s note had instructed.
She turned to examine herself from the side. The gown followed her figure with a fidelity that her usual wardrobe never attempted. She looked like herself, but a version of herself that had been kept behind a locked door and was only now being allowed into the light.
“You look beautiful, darling.”
Lady Brimsey stood in the doorway with tears in her eyes, because Lady Brimsey cried at beautiful things the way other people sneezed at dust, involuntarily and without warning.
“Thank you, Mama.”
“The Duke has excellent taste.” Lady Brimsey crossed the room and adjusted a curl at Lily’s temple with the gentle precision of a woman who had been adjusting her daughter’s hair since before she could walk.
“Your father and I will not be joining you at the house party, as you know. Aunt Margaret will be your chaperone.”
“I know.”
“Lily.” Lady Brimsey held her daughter’s face between her hands. “Be careful. Not because I do not trust the Duke. Because I do not trust feelings that arrive faster than you expect them to.”
Lily covered her mother’s hands with her own. “I will be careful.”
She meant it. She always meant it.
The carriage arrived at ten. Aunt Margaret was already inside, dressed in a traveling pelisse of deep gray and an expression of weary tolerance that suggested she had accepted this excursion as one accepts an unpleasant but necessary medical procedure.
“If I am to spend three days in the countryside with a Duke, a collection of social climbers, and a man who presses ferns,” Margaret said as Lily climbed in, “I will require a great deal of wine.”
Lily settled onto the seat opposite and tucked her skirts around her legs. The carriage lurched forward, and London fell away behind them. Soon, the crowded streets gave way to greener lanes and wider skies.
Somewhere ahead of them, Thornwaite Hall was waiting.