Chapter 24
“He all but said it, Hugo.” Lily sat in the chair nearest the fire with her hands folded in her lap and her gaze fixed on a point somewhere between the hearth rug and the future she had been building for weeks.
The drawing room had emptied of children and noise, and the evening had settled into the quiet intimacy of family, brandy, and conversations that mattered.
“He told me he wished he had spoken sooner. Before the engagement.” She lifted her chin. “If I were available again, I believe he would propose.”
Hugo’s fingers curled into his palm. The contraction was brief, a single pulse of tension that he released before anyone could notice. He raised his brandy and took a measured sip.
“Then the arrangement has served its purpose.”
“It has.” Lily’s voice was steady.
Her eyes were not.
They found his across the room, and in the space between one breath and the next, something passed between them that had nothing to do with arrangements or purposes or the careful bloodless language of two people pretending to discuss strategy.
He looked away first.
“We can begin the dissolution at the next event,” he said.
“A quiet conversation with the right people. His Grace and Lady Lily have come to a mutual understanding. The engagement was premature. Both parties remain on excellent terms. The ton will talk for a week and then move on to something else.”
“Just like that?” Aunt Margaret swirled her wine. “You build a fiction, dismantle it over canapés, and everyone simply accepts the revised version?”
“Society has a short memory, Lady Oldbarrow. And a shorter attention span.”
“Society has neither. It simply pretends to forget while keeping meticulous records.” Margaret set her glass down. “But I take your point. A clean dissolution is preferable to a messy one.”
Lord Brimsey nodded from his chair. “If Wilfrey is prepared to court Lily properly, then the sooner the engagement ends, the better. We do not want to give the impression of impropriety.”
Lady Brimsey reached for her husband’s hand. “Our Lily will be settled. That is all that matters.”
Hugo’s grip on his glass tightened. Settled. As though Lily was a piece of furniture being placed in a room where she would remain, fixed and ornamental, for the rest of her life.
“Then we are agreed,” Hugo said. His voice carried the pleasant neutrality of a man chairing a meeting about crop yields. “We can announce it at the Hollingsworth soirée on Thursday.”
“Thursday,” Lily repeated the word as though assessing its weight. “That is soon.”
“You wanted this resolved quickly. Wilfrey is interested. The longer we wait, the more opportunity there is for complications.”
Their eyes met again. The word complications hung between them, loaded with everything it did not say. The terrace. The moonlight. The sound of her voice in the dark.
“Thursday it is,” Lily said.
Sophia, who had been sitting beside Edward with the watchful stillness of a woman absorbing every word and filing it for future analysis, opened her mouth to speak.
The drawing room door burst open.
Allen, Edward’s butler, stood in the doorway with a stricken expression.
“Your Grace.” He addressed Edward. “I apologize for the intrusion. Mr. Colborne is here. He says it is urgent.”
Edward rose. “Show him in.”
Mr. Colborne appeared behind the butler before the invitation had fully left Edward’s mouth. He was hatless, his coat buttoned crookedly, his spectacles fogged, and his chest heaving. He carried a leather satchel under one arm and gripped the collar of a second man with the other.
The second man was small, wiry, and terrified.
He wore the rough wool coat of a laborer and the hollow-cheeked look of someone who had not eaten well in some time.
His eyes darted around the drawing room, taking in the silk wallpaper and the crystal decanters and the faces of the aristocrats staring back at him, and the color drained from his face.
“Mr. Colborne.” Edward gestured to a chair. “What has happened?”
“I caught him.” Colborne released the man’s collar and pushed him into the center of the room.
The man stumbled, caught his balance, and stood with his shoulders hunched and his hands clasped in front of him.
“I was working late at the office. I heard a noise at the back entrance. When I went to investigate, I found this man leaving a stack of printed pamphlets on my doorstep.”
Colborne reached into his satchel and pulled out a sheaf of papers. He held them out to Hugo.
Hugo took them. The paper was the same cheap rag stock as the first forgery. The masthead bore Lady Fairhart’s name in the same compressed letterforms, and the rosette was still missing.
But the text beneath it was new.
He read it. The room waited.
It has come to this author’s attention that the Duke of T.
and his intended, Lady L. R., were observed retiring from a ball at Thornwaite Hall under most irregular circumstances.
The pair were absent from the festivities for a considerable period, and upon their return, Lady L.
R. appeared in a state of notable dishevelment.
One must wonder what business a young lady of supposedly good breeding conducts in the dark corners of a Duke’s estate, and whether the engagement that was meant to salvage her reputation has, in fact, provided the very cover under which it was destroyed.
Hugo’s blood ran cold.
He passed the pamphlet to Lily. She read it, and the color left her face in a single, visible tide. Her hand trembled. The paper shook.
“These are already circulating?” Hugo’s voice came out flat. Controlled. Every syllable placed with precision.
“I found a stack of fifty on my doorstep with some money and a note to distribute them,” Colborne said. “If this batch was meant for me, there are others. Dozens, possibly hundreds, already distributed across London.”
Sophia took the pamphlet from Lily’s hands and read it. Her expression hardened into something Hugo had never seen on her face before. Not fear. Fury.
“They were watching us,” Sophia said. “Whoever did this had someone at the house party reporting on Lily and Hugo’s movements.”
“Someone saw them leave the ball,” Edward said. He had moved to stand behind Sophia, with one hand on her shoulder. “Someone close enough to notice and willing to report it.”
Lady Oldbarrow rose from her chair. She crossed to Lily and placed her hand on her niece’s shoulder. Lily did not look up. She stared at the floor with the fixed, blank expression of someone absorbing a blow they had not seen coming.
“The pamphlets must be collected,” Lord Brimsey said. He was on his feet, his fatherly instincts overriding his shock. “Every copy we can find. If we move quickly…”
“It is too late for that.” Hugo’s voice cut through the room. “If Colborne received fifty copies, the rest are already in circulation. Drawing rooms, coffee houses, gentlemen’s clubs. By morning, every household in Mayfair will have read it.”
Silence ensued.
Lady Brimsey pressed her handkerchief to her mouth. Lord Brimsey’s hand found her elbow. Sophia’s jaw was set. Edward’s eyes were dark and calculating.
Hugo turned to the man standing in the center of the room. The man flinched.
“What is your name?” Hugo kept his voice level.
“Rawley, Your Grace.” The man’s voice cracked. “Thomas Rawley.”
“Mr. Rawley.” Hugo kept his voice measured. “You were caught delivering forged scandal sheets to Mr. Colborne’s office. You understand the severity of that.”
“I did not write them, Your Grace. I swear it. I cannot even read.”
“No one is accusing you of writing them. But someone gave them to you, and someone paid you to deliver them, and you are going to tell me who.”
Rawley shook his head. His hands twisted together. “I was just told to leave the papers. That is all I know. I was paid to deliver them, nothing more.”
“Paid by whom?”
“I cannot say, Your Grace. I was told there would be consequences if I talked.”
“There will be consequences if you do not.” Hugo took a step forward. “Who hired you, Mr. Rawley?”
“I cannot say.”
“Cannot, or will not?”
Rawley’s eyes darted toward the door. Hugo stepped forward. He did not raise his voice. He did not clench his fists. He simply closed the distance between himself and the smaller man and stood there, six feet of ducal authority and barely leashed rage, and looked down at him.
“Mr. Rawley.” Hugo’s voice dropped to something barely above a murmur.
“I am the Duke of Thornwaite. The woman whose reputation you have just helped destroy is my fiancée. I have the resources to make your life wonderfully comfortable or exceedingly difficult, and which of those outcomes you experience depends entirely on what you say in the next thirty seconds.”
Rawley’s mouth worked. Sweat beaded along his hairline.
“I have a family, Your Grace. Two little ones. If they find out I talked…”
“If you do not talk, I will ensure that every magistrate in London knows your name and face by morning.” Hugo held the man’s gaze. “If you talk, I will ensure that you and your family are protected. I will find you work, honest work, and no one will know you spoke to me. You have my word.”
“The word of a Duke,” Rawley whispered.
“The word of a man who keeps his promises. Ask anyone in this room.”
Rawley’s shoulders sagged. The fight went out of him all at once, like air from bellows.
“It was a lady,” he said. “She came to me at the Cock and Bull on Drury Lane. Gave me the papers and told me where to leave them. Paid me five pounds.”
“Describe her.”
“Tall. Dark hair. Well-dressed, too well for that part of town. She had a way about her, like she was used to giving orders and having them followed.”
Hugo’s jaw tightened. “Would you recognize her if you saw her again?”
“I would, Your Grace. I am not likely to forget. She looked at me like I was something she had scraped off her shoe.”
Hugo glanced at Edward. Edward’s expression confirmed what Hugo already suspected.
“Did she give you a name?” Hugo asked.
Rawley swallowed. “She did not give one. But the man who pointed me to her, the one who set up the meeting, he called her Lady Stapleton.”
The name landed in the room like a stone dropped into still water.
Hugo stood motionless. The drawing room, the faces, the flickering candlelight, all of it sharpened into focus around a single point of clarity that had been gathering for weeks.
The Continental connections. The access to the Fenwick guest list. The careful positioning of Beatrice beside Wilfrey at every opportunity.
The cool, appraising gaze that swept every room she entered, cataloging weaknesses, measuring distances, filing away information to be weaponized at the precise moment it would cause maximum damage.
He turned to Lily.
She looked up at him, and the shock in her green eyes had already hardened into something fiercer.