Chapter 2 #2
And the face looked at him now from her seat. From it, he heard, “So it’s true. You have come, Your Grace.”
She was still in her wedding gown. The wrongness of it struck him, a woman still dressed for something that had not happened and never would.
Her hair was still pinned up but somewhat undone.
Her gloves were gone. Her eyes were red.
She was very beautiful but downtrodden. It was like he had never seen her before in his life.
Mrs. Hartwell appeared in his periphery, sending the staff away discretely.
“Your Grace,” she said, visibly stunned to see him but trying to conceal her shock.
“How good of you to visit. Pray, come and sit with us. We have just,” here she choked on her words, “called for tea. I heard you take yours with milk rather than cream. Do you like fruitcake? I’m afraid that’s all we have… ”
She was a compact woman of perhaps fifty, with hair that once had been a shade of brown like her niece’s but was now turning grey. She looked at him extensively, especially when she thought his attention was elsewhere.
But it was Miss Knowles who concerned him most, sitting stony-faced, not even bothering to rise to greet him. Did she blame him, somehow, for what had happened?
He waited, and he was a little surprised when Miss Knowles said, “Well then, why have you come?”
“Aurelia,” her aunt said in an admonishing tone. “What are you doing?”
She gestured toward Evander. “I am asking the Duke of Sandacre why he has come, obviously – unless you want to keep talking about milk.”
“Asking is not a crime,” he said quickly but firmly, not wanting to encourage Miss Knowles further but showing some compassion. The aunt sat, leaving a free space beside the niece. He remained standing. “You are feeling better, I take it.”
Her resolve faltered. She blinked quickly, glanced down. “I am still conscious, which is an improvement on my earlier state.”
“Quite. You will need to maintain consciousness for what will follow.”
“I am made of sterner stuff than you think,” Miss Knowles said with a weak smile. “I have never fainted in my life before today. Not even when I have felt so afraid I could not feel my hands. To have succumbed this morning, before all those people, shames me more than… more than, well…”
When she trailed off, Evander felt his heart clench.
He stepped forward, placing a hand on the back of the settee she occupied.
This close, he could see how young she was.
It was a foolish thing to think. She was a year older than Frederick, for heaven’s sake.
Only four years younger than Evander. But her face had not matured fully yet.
Her cheeks were full and her nose flicked slightly upward.
Maybe she would look like that for ever.
It was not displeasing. Not in the slightest.
But it was obviously not, he thought privately, the type of beauty preferred by his brother.
“You need not speak of shame, dearest,” the aunt cut in gently, leaning forward.
She began serving tea, freckled hands around the teapot.
“What occurred today would have floored even the sturdiest of individuals.” She paused, and addressed Evander.
“My niece was left at the altar, Your Grace, by your brother, on her wedding day. We were of course delighted by the match in the first place, but things have changed indelibly now. You must forgive her fragility this morning and not hold it against her.”
“That had not been my intention”, he clarified. “And if I have given the impression by coming here that I am cross with Miss Knowles, then I have been misunderstood. I departed from Sandacre House almost as quickly as I arrived. A search is underway.”
“For Fred–” Miss Knowles shifted eagerly in her seat, then corrected herself. “For Lord Canterbury, you mean?”
“Not his person, not physically,” Evander replied. “I doubt we shall be so lucky as to find him hiding in a larder with Lady Seraphina in his lap.”
“Then what?”
“We are hoping to glean something from his belongings, to understand where he has gone, or where he intends to go once they have eloped. I have sent someone to the Whitmore house to enquire about my errant betrothed – though I am not confident we will find much there. Lady Seraphina was, and this has become more salient than ever today, a private woman.”
Miss Knowles furrowed her brow. “How can you make jokes about her at a time like this? In your place, I would be furious at Lady Seraphina.”
He had not realised that was how he ought to feel.
He was irritated by the new demands of the situation, discomfitted by what had happened, worried for Frederick, wherever he had gone.
But no, he was not furious at Seraphina.
He was not pleased with her – wished she had thought twice before bringing down such embarrassment on his family and had just rejected him in the first place, if this was how she felt all along, if she preferred his brother.
But Evander had never yearned to marry her in the first place.
The marriage, which would now not come to be, could just as easily become another, with another woman.
Seraphina was pleasant enough, abscondence aside.
But they had not made a robust match to say the least. His father, before his death, had suggested Salsburgh’s girl because he liked their family and trusted her breeding.
Evander had accepted because… well, why not?
Marriage was the least of his concerns. Better to get it over with.
“It is not your place to question His Grace’s feelings in this difficult moment,” the aunt corrected again, putting three tea cups into a row on the mahogany table.
She took her own, topped it with cream, and paused right before sipping.
“And yet… one of us must ask how this was permitted to happen, and what will happen next. A search is a promising start. But what more?”
He had some ideas. But he considered his next words a moment, doubting he would ever be able to speak candidly with Miss Knowles while her aunt occupied the same room, determined to cut in and speak for her niece at every opportunity.
He frowned, staring through the windows onto a small terraced garden.
How he wished he were outside, elsewhere.
“In truth, I have come to speak with Miss Knowles with a task in mind,” he said to her aunt. “But I had hoped to perform the task privately, if you are willing to give us a moment alone.”
Mrs. Hartwell stiffened, and the cloudy tea rippled in her cup. “That is… somewhat irregular.”
“As has been much of the day,” he agreed.
“She is too weak for the out-of-doors.”
A beat of silence, and then, from Miss Knowles, “I certainly am not.”
“My gaze wandered to the gardens, but I was not suggesting taking Miss Knowles on a walk.” Neither woman said anything, so he continued. “If you would leave us a moment, and leave the door ajar… My brother inherited the sum of our family’s roguishness. I will not harm a hair on your niece’s head.”
Slowly, Miss Knowles rose, clasping her hands before her.
Mrs. Hartwell looked at Evander, then at her niece.
Something passed between them, some communication between women he was not privy to.
And then Mrs. Hartwell looked back at him with the expression of a woman making a concession she found personally offensive, and she nodded.
She took her teacup with her when she left.
Alone, Evander turned to face Aurelia fully. He waved for her to sit again and took her aunt’s seat, finding it warm.
Up close, the redness around her eyes was clearer. She met his gaze without flinching, not bothering to pretend that she was fine. And he did not pretend that he had not noticed. He found he respected that candour considerably.
“I will be brief, because I think brevity is what this moment requires.” He held her gaze. “I am here to repair the damage caused by your betrothed. But we must act quickly, and so I will be rough and boorish with you and say what must be said without sugarcoating my words. Do you understand me?”
She blinked, glancing at the open door, behind which her aunt was most definitely eavesdropping. She dropped her voice as though they would not be heard, “I beg your pardon?”
“Your reception of me. These matters. Your reputation.”
He feared he was making things worse. Evander did not consider himself a particularly eloquent man.
He tolerated a book occasionally and attended to his correspondence with the discipline of a mercenary rather than an artist. But he had never fumbled his words quite like this.
What was about this situation, this woman, who made this all so damnably difficult?
"My reputation?" she repeated, and the word came out with a flatness that was not quite bitter, but was close. "Yes. I imagine it is in a rather poor state. Especially in your eyes."
“Why do you think that?”
“I was not sufficient enough to convince your brother to remain instead of running away with your bride.”
Evander paused, not sure whether to feel impressed by her assessment of the situation or offended. “You have made a great deal of assumptions about me this morning, Miss Knowles. I had not realised we had grown close enough for you to measure my character so carefully and speak on my behalf.”
“We would have been family.”
“Would have been, yes.”
“And I know how I feel,” she said softly, picking absently at her fingernails. “It is only natural to assume that you would feel the same. Though perhaps…”
“What?”
She shook her head, but he guessed what she had wanted to say: perhaps he felt nothing at all.
“My brother is gone, Miss Knowles. What concerns me most is not my runaway bride and her selected partner but the safety of them both. But at present, the precariousness of their situation cannot be helped by me. In addition to the search here in London, I have sent riders after them. I have asked these riders to follow the main roads up to Scotland in hopes of finding them.”
“To stop the wedding?”
He did not answer this.
“That was not a criticism,” she argued meekly.
“No? Then perhaps I was correct, and we are not close, and I misunderstand you as much as you misunderstand me.”
Despite the seriousness of recent events, he had to admit to taking a strange satisfaction in sparring with Miss Knowles.
Maybe the jilting had emboldened her. He had not remembered her speaking her mind so freely before.
Frederick had never mentioned it. Then again, Frederick had said little about Miss Knowles beyond finding her suitable for marriage and finding her talent for music impressive.
She sighed and straightened, meeting his eye confidently. “You were saying… About my reputation…”
Evander nodded. “That can be recovered, and I needn’t send a rider. But only if we act now, before things can evolve – dissolve – further."
He looked at her, wondered fleetingly whether she would faint again once he said what he had come to say. He had steeled himself on the drive over from Sandacre House. He had made the decision the moment he had left the church without a sister-in-law, without a fiancé, without a brother.
“I intend to marry you myself.”