Chapter 1 #2
“Frederick,” she replied, stopping to suppress her rising nausea, “has gone to Gretna Green… with Lady Seraphina Whitmore.”
She had to say all of it at once. She would not have survived a break in the words.
The priest shifted, his presence coming over her like a shadow. Her aunt made a sound she had never heard her make before. Aunt Violet was not looking at Aurelia then with an expression of fury. She was looking at the Duke of Sandacre.
Aurelia wanted to look and find some reassurance in him, but she could not bear the sight of him – different, yes, but too close to Frederick still – and continued looking down at the sheet for want of something to do instead of screaming.
Inside the church, the murmuring had become something else entirely.
It was the low collective sound of the scandal sheet’s contents being repeated.
Someone said a name – it was her own, Aurelia realised after-the-fact – and it rippled through the room like a stone in water, outward in rings.
The news was travelling and would not stop.
Outside the church, it would already have begun, while she waited there stupidly in her bridal gown for a groom who never had any intention of arriving, who had run off with another woman.
She understood now that was why the servant had been sent. Frederick hadn’t wanted to inform her, he had wanted to give the appearance of having informed her, so that no one could say she had not been told, that she could not have known better than to go to St. George’s that morning.
The world spun. She thought at first that she had imagined the whitish light as it struck her face, some trick of her deceived and failing mind.
But it was not a trick. The church doors were open and light poured in.
And the noise – good God that noise of people and Mayfair town outside – was real too.
Figures were moving toward the exit, and if not moving then standing or sitting in the pews and talking.
Aurelia took a step back, feeling faint.
She did not speak, not even when she stumbled over the altar step and collided with the priest. Not when Violet grabbed her arm and shook her gently, saying her name over and over as if Aurelia were dying.
Not when she saw the handsome Duke of Sandacre stir from the corner of her eye and felt more than shame.
She thought absurdly of Frederick’s kind brown eyes as they looked through her like she was not real, and she almost laughed.
It would have been worse than crying, to laugh, so she did not do that either.
And then she thought of her parents, and for a moment she was glad they were dead so they did not have to witness her fall.
She was falling fast in esteem, in space. Falling, and could not stop falling.
It took only minutes for the disorder his brother had caused to find its full expression.
Miss Knowles hit the ground softly, the squat ungainly priest holding her beneath the shoulders, cradling her against him and saying a prayer as her aunt fanned her with the same scandal sheet that had caused her to faint.
Evander looked around as he rose, pushing past his cousins to exit the pews, increasingly irritated by their slowness and their hands pawing at him.
Guests stood in loose clusters, a plague on the church floor.
The organ made a brief attempt to resume before someone thought better of it, though maybe that had been an accident.
A woman near the back was being attended to with smelling salts, either from genuine distress or to distract from Miss Knowles’s fall – who could say?
Not Evander, no, not at all. He was still processing what had been read aloud by his younger brother’s bride, moving on instinct toward the woman who Freddy had cast aside like an ill-fitting coat.
Beneath his shock, something dark and familial stirred within him that he was not yet ready to consider. He wished he had stayed in the country. Not Kent, which Freddy preferred, but Norfolk. He wished he were not here.
A hand appeared at his elbow now that he had disentangled himself from his family. It was one of his female cousins, saying she would fetch a doctor for Miss Knowles post-haste, asking if she could take the carriage. Yes, he was saying in daze, and take Granny home too – she should not see this.
Then came a soft, “Your Grace,” cutting through the fog of his thoughts.
It was the worried voice of that maternal aunt and guardian, Mrs. Hartwell, glancing up at him as she fanned her niece. Time moved strangely. He could have sworn he had just been elsewhere. Now he was before them at the altar, choking on the smell of flowers and nervous sweat from the priest.
Evander crouched beside the bride. Miss Knowles was deathly pale.
Her eyes were half open, and they had rolled into the back of her head.
What a morbid but beautiful sight. She reminded him terribly of a painting he had acquired in Paris years ago and had planned to give to Seraphina’s parents after they were wed.
A small detail at present, he thought mirthlessly, staring down at the unconscious young woman while his own bride was halfway across the country.
The aunt was asking him what he intended to do, and Evander started. Did she mean about the failed wedding or about the niece lying on the ground? He shook his head and tapped Miss Knowles lightly on the face. She did not stir.
“They are bringing a doctor,” Evander said, checking his cousin had gone, and she had. Miss Knowles’s skin was cool and soft against his hand, and it sent a chill through him – not of fear, not exactly.
“Not about the doctor,” Mrs. Hartwell said, her eyes widening. “What about your brother? What about Lord Canterbury? And your betrothed, Lord Salsburgh’s girl…”
Evander sucked a breath through his teeth, steadying himself. “Now is hardly the time for that.”