Chapter 2 #3
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.”