Page 9 of Two Blessings For His Duchess
Seraphina paused her pacing, though she looked entirely unconvinced.
“I truly do not see what the grand issue is,” Leonora said from the chaise lounge, completely unbothered. “Sure, lots of people are currently talking about the fact that Effie was caught outside the Duke of Greymoor’s chambers. But if we simply give it a bit of time, people will forget all about it and move on to the next big scandal. They always do.”
“That is not how the world works, Leonora, and you know it!” Seraphina retorted sharply, turning on her. “Thetonnever forgets a disgrace like this. There is absolutely nothing we can do to scrub it clean. By this afternoon, people will be avoiding us like the plague. We will be completely isolated.”
“They might be talking...” Emily interrupted smoothly, trying to anchor the room before the sisters could descend into a shouting match, “...but my husband, Theodore, is already out working on laying the groundwork to handle the rumors. He is already working on delaying the scandal sheets.”
While Emily offered her assurances, Leonora stood up from the chaise lounge. She drifted across the room to Euphemia’s side. She reached down, gently patting Euphemia’s arm.
“Effie, you have not eaten a single thing since you arrived yesterday,” Leonora said softly, her charming smile entirely intact as she extended the half-eaten piece of marmalade toast in her hand. “You cannot face a social execution on an empty stomach. Eat something.”
It was typical behavior for Leonora, the youngest of the three Byron sisters. While all three girls had grown up under the strict, intellectual roof of Lady Byron, Leonora was the one who loved books the absolute most. She swallowed romances and histories whole, yet the literature had cured her of any desire to participate in them. Leonora did not believe in love, she did not believe in marriage, and she had zero intention of ever letting a man dictate her life. She was incredibly charming, beautiful, and witty, but beneath that pleasant exterior lay a brilliant mind that was exceptionally difficult to trust. She viewed the marriage mart as a ridiculous game she had no interest in playing.
Seraphina, on the other hand, was a different creature entirely. As the oldest of the Byron sisters, she was much stricter and more structured. She took heavily after Lady Byron herself.She was confident, sharp-tongued, and fiercely protective of the family unit. Seraphina was an intellectual bookworm in her own right, but her refusal to marry came from a completely different place than Leonora’s.
The three of them were a strange collective. Even Euphemia had no doubt about it. They called themselves the Byron sisters, which confused people at first and then made sense when explained. They had been taken in by Lady Byron when they were young, at different ages but similar circumstances, with different surnames. The name was not legal. It was not formal. It was simply what they were. Sisters… raised by Lady Byron.
It began with their fathers, three friends who entered a business partnership that collapsed in the dead of winter. On the night the financial ruin became undeniable, the three men went out together to escape the wreckage, or perhaps simply to breathe. They stayed out too long. On the coldest night of that unforgiving winter, they froze to death.
As each household crumbled, Lady Byron took the girls in one by one. She gave them her name completely, determined that tragedy would not define them.
The Byron sisters.
Euphemia, sitting dead in the middle as the second daughter, had always been the pragmatist, the one who tried to balance Seraphina’s rigid standards with Leonora’s cynical detachment. Yet, ironically, Euphemia was the only one who believed in love among them. She was the only sister who had actually wantedthe fairy tale, the true partnership, the grand romance written in the stars. But after the public humiliation of being left at the altar by Finch, and now this current disaster, she had started to lose hope too.
Now, she was simply the sister who was ruined.
Euphemia looked from Leonora’s offered toast up to Emily’s face, and sighed. “I have no idea what to do,” she admitted.
She took the toast from Leonora and took a small bite. “I owe you both an apology,” she said.
“You do not,” said Leonora immediately.
“I do. I brought you here, I have made everything worse and —”
“Euphemia.” Emily’s voice stern. “We are not doing that today. Today we are solving the immediate problem.” She looked around at all three of them. “Are we agreed that we are solving the immediate problem?”
Euphemia sighed. “I don’t think there is any way we can come back from this, Emily.”
“There are always ways to save a situation,” Emily insisted, sitting up. “We have options. Theodore can ensure the newspapers print nothing. We can bury the story entirely by keeping you out of the public eye for a few weeks, or we couldperhaps create a distraction, a larger scandal involving someone else.”
“None of that will work,” Seraphina interjected. “The only definitive way to save this situation is if Euphemia marries the Duke.”
The room went completely silent. Leonora paused, her hand hovering near her mouth.
Euphemia looked at Seraphina as if her sister had lost her mind. Marry him? Marry the arrogant, cold, deeply selfish man? She knew she would never marry him. The very idea was absurd.
“No.” She said and shook her head. “Absolutely not.”
“Think about what it would mean,” Seraphina pressed. “If you were to marry the Duke of Greymoor, the story changes entirely. No one spreads rumors about a duchess. No one whispers about a woman who has secured one of the most prominent titles in England. What people saw yesterday morning becomes, in retrospect, two people who were already developing an attachment. It becomes... romance, I think. It becomes exactly the kind of story thetonloves to tell, and they will tell it gladly, because it is a far better story than the alternative.”
Emily bit her lower lip. “She is not wrong, Effie,” she said, slowly, as though the words were being extracted from her against her better judgement.
“She is completely wrong,” said Euphemia.
“Euphemia, he is a duke,” Seraphina added. “A very wealthy one, and quite handsome from what I hear. There are worse fates.”
“Stop,” Euphemia said. “I am not marrying him. Besides, he already dislikes me, and he made it perfectly clear that he guards his bachelorhood like a fortress. He would never offer for me, and I certainly will not beg him to save my reputation with a ring. What are we even talking about? He is a stranger. I met him just yesterday.”
