Page 62 of Caught by the Forbidden Duke
“Helena.” Lady Rosenhall turned, and her voice dropped back into the ordinary business of a chaperone, as though she had decided, for tonight, that the argument was concluded. “Lady Annabelle’s hair has come down on one side, and her bodice has slipped at the shoulder. See to both before we go back through that door, because I will not have her walk past Lady Harcroft looking like exactly what she is at this moment.”
Helena’s hands were already at Annabelle’s hair, quick and gentle, finding the loosened pins and setting them again with the ease of a friend who had dressed her for half a season of balls and knew every pin by feel.
“Hold still,” she murmured, not unkindly, working one free and resetting it higher. Her fingers brushed Annabelle’s temple, light and steadying. “I’m sorry,” she said, so quietly it barely carried beyond the two of them. “I tried to slow her down. I told her you’d only stepped out for air, and she didn’t believe a word of it, and I don’t think she believed me either, walking out here so fast.”
“I know,” Annabelle said. “I-It’s all right.”
She looked past Helena’s shoulder at Dominic while her friend worked. He was watching her, his hands still at his sides, his coat still open at the throat where her fingers had been not ten minutes before, and he said nothing at all. He did not look away from her, and he did not come any closer either, and Annabelle understood, watching him hold that exact distance, that he had nothing left to say tonight that could change what had already been decided for both of them.
“That will do,” Lady Rosenhall said, once the last pin was set and the shoulder of Annabelle’s gown restored to its proper line. “Come. Both of you. Now.”
They had gone perhaps ten steps along the path toward the house before Dominic’s voice came after them.
“Lady Rosenhall.” He had followed at a distance that was not quite proper and not quite improper either, the distance of a man who knew exactly how far he was permitted to stand and had placed himself one pace beyond it regardless. “A moment.”
Lady Rosenhall stopped without turning fully around, one hand still wrapped around Annabelle’s wrist where she had taken hold of it somewhere between the bench and the path. “You have had a great many moments this evening, Your Grace. I think you have had rather more than your share of them.”
“I am asking you to consider what forcing this does to her. A marriage built on a chaperone’s threat and a single evening’smistake is not a kindness to anyone, least of all to Annabelle, and I would have thought her happiness mattered to you as much as her reputation.”
“Both matter to me, Your Grace, which is exactly why I am not prepared to leave either of them to your discretion.” Lady Rosenhall’s hand found the door frame and rested there, as though she required the support of it more than she would ever admit aloud. “I am not in the business of kindness tonight. I am in the business of what remains of her future, which is considerably narrower now than it was an hour ago, and which I intend to protect by whatever means are available to me, your objections notwithstanding.”
And before Dominic could respond, Lady Rosenhall dragged her back inside the house.
Chapter Eighteen
“Don’t write to him.” Annabelle had Lady Rosenhall’s wrist before the older woman had crossed half the entrance hall of Fairmont House. “Please. Give me until morning, at least, to think what’s to be done.”
“There is nothing left to think on, Annabelle, and I have already written it.” Lady Rosenhall did not slow.
A footman took her cloak without being asked; she handed it off without looking at him, her attention fixed somewhere past Annabelle’s shoulder, on the staircase, on the rest of the night she had already decided how to spend. “The letter went out by express an hour ago, while you were still upstairs having your hair put right. It will reach Fairmont Hall tomorrow.”
“You wrote it before we’d even left Lord Harcroft’s.” Annabelle heard her own voice come out thin and hated it. “Before you’d so much as asked me what I wished.”
“I did not require your wishes to know what your brother is owed.” Lady Rosenhall finally turned, and the candlelight from the wall sconce found every line in her face that the evening had put there. “He left you in my keeping, Annabelle. Not in your own. That was the arrangement he made with me, and I intend to honor it whether or not it is convenient to you tonight.”
“Mama.” Helena had come up behind them, still in her gloves, her bonnet ribbons untied and trailing. “You might at least have waited. Given Annabelle the chance to write to him herself, in her own words, rather than have him learn it from a stranger’s hand on the mail coach.”
“My hand is not a stranger’s. He has known my hand since he was a boy in short coats.” Lady Rosenhall’s voice gentled by exactly enough to show Helena she had heard her, and no further. “I will not apologize for doing the thing I was brought into this house to do. If I had waited for permission from either of you, I should have waited until it no longer mattered, and that is precisely how reputations finish themselves, my dears—by women who meant to act tomorrow.”
She went up the stairs without another word, one hand on the rail, her back straighter than Annabelle had seen it all evening.
Helena watched her go, then looked at Annabelle, and didn’t say anything at all for a moment, which was somehow worse than if she had.
“Come and sit,” she said instead, and steered Annabelle by the elbow into the small parlor off the hall, the one with the good fireand the worn cushions, because the formal drawing room would have meant facing a dozen society portraits and Annabelle did not think she could bear being looked at by anyone tonight, painted or otherwise.
Newton was curled on the window seat when they came in, and he opened one eye, judged the hour and the company unworthy of further attention, and went back to sleep. Annabelle sat beside him anyway and put a hand on his flank, and the cat’s small, steady breathing under her palm was the only thing in the room that felt unchanged.
“He won’t marry me,” she said. “You heard him say it yourself, in the garden. And now Lucien will have it from Lady Rosenhall before he has it from me, and he will come back from Fairmont believing the worst of all of it, and there is no version of what happens next that does not end with him calling out a duke.”
She pressed her palm harder against Newton’s side until the cat shifted, unimpressed, and resettled.
“I have ruined every single one of us in one evening. You, for being seen leaving with me. Lady Rosenhall, for failing to prevent it. Lucien, who will be made to defend a sister who didn’t ask to be defended and won’t thank him for trying.”
Her throat had gone tight, and she made herself say the rest of it anyway, because saying it seemed better than letting it sit unsaid in her chest.
“I was an idiot. I am an idiot. What have I done, Helena?”
“Darling,” Helena said, settling beside her, taking Annabelle’s free hand in both of hers. “I don’t think you committed the crime my mother is making it out to be.” She squeezed once, firm. “And you have not ruined me.”
