Page 30 of A Mismatch Made in London

There was a pause in which he heard a sniff.

“Be a good girl, and send me word if you wish to leave here.”

“Yes, Aunt.” Another sniff.

“Don’t sniff. It’s bad manners.”

“Aunt, please, will you tell Mrs. Roberts that nothing happened between Juliet and Mr. Fairweather? The gossip—”

“I told her in no uncertain terms that she was not to speak a word of it to anyone, and if I discovered that she had, I would never speak to her again. Depend upon it, she will keep it quiet, or she will never receive another invitation from me or my circle.”

“Thank you.”

“But I cannot say how many other people may have seen them together and may talk.”

A servant’s voice was heard nearby, coming closer.

Mrs. Kendall quickly took her leave, whispering something he couldn’t hear. Then Amelia Moore went past the doorway with a handkerchief pressed to her face.

His blood was still boiling, but he needed to focus his efforts on getting his sister married. Someone with the means to support her, someone who wouldn’t mistreat her. That was what they needed. He only hoped Shelley wouldn’t hear of this little scandal, or if he did, wouldn’t be put off by it. After all, he couldn’t imagine finding anyone else whose character he trusted so completely.

And then there was Miss Moore. Perhaps he’d been unjust to her and wrong about her wanting to use Juliet to get to him. Just now she’d been loyal to Juliet while endangering her relationship with her influential aunt. She seemed as kind and unselfish as Juliet said she was.

But then again, perhaps she only begged to stay with Juliet because Miss Moore had no other friends in London.

He was beginning to form a plan. At first it had seemed too radical and too much of a risk, should Juliet discover what he’d done. Now he saw that things were as bad as he’d feared. He needed to get Juliet married. He clearly couldn’t live his own life until she did. But if Juliet had a good, upstanding gentleman by her side to keep her from being preyed upon by men like that Fairweather...

Jeremy would talk to Shelley, ask him to meet them somewhere, as if by chance, and Shelley would take it from there. Their conversation on the trip to Kent made him think Shelley would be amenable. The best part of their plan was that Shelley had a friend, Lord Gotthurst, who Shelley thought would be amenable to escorting Miss Moore—ifshe was pretty. He had assured Shelley that Miss Moore was very pretty.

“Lord Gotthurst is a good sort of fellow, if a bit shallow in his insistence on outward beauty.”

“Perfect,” Jeremy said. “I don’t think he will have a problem with Miss Moore’s outward appearance.”

It seemed a good plan. Everyone would get what they wanted. Juliet would get a husband, and Jeremy would see his sister find her happiness. Then he could see about finding his own happiness. And Miss Moore would at least be occupied, if she did not find her own happiness.

Perhaps he had been unjust to her. Either way, he was grateful for her loyalty in standing by Juliet.

“Where are you going?”

Juliet and I looked up to see Jeremy hovering above us on the stairs.

“We were going for a walk,” Juliet said.

“I think you should stay in the house.” He came down the stairs until he was standing beside Juliet.

“Why?”

“Because of what happened, because people may talk about seeing you riding alone with Fairweather at night, and the less they see you, the less they are apt to talk, especially if they think it may not have been you.”

Juliet stared up at him, open-mouthed.

He was right, although I didn’t want to say it. People had seen her—obviously, since Mrs. Kendall had already heard about it—and they might either forget about it or decide they had been mistaken if they heard little or nothing about it for a while. But the way Jeremy was hovering, telling her not to even go for a walk...

“Do you expect Amelia and me to just sit in the house with the curtains drawn? I’m not going to behave like a scared little girl.” Juliet’s voice shook. She was as upset as I’d expected her to be.

“I will go with you on your walk, if you insist on going, but it looks like it may rain.”

Sure enough, when we had put on spencers and bonnets and stepped outside, it was raining.