Page 95 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

Phelps hesitated. The pause lasted a quarter-second, but Oliver saw it and understood. The household had expected this. They had watched him retreat from society over the past weeks, watched invitations pile unanswered on the silver tray, watched the study lamp burn past midnight while the rest of Grosvenor Square slept. Servants saw everything. He’d known that all his life. Heard the whispers.

“Very good, Your Grace. Shall I instruct Mrs. Aldridge to open the house?”

“Send an express this morning. Tell her I will arrive by Thursday evening.”

“And your engagements, sir? Lord Tyndale’s agricultural committee meets on…”

“Send my apologies. To Tyndale and anyone else expecting me this week.”

Phelps nodded and withdrew. Oliver heard his footsteps descend toward the servants’ passage, heard the distant murmur of instructions being relayed, trunks being pulled from closets, the quiet machinery of departure.

He looked at the blotter where the folded paper sat. Three words. Dear Miss Fairchild. He had spent an entire Season calling her Louisa, and now he could not finish a letter that began with her surname.

He left the study without looking at his father’s portrait in the hall. He climbed the stairs. He stood in his dressing room while Colton laid out travelling clothes. He said nothing. The only person he wanted to speak to was the one person he had forfeited the right to address.

* * *

Eleanor arrived at half past two, carrying a basket of lemon biscuits from the Whitmore cook.

“You look dreadful,” she said, setting the basket on the tea table and pulling off her gloves.

Louisa flashed a tired half-smile. “Thank you, Eleanor.”

“I mean that I can tell you have not slept, which I fully understand, because you ended an engagement yesterday and I would be surprised if you had managed it.” She unbuttoned her pelisse and draped it across the chair. “Tell me everything. Your note last evening was three lines long and one of them was illegible.”

Louisa had not moved from the blue damask chair since breakfast. The tea on the tray had gone cold. The toast her mother brought at nine sat untouched, its butter softened into a pale slick.

“The ring came off easily,” Louisa said softly, then shrugged. “He never asked my size. He guessed, and it never fit, and I wore it for weeks without telling him.” She turned the teacup in her hands. “When I… ended it... He claimed that I was nervous. He told me his mother had nearly fled to Bath before her own wedding, and that my feelings would pass once we were settled at Langley Park.”

Louisa leaned forward slightly. “And then?”

“Then I told him he had put milk in my tea for six weeks and never noticed I pushed the cup aside every time.” She set the cup on the saucer. “He stopped laughing after that.”

“Oh, Louisa…”

“He left quietly,” Louisa continued. “He did not shout. He asked for the ring. And then he walked out.”

“And you?”

“I breathed.” She looked at her bare hands. “Properly. For the first time in weeks.”

Eleanor reached across the table and squeezed her wrist once, firmly. Then she picked up a lemon biscuit and bit into it, because Eleanor had always dealt with unpleasant facts and food in the same manner: directly.

“I loved the idea of him,” Louisa admitted. “I never knew the man. Not really. And he never knew me.”

“The whispers will be vicious,” Eleanor said gently. Louisa nodded.

“I know. The Ton will have a field day.”

“Lady Caldwell will have told Mrs. Fenton by now. Mrs. Fenton will have told Lady Ashton. By Thursday every drawing room in London will have a version, and none of them will be yours.”

“I know.”

“The invitations will stop,” Eleanor continued.

Louisa sighed. “I know, Eleanor.”

“Good. Then we need not discuss it further.” She brushed crumbs from her lap. “What happens next?”