“I adore you, Mary Frances,” Tabitha said as she hauled herself up and through the narrow window frame. “I’ll see you in a week.”
And with that, she dropped into freedom on the other side.
Chapter 11
Marrywell.
The quaint village had been the first place Tabitha had thought of when she’d ducked into a hackney carriage outside of the church. It was perfect for so many reasons. Marrywell was far enough away from London that nobody who had been at the church was likely to stumble across her. Despite being known as the place where people fell in love, this year’s festival was now over. The streets and inns were empty, likewise ensuring Tabitha would have no problem staying out of sight.
Perhaps most importantly, Marrywell was somewhere Tabitha felt safe. A place where she’d been happy. For a woman with an unwanted marriage looming over her shoulders like a dark cloud, Tabitha was grateful for any scrap of joy she could find.
After checking into a different hotel than the one she usually booked—using “Mrs. Snowfeather” as a pseudonym—Tabitha cleaned up and went for a long walk in the botanical gardens to restore her battered spirit.
She might have postponed the wedding for the moment, but a battle still raged inside her.
On the one hand, she could not bear to become a lecherous old roué’s possession and plaything. On the other hand, she had been raised to be a dutiful daughter. She wanted to please her father and make him proud.
Arranged and political marriages among the aristocracy was not a torture designed just for Tabitha, but an everyday occurrence no more remarkable than London rain. Who was she to think herself deserving of special circumstances?
By the time her stomach rumbled, Tabitha was no closer to making peace with her inescapable future. Because the matchmaking festival had concluded, the assembly rooms were closed, the brewer’s field was empty, there were no activities on the stage or in the gardens. She would have plenty of time to be alone with her conflicting thoughts until she worked out what to do.
But first: supper. Tabitha glanced up and down the main street, then picked a public house at random. This one was called the Cork & Cupid. During the festival, the bustling interior had been packed to standing room only, but now, a fortnight after the fact, Tabitha was one of only a handful of guests inside the cozy wooden pub.
She took a table near a window and ordered the special of the day without even inquiring what it might be. She was not a picky eater. Tabitha was not a picky anything… save, apparently, for selecting a husband to whom she would be happy to vow to love and obey.
Oh, how lucky were all the women who had come to Marrywell before her and found glorious love matches! Tabitha was so envious of every one of them, she could barely see straight. She didn’t want to be a viscountess. She needn’t be Lady anything at all. She’d take a blacksmith with a kind smile, an organist with a fine sense of humor, a candlestick-maker with a love of good books.
Social status didn’t matter half as much as meeting the sort of man who would ask how she was doing and actually care about the answer.
“Lady Tabitha?” came a low, gentle voice filled with obvious relief. “Are you all right?”
She glanced up from her plate of fresh fish in shock.
Mr. Frampton stood beside her table, looking much the same as he had back at the church ten hours earlier, if a bit more wrinkled and with a slight shadow of stubble along his jaw. In other words, big and strong and frightening…ly handsome. His perennial good looks were not what surprised her.
“How did you find me so fast?” she said in dismay.
She’d hoped to have at least a week to herself. She was incognito in Mary Frances’s plain maid’s clothing, and she was paying for her rooms herself, rather than charging the costs to her father’s accounts.
Even if someone, somewhere, had recognized her—which Tabitha was certain they had not, given that hardly anyone was still in town at all—London was an eight-hour drive from Marrywell. If some wayward gossip had dispatched a footman with the news the moment Tabitha alighted from her hackney, the missive would still not cross her father’s door for another six hours, at the earliest.
Mr. Frampton slid into the seat opposite her with a rueful smile. “Fast? You missed me dashing about in a panic from the moment you turned up missing. I was terrified that something awful had… I’m unspeakably relieved to find you well. I would have come here sooner, had I not stopped to check a few likely venues in London first.”
“Like where?”
His neck flushed slightly. “Your rooms, obviously—”
“You went into my bedchamber?”
“—and the homes of those I thought might harbor you.”
“Harbor me?”
“Friends like Miss Matilda Dodd, and her guardian Lord Gilbourne. Or family members like Mr. Reuben Medford and his wife.”
“He’s not my family. He’s Viscount Oldfield’s family.”
“And yet, I quite suspect Mr. Medford would have happily offered you sanctuary, had you asked it of him.”
