“Of course, your sister should come to live with you as well so that you would not be so lonely, and so that she might know her family,” he explained. “I cannot remember now if I have expressed my condolences to you adequately for the loss of both of your parents, and knowing you as I have all these years, I know your sister must mean a great deal to you.”
“Thank you for your kind words,” Lydia said, bowing her head in gratitude. “Yes, Elsie is the most important thing in the world to me, more important than my own happiness. Your offer just now is the very thing that has persuaded me. I care not for my own happiness as a bride, so long as I know that my sister and I will be well cared for.”
“Then that is all you shall have, I fear,” Matthew said, his tone turning more serious, more distant. “I have no interest in a wife—take no offense, I mean any wife, not only you—and even less interest in remaining in England. I cannot help but think that I was the one who was rescued last evening by forcing this arrangement upon us both.”
“I understand,” Lydia answered, hiding the pang of hurt deep in her heart. “Though I will admit…rather, I had hoped when you wrote to me this morning that there might be the chance for a friendship between us, if not the love of a man and wife.”
“I do not need friends, Lydia,” Matthew said gravely. She looked up at the use of her name and sought to understand his coldness. “I have learned that even the truest of friends can turn on you in an instant, and they would do so for little cause. All I need from this marriage is to rid my estate of my domineering mother and to keep my business interests intact. If you can assure me of those two things, then we have a contract.”
“I agree,” she whispered quietly, looking down to prevent Matthew from seeing the hurt on her face.
“Good. Then we must plan for how this wedding shall take place,” he announced next. “Clearly, there are those who do not wish for us to be married. My mother has expressly forbidden it, and in her foolishness, she also believes that I will adhere to her proclamations. I cannot help but think your uncle is not enthused about this match either.”
Lydia shook her head. “No, he was very angry with me yesterday evening. He told me he would seek to mend things with the Viscount, though—and please do not misunderstand my meaning as I say this—I do not understand his reluctance. You are eligible, well capable of supporting me, if I may be so bold as to say, and a member of the peerage. You more than fit the requirements of my father’s will in that you are titled and willing to marry me. It is not clear as to why, but my uncle wants no part of this taking place.”
“I know not, though it would certainly not be the first time a man secured his business interests with an alliance between his daughter—or in your case, his niece and ward—and some other fellow in industry,” Matthew explained, acknowledging Lydia’s confusion on the matter. “I don’t know this Viscount fellow, but they may well have had some agreement involving your hand in marriage.”
“You think so?” Lydia asked, horrified by the notion.
Matthew only shrugged. “You make it seem as though you were sold like livestock. Trust me, it is far more common than ladies of polite society wish to discuss. While you ladies retire to your pianofortes and talk of fashions and Seasons, we men are in the drawing rooms, smoking cigars and plotting our empires. Too often, those discussions include which unlucky rooster must marry someone’s younger hen.”
Lydia laughed quietly at Matthew’s succinct description. “And here I was, foolish enough to believe that men actually fell in love with women. I had no idea it was all a game of who could tolerate which horse-faced girl so long as her father’s properties were profitable.”
“I’m very sorry to be the one to shatter the illusion, My Lady,” Matthew said sternly. “All marriages—even this one—are a matter of securing one’s own standing and trying to climb up over the backs of the other powerful men. The most one can hope for is an amiable relationship… and that one’s wife does not, in fact, resemble a horse.”
They were silent for a moment, each pondering the levity of what was revealed. While it seemed to make Matthew even more jaded towards the institution of marriage, this revelation only helped Lydia to feel more at peace with the situation she now found herself in. If all marriages were built on money and title rather than love and friendship, what did it matter if her husband was Lord Paxton or the Viscount of Lockwood?
“As I was saying before,” Matthew continued, interrupting Lydia’s pondering, “in light of outside forces who would seek to prevent this wedding, we must make some difficult decisions.”
“I don’t understand,” Lydia answered. “We must inform our parish priests, and they must read the banns for three Sundays. Then we can marry. I agree, there’s no reason to delay once the banns are read, though.”
“Yes, but that is ample time for our families to interfere, to find some cause to object or prevent this,” Matthew said. “It is also three weeks for the ton to rake you over the coals for being a loose young lady of little morals, while also laughing with one another about how I managed to romp about in the garden with the prettiest young lady at Verdurn’s ball. If we could be married sooner rather than later, then there is no fear of gossip or delay.”
“How is it possible when the Marriage Act is clear? I am not yet one-and-twenty years of age, the banns must be published… I simply don’t see how we can hurry it along.” Lydia frowned, not wishing to argue with one who was doing her so great a service, but also not certain that Matthew understood the scope of their dilemma.
“We can elope to Scotland,” Matthew said gravely, lowering his voice and leaning closer.
“Run away with you?” Lydia asked, her voice shaking. “Have you gone mad? That is the opposite of preventing scandal! The only couples who do such things are those who’ve thrown their good breeding to the wind and turned up their noses at their families’ wishes.”
“You mean, as we are doing?” Matthew reminded her coldly. “Or have you already forgotten our conversation precisely four minutes ago in which we said our families would work to undo any engagement between us?”
“I… I only thought that by going forward with the engagement, perhaps our families would see reason and allow it. They could even celebrate the occasion if they had time to think it through. But elopement?” Lydia felt faint all of a sudden, and wished desperately for someone who could help her make Matthew come to his senses.
“Lydia, I stand to lose far less than you do if we do not marry,” he explained severely. “If you do not agree to marry me, there are certainly other women I could ask.”
“Then perhaps you should,” she shot back angrily, crossing her arms in front of herself.
“I do not wish it. Those other women would not keep my business interests at heart the way you would.” Matthew waited for her to understand his meaning.
Lydia, on the other hand, sat fuming. “It is not enough that I am to be denied a happy marriage, or that I shall also be denied a wedding with a small celebration of bliss. But I am to even be denied the decency of marrying in the church and without a sense of shame surrounding the occasion?”
“The shame took root when you fell off that wall, Lydia,” Matthew retorted angrily. “Anything you are capable of redeeming afterward is cause for your gratitude, not scorn.”
His words, though true, left a scorching pain in Lydia’s heart. So this is how it was to be then, marriage to a man who—while hardly a stranger or a villain—did not hold any love for her. He barely held any regard at all. No, this marriage was simply a tool to permit both of them to have what they wanted, though it fell short by countless measures.
“Fine,” Lydia said, fighting back tears of hurt and disappointment. “Tell me what I must do.”
Chapter 12
