“Daisy, why are you here?”
Daisy swallowed down a sob. She’d done so well keeping her emotions in check all the way here, but now that she’d made it, exhaustion tugged at her body.
“News of your wedding reached Mrs. Miranda yesterday, the same morning I got your letter. She thinks your marriage is a scandal, so she sent me away to protect her daughter’s reputation.”
“How could she send you away?” her brother asked. “She knows mother and father are not at home. The house is closed up for the season! Scandal or not, she turned you out with no regard to your safety.”
Daisy took a steadying breath. “She had her lady’s maid put me on the mail coach in Weybridge. I think Bailey was supposed to stay with me, but she took my money and left me alone. Mrs. Peppers, a woman I met on the coach, was kind enough to loan me coin and escort me to you.” Daisy sniffed. He rubbed her arms, shaking his head in disbelief, and then stood.
“You’ll stay with me and Amelia at Alston House until mother and father return. Where are your trunks?”
“I had them taken to the lavender guest room,” Lady Amelia said. “While you two talk, I’ll have a bath readied. You look a bit peaked.”
“I hope I won’t be a bother,” Daisy said, her gaze flicking between her brother and his new wife. “You’re newly wed, and Lord Alston is still healing.”
“Nonsense,” Lady Amelia said. She gave Daisy a small smile as she left the room.
“You could never be a bother.” He sat on the sofa beside her. “I’m sorry you’ve been affected by my marriage like this. While the circumstances weren’t the best, the rumors are purely malicious.”
“Why should there be any rumors at all?” Daisy asked.
“Amelia’s family—her aunt and cousin—they had a falling out and now they want to hurt Amelia and Alston. This is the only way they can.”
“What are they saying?” Daisy asked. She remembered what Miss Miranda had said about Lady Amelia carrying another man’s child.
“Anything and everything to malign Amelia.”
Daisy cleared her throat. She wanted to know, not that she would believe gossip rags, but knowing her brother as she did, hewouldmarry a woman to protect her virtue.
“Is she... I heard Lady Amelia is with child.”
Her brother snorted and then rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve heard that one too, only it isn’t mine, correct?”
Daisy blushed uncomfortably.
“She is not with child,” he said. He sounded as uncomfortable as she felt. Pregnancy was not a topic she would normally discuss with her brother.
“But someday?” Daisy said. She pictured her brother with a little version of himself. She met his eyes and smiled.
Her brother grinned. “Hopefully.”
“I’m glad—astonished, but glad. I wish I could have been there.”
“I know. Mother will be upset I married so hastily, but time was short. Lord Alston’s death was imminent, we thought then. That is the only reason we married by special license. Amelia needed her brother to be there, and we didn’t think he’d live to see the morning.”
“He was hurt that badly?” Daisy asked. She tried to picture the vibrant, beautiful man from two years ago.
Her brother nodded. “He fell from his horse and sustained a broken rib and bleeding inside his body. He had to have an experimental surgery performed to save him. Now he’s awake and mending.”
“Nothing about this sounds scandalous,” Daisy said.
He bit his bottom lip and looked away. “I was living here while Alston was severely injured. We did not have a proper chaperone. I was not behaving honorably,” he said.
Daisy couldn’t believe it. “If you were here it was for honorable reasons, Graham. You always know the right thing to do. Whywereyou living here?”
He sighed and leaned back in the chair, watching the flames in the hearth. “I was with him when he fell. I brought him home. Amelia was all alone and frightened for Alston. He asked me to look after her. Those could have been the last words he’d everspeak to me, and I could not refuse him. I could not abandon her, proper or not. Her relationship with her aunt is contentious at best and Amelia didn’t want her to know about Alston. I’m not sure it was the right thing to do, but I did it anyway, because I love them.”
Love?
