“But you do not owe him!” Frances insisted. “You can break it off. Please, Lavinia—please.”
Lavinia turned to Tomley, who was watching the sisters with a mixture of awe and terror. “Show me the signature,” she said.
He obeyed at once, flipping to the relevant page and pointing with a shaking finger. “Here, my lady. The seal. You will see that all is in order.”
She examined the page. Crawley, the most vengeful of her creditors, was marked as paid in full. So was every other name she had come to dread.
She felt the beginnings of a tremor in her hand and clamped her fingers together to still it. “Thank you, Mr. Tomley,” she said, and he rose with unfeigned relief, leaving the documents in a neat pile between them.
When the door closed, Frances leaned in, her voice shaking when he spoke. “We can run away if you want. We can hide in the country, or?—”
“Do not be absurd,” Lavinia said, though her eyes filled as she spoke. “We have nowhere to go, and Lady Montfort would hunt us to the ends of the earth.”
Frances clung tighter. “But you do not have to marry Lord Dawnford. That is the only thing that matters. We can tell him to go to the devil.”
Lavinia let out a ragged breath, and in the stillness that followed, she realized, for the first time in months, she had no idea what to do next. The future stretched out, not as a straight line, but as a fog, full of perils she could not anticipate.
“Lord Dawnford could have paid these. If that is so, then he would never let us go.”
Before she could answer, a knock came. She turned to see Mrs. Down in the doorway. “My Lady. Lord Dawnford and Lady Montfort are here.”
CHAPTER 35
“Ah!” Dawnford turned when they entered the drawing room with a smile wide enough to swallow a lesser woman whole. “Lady Lavinia, I declare myself the luckiest of men to see you today.”
“Lucky indeed,” Lady Montfort said from her place on the settee, her fan snapped open and oscillating with the tempo of a fencing master.
Lavinia made a curtsy so shallow it was an insult. “My Lord.”
Dawnford crossed to her and seized her hand, bending low enough to brush his lips against the air just above her glove. “I could not wait another day without seeing my bride, even if only to assure myself that her beauty had not been a figment of my longing.”
Lady Montfort cut in. “Isn’t it extraordinary, Lavinia? Lord Dawnford has acquired a special license! A true coup. You mustunderstand, very few are able to secure such a thing, not even peers.”
Lavinia summoned all her discipline not to look at Frances, whom she could sense vibrating with suppressed laughter—or were they sobs? —at the far end of the room. “Indeed. How…efficient.”
Dawnford’s smile curdled for a moment, but he recovered. “I am a man who knows what he wants and will not be denied, my Lady.”
“And what you want is… me,” Lavinia said, as if reciting the lead in a riddle.
“And your hand. And your smile. And, if I may say so, the pleasure of your conversation.” He released her hand, but his gaze lingered in a way that suggested he had not released anything at all. “Would you grant me the honor of a stroll in your gardens? I have much to say, and I cannot bear the thought of parting without at least a few words alone.”
Lady Montfort made a pleased littletsk. “How romantic. Lavinia, be a darling and show your fiancé the rose arbor. I will keep Frances company. There are matters of her own future to discuss, after all.”
Frances, who had never in her life been able to keep her face blank, gave Lavinia a look that could only be interpreted asDon’t do anything I wouldn’t do.
Lavinia replied in kind:I intend to do several things you would never dare.Then, with a curtsy, she let Dawnford lead her out of the room, his hand unctuously light on her arm.
They crossed the hall in silence, his steps perfectly matching hers, but always with just enough pressure at her elbow to remind her of the balance of power. The door closed behind them with a sound like a tomb sealing.
The air in the gardens was cold, still, and sharper than any inside the house. It made Lavinia feel braced, alive, if also aware that she was walking into an abattoir with a man who fancied himself both butcher and connoisseur.
Dawnford kept just half a pace ahead, then dropped back, then surged forward as if trying out different strategies for walking with a woman. At last he settled for steering her bodily toward the rose arbor with a grip at her elbow that suggested he would not mind if she bruised.
The only reason Lavinia was out here with him was to determine whether or not he was their benefactor.
When they reached the first break in the hedges, he stopped, pivoted, and trapped her with a look. “I confess,” he began, “I expected more resistance. I am not ungrateful, mind you, but it is a rare woman who submits to the hand of fate so gracefully.”
“I have found,” Lavinia replied, “that fate often takes the form of a man in a cravat. Why not surrender to the inevitable?”
