Lillian nodded and then feigned a cough as she pushed her chair back. She really was not very good at dissembling.
The footman smoothly pulled the chair back as she rose.
Slowly,she reminded herself. She also tried to summon an expression that might accurately portray a sickly person. Her younger sister Cora, at the age of eight and ten, was so much better acting out deceptions. Lillian ought to know, Cora had fooled her on more than one occasion. Even the youngest of them, Martha, would have done better.
“You don’t look… normal.” Her mother’s gaze trailed her.
Lillian felt anything but normal. “I intend to rest.” Only she wasn’t sure how she would do locked away in her room for all of the afternoon. Although her nerves were making themselves known, Lillian felt not only hopeful but also exhilarated to finally be doingsomething!
She would take her fate into her own hands for the first time in her life.
But she had not expected to learn that Christian’s brother had been a scoundrel, nor that he’d died in a duel.
Climbing the steps that led to her bedchamber, she reluctantly acknowledged to herself that she knew very little, practically nothing, about this man to whom she’d just become engaged. But she had had afeeling.
As she rounded the corner, her body jerked when her dress caught on an ornamental knight standing guard. The corner of the shield had caught at her gown for the ten-thousandth time, drawing a mindless curse from her lips as she unhitched the fabric and continued to her chamber.
She had consented to marry a man whom she’d known for less than a week. And she’d consented to journey to Gretna Green with him! There wasn’t time to wait. There wasn’t time to have banns read, or even to send for her brother.
Overwhelmed by her own audacity, she strode across the room and, hugging herself, stared out the window. Having met Warwick, it was difficult to remember what had compelled her to apply for the position in the first place. He certainly seemed kind and gentle and everything that her stepfather had not been. The late Duke of Crawford had ruled his household with an unfair and heavy hand. He’d beaten those who displeased him and harmed those who got in his way.
Lillian was doing this in order to protect herself from having to live as her mother had. Before long, she would not only have her freedom, but finances to support herself.
She shivered.
She had very good reason to take such a risk. Her reason was a sensible one.
Although a hasty decision, it might be her only such opportunity. Even if she married an old man, there was no guarantee she would ever have such freedom as Warwick promised her. With her luck, she’d marry the one old titled gentleman in all of London who lived beyond the age of one hundred.
It was so very sad, though, Warwick’s condition. She blinked away tears when her maid appeared in the doorway of Lillian’s dressing room.
Lillian informed Becky that she was not feeling well and then allowed the young woman to assist her back into her night rail and into bed. She felt quite the fraud, lying beneath the lightweight counterpane.
Lillian rolled onto her side after Becky had closed the drapes and quietly exited. Of course, she would not sleep—too many worries niggled at her. Would her mother insist that she go with her that evening?
This might very well be the last time she slept in her own bed, in her mother’s home.
She would become a wife within a week and, eventually, an independent woman. And if all went as planned, she would be a mother.
Christian Masterson wanted to protect his sister, above all. Such a man, a man who cared for his sister to such an extent, could not be anything but a decent human being.
She wondered what he was thinking in that moment. Was he wishing he had married someone from his past? Someone he’d loved before being stricken with his illness?
Was he regretting his brash decision? He’d never meant for anyone to see the ad.
It was possible that her husband would never kiss her. She’d heard of such marriages; the type where the man did the bare minimum necessary in order to spend inside of his wife.
If that was the way of her marriage, so be it.
But if not… She shivered. Louella, her sister-in-law, had confided that lovemaking was one of her favorite aspects of marriage.
Melancholy settled on her.
He was too young. Too alive! It was not fair.
He had a few lovely creases at the outer edges of his eyes, as though he’d smiled often before he’d learned of his fate.
And then she smiled.
