Margaret rushed into the sitting room where Mr. Foley spent his evenings. The fire crackled cheerfully—obscene, given the circumstances. It cast dancing shadows across the old man’s face, making him look ghoulish. Wrong.
Tessie stood near his chair, wringing her hands, her face a mixture of shame and fear.
Anna, the youngest of her siblings, aged ten, clattered down the stairs with a clean nightshirt, eyes huge in her pale face.
Margaret dropped to her knees beside Mr. Foley’s chair.
His chest rose and fell, but the movement looked labored. He wheezed. His face had a strange droop that hadn’t been therethis morning. His eyes were closed. His skin felt clammy under her fingers.
“Tell me everything,” she said.
Tessie’s words came out in a rush. The same story as Matthew. The stomach complaint. The tea. Coming back to find him violently ill. His face sagging on one side. His arm hanging useless. Water wouldn’t go down. They’d cleaned him as best they could. Kept him warm. Waited for Margaret.
Margaret pressed her fingers to his wrist. His pulse was thready but present.
She had no idea what to do. This was worse than before. She wasn’t a physician or a healer. She knew herbs for common ailments and how to tend fever, but this was beyond her.
“We need Dr. Bromwell,” she said, her mind already calculating. They had a few coins saved. The chickens. Perhaps they could barter?—
Then she heard a man’s voice…
Henry had barely steppedout of the orangery after Margaret left, when one of the servants appeared.
“Your Grace, Lady Margaret’s family sent word. There’s an emergency at her home.”Ah, the gossips had spread the word that Margaret was with him in less than five minutes.
His stomach dropped. “What kind of emergency?”
“Medical, I believe. Her younger brother sounded quite distressed.”
Henry didn’t hesitate. “Get my carriage. Now.”
He'd already promised to court her. Already decided she was worth whatever scandal Lady Thornby tried to manufacture. The gossips could whisper all they wanted—he would marryMargaret Foley if she'd have him and put the matrons' fabrications to shame.
In private.
In the big bedroom at the castle.
With Maragaret… oh boy. Perhaps being a duke was worth it just to meet her this night.
But first, he needed to make sure she was all right.
“I’ll need her address,” he told the footman.
The man hesitated. “Your Grace, the family lives in… modest circumstances. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to?—”
“The address. Please.”
Within minutes, he had it. At least the gossips were good for one thing: information. They’d been more than happy to tell him exactly where the charity-case widow lived with her dependent siblings and invalid father-in-law. Charity case. The words made his blood boil. These people had no idea what they were talking about.
His carriage clattered through the darkening streets. Away from the grand houses and manicured gardens toward smaller cottages and narrower lanes.
Henry’s mind raced. Her father-in-law was ill, according the hastily recited information from Mrs. Thornby. Not her father—the man was long dead, apparently. But her late husband’s father. A man she had no blood obligation to care for, yet she’d taken him in and supported him along with three younger siblings. Four dependents on a widow’s pension.
The gossips had painted her as grasping. Opportunistic. A woman who’d set her cap at a duke to escape poverty.
They were fools. She wasn’t grasping but surviving and keeping her family together through sheer force of will. She was extraordinary.
The carriage stopped outside a small cottage. Modest didn’t begin to cover it, but Henry didn’t care. He’d lived in worse.The thatched roof needed repair. The garden was practical, not ornamental. A single window glowed with candlelight.
