Rosalinde’s lips pressed together. “Their love match.”
Celia nodded. “I had convinced myself love matches didn’t truly exist in theton, I suppose. That they were a fairytale. But they love each other, Rosalinde.” Her sister’s tears began to flow anew. “They love each other so deeply and I…I…”
“You want that,” Rosalinde whispered. “Despite any threats leveled at you by Grandfather, you want it. Youdeserveit.”
Celia had gone still and she wiped her eyes slowly. “Yes, Grandfather. If I break this engagement, his punishments to both of us will be swift and vicious.”
Rosalinde shook her head, even though she knew her sister’s words were true.
“He will cut me off,” Celia said. “And likely you, too. And there will be nowhere to go for us. We’ll have no money, no references.”
Rosalinde swallowed past the fears those words left in her stomach. “We would work out a way,” she said, though she could think of nothing. “Because like you, my job as the one who loves you most is to protect you. If you will be so unhappy with Stenfax—”
“We’ll never learn the truth about our father,” Celia continued, and now her voice was flat and emotionless.
“It doesn’t matter,” Rosalinde reassured her. “We’ll—”
Celia pushed from the settee and walked to the fire. She stared at the dancing flames a moment, then turned back to face Rosalinde. “I am being foolish,” she said, her tone suddenly very calm. But her eyes were so empty, so lost that Rosalinde nearly burst into tears herself. “I am reaching for things that most never find, and throwing away opportunities we will never have again.”
Rosalinde stood and moved toward her sister. “Celia, you were just describing a highly unhappy and empty marriage. You cannot pretend—”
“There is no choice!” Celia interrupted, her voice elevating to near hysteria. Then she took a long breath and grew calm again. “The deal is done, the contracts signed, the license obtained. There is no choice in the matter. And the alternative if I made another choice is bleaker than anything I shall endure if I marry as planned.”
“Celia,” Rosalinde whispered, moving toward her.
Celia caught her hand and squeezed. “I was only feeling bridal nerves,” she said. “That is all. Please forget all I said here tonight. It matters not, and we will continue on just as before.”
She released Rosalinde and moved to a mirror on the opposite wall where she smoothed her gown and pinched her cheeks to put color back in them. Rosalinde watched her perform the motions and her heart broke.
Celia faced her again. “I should return. It is rude of me to be gone so long from a party in my honor, after all. Please promise me you won’t say anything to anyone about my foolishness tonight.”
Rosalinde caught her breath. She had so much to say to Celia. So much she wanted to do. But she could see her sister would not allow it. She was determined.
“I won’t say a word,” Rosalinde whispered.
Celia nodded and then moved to the parlor door where she stepped out and left Rosalinde alone.
She stood at the fire a few moments, shocked and numb from what had just happened. She had promised not to say anything about her sister’s hesitations, and she would do her level best not to. But she could not make the promise to forget. She would never forget Celia’s panic, her uncertainty, her regrets.
But Rosalinde had no idea what to do about any of it. She had no idea how to save the person she loved most from a future that might crush her beneath its weight.
Hours after the ball had ended, hours after everyone else had retired to their beds, Gray sat in his chamber at a table near the fire. He was wide awake. The papers delivered by Folly were spread out before him. He had read them over and over again until he could almost repeat them verbatim without looking at the pages.
Agatha Fitzgilbert had not married, as had always been reported. She had certainly not married anyone who was deemed appropriate by Society. No, Celia and Rosalinde’s mother had run off with a former servant of her father’s. No one knew his name, no one had a record of him, it seemed Fitzgilbert had very carefully taken care of that information.
But the bare bones were enough to ruin the young women. They were not only bastards by law, but bastards created by a scandalous relationship with a man far below their mother’s status. Even Stenfax would have to think twice about a marriage now. After all, he was trying to not only return the coffers of their family to their former glory, but make people forget the shameful decisions that had emptied those coffers in the first place.
Marrying a bastard daughter of a servant would do little to elevate him.
Gray knew that he held a bullet in his hands that would jeopardize the engagement he had worked so hard to end. And yet he had no idea what to do with what he knew.
A day ago, he would have been perfectly clear. He would have taken this information straight to his brother and revealed all. He wouldn’t have felt good about it, he wasn’t a total cad. But he would have done it to protect Lucien. He would have calmly reminded his brother about all the issues the information could create.
He might not have had his way, but it would have been his best play in this game of chess.
Now, though, there were new revelations, new problems that kept Gray up, staring at the papers before him and completely unsure what to do.
The Duchess of Kirkford was widowed. And if Stenfax found out and was unattached, there was no telling what he would do. Love was a powerful thing. Even hate couldn’t fully destroy it.
