Father sighed and nodded. “That is about the sum of it.”
What a mess. Louisa had no idea what to do. And there was less than a week to go until the wedding.
Chapter Nineteen
Fletcher met Louisa in his drawing room. At least it wasn’t the middle of the night—she’d arrived at his home in the early afternoon—but it was probably still inappropriate. She braced herself for Fletcher to say as much, but she didn’t care anymore.
Maybe propriety didn’t matter anymore.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, even though must have known.
“I told my mother I was calling on Lady Adele, and she allowed me to walk outside without taking my maid.”
“Foolish of her.” But a small smile played across Fletcher’s lips.
“Indeed. But I needed to speak with you.”
He sighed. “I don’t have much to report. I spoke with your father.”
Louisa sat on the sofa and motioned for Fletcher to do the same, but he stood. Every emotion seemed to be displayed on his face at once. He shot Louisa a sad smile, like maybe he was happy to see her but unhappy about the circumstances, but he also looked distressed, like he thought the meeting with Louisa’s father had been futile. But it hadn’t, at least not from Louisa’s perspective.
“I know you talked to Father,” Louisa said. “He told me.”
“I want you to know, I feel terrible that you feel trapped in the engagement, and I believe that it’s not too late as long as you aren’t legally wed to Rotherfeld, but I walked away from the meeting with your father convinced that the only way to end the engagement is for me to spend some money. So I spent themorning trying to find out how much that would cost me, and I finally just got word that it’s a hefty sum.”
“You mean father’s half of the business arrangement. Do you intend to buy out Rotherfeld?”
“That’s an option on the table. That is, I could pay Rotherfeld’s half of the farm that he invested in and go into business with your father. It was my initial instinct to do that.”
Louisa hadn’t known it was a farm. Father invested in a farm? An expensive one? “But it’s a lot of money,” she reiterated.
“It is. Not an unsurmountable amount, but enough that I’m hesitant to part with it. I have my man of business looking into it now, though. He’s also investigating a few other options. Beresford, of all people, had an idea about what I could do instead, but it still involves spending some money.”
“I don’t want you to have to buy me.” Louisa could not understand what the men in her life were about. “I’m a woman, not a parcel of land or a fancy trinket.”
“I understand that, and I agree with you, but I can’t see another solution. Can you?”
Louisa was angry and frustrated and she stood so she could pace back and forth across the room. In point of fact, she could not figure a way out of this, hence feeling trapped. “I didn’t know Rotherfeld was so…nefarious. I had no idea.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“I feel like a fool.”
“You shouldn’t. You couldn’t have known. He fooled all of us.” Fletcher tracked her with his gaze as she paced. “And I don’t think he’s a bad man. He’s just not the man for you.”
“He tricked me. Made me think he could love me. But I wasn’t much more than a mark to him.”
“So maybe heisa bad man. It’s not too late to, I don’t know, leave a snake in his house. Preferably a poisonous one.”
“Fletcher. Be serious,” Louisa said, although she giggled. She was angry, though.
She stomped across the room. Fletcher stood in the middle and stared at her as she paced. She was mad at him, too, angry that he didn’t speak up for her sooner, sad that they’d missed an opportunity by being fools about each other and not recognizing their own feelings. If she could have married Fletcher a year ago, she wouldn’t be in this predicament.
“I hate this,” she said. “I hate that I as a woman have no power to choose who I marry because I happen to be a little older than most women are when they get married, I hate that Daniel took advantage of my need to find a husband, I hate that it took my engagement to makeyourealize you had feelings for me, if you even do or if you’re just saying you do to rescue me as a friend, and I—”
Fletcher grabbed her arm, and she abruptly stopped pacing. “I do have feelings.”
“And I hate that I have to keep you at arm’s length because of my engagement to Daniel, because all I want to do all the time is kiss you.”
