Edward had tried to talk sense into his cousin at the time. Graham had been resolute.To hell with society.He was in love and that was all there was to it.
Now that Edward had found Fiona, that conversation left a bitter taste. “What, precisely, are you saying?” Edward asked.
“The girl took her own life. Here, Dunburton sent a letter.” She tossed a parchment onto his desk, the seal broken.
“I don’t understand.” He’d had little chance to become acquainted with Eliza, but from their brief conversation she’d seemed perfectly happy.
“Have you not been getting the papers in the country?”
He had been gettingThe Times. He’d just been too preoccupied with Fiona to bother reading it.
“The upstart got what she had coming. What could she expect? That she would marry a viscount and be welcomed to society with open arms? I must say, the papers did their best to shred her to pieces, but they had nothing on the young ladies. A delirium of debutantes scorned and all that.” His mother chuckled.Chuckled.
A young woman had just lost her life. His cousin, his mother’s nephew, had just lost the woman he loved, and she laughed?
“Of course, you’ll need to do something about the gossip. Call your man at the paper. Have it put out that she came down with a fever or something of that manner. Death by one’s own hand is unseemly. We can’t havethatgetting out.”
He would handle it. That’s what he did. But first he needed to get it straight in his head.
“Are you telling me that the men and women of our acquaintance were so cruel to this girl that she chose to…” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the thought.
“A fish out of water dies gasping. Now, tell me more about this…Fiona.”
His heart stopped. A sudden cold chilled him. The look in his mother’s eyes was deadly. He should never have said Fiona’s name. He should never have breathed a word of her to this woman. “There’s nothing to tell,” he said.
“Good, because I would hate to think that you’d forgotten what mattered.”
The Wildeforde name, above all else. Above one’s wants. Above one’s self.
“I haven’t forgotten, Mother.” It was where his father had failed. The previous duke’s inability to put family before his selfish desires had cost them all dearly. “If you’ll excuse me, I must send Graham my condolences.”
His mother gave a cruel, satisfied smile. “I expect to see you at dinner.”
He nodded, unsure he could get further words out without his voice breaking. Once his mother had closed the door behind her, he collapsed into the chair. A maelstrom churned within him. He loved Fiona with everything he had. He wanted to wake up beside her every day, forever. The thought of not doing so ached.
But she wouldn’t be safe. If he married her, she would be in his mother’s sights for as long as the witch lived. He’d be setting her up to be society’s next victim. If he really, truly loved her he would do what his father couldn’t. He would end things.
Chapter 2
London, 1821
Sitting on the cold stone, the hard metal bars of the prison cell pressing against her head, Fiona inhaled and exhaled with shallow breaths trying not to notice the smell of vomit or give any sign that she was not exactly who she was pretending to be—Finley McTavish, country lad.
She’d lost her cap in the chaos of the protest as well as her right shoe. But somehow, despite being roughly shoved into a wagon with fifteen men, her wig had remained in place and the binding around her breasts hadn’t shifted. The thin layer of coal dust she’d put on her jaw that morning to give a hint of stubble was now covered in mud and a constable’s spit. She supposed the dried blood that ran in a trail from her hairline across her brow and into her eyes probably helped with the disguise.
“Ye mongrels,” a man standing next to her yelled, banging on the bars and causing reverberations to travel through her skull and into her teeth. They had been in the cell for three hours, and her headache, which had started with an elbow to the temple before the authorities had even shown up, was intensifying with every minute.
Three feet away from her, another cellmate turned to face the wall, reached into his trousers, and pulled out his cock, a steady stream of urine hitting the bricks and splashing. As disgusting as the sight of a wrinkled, limp member was, it was nothing compared to the sudden urge to pee let loose by the sound of the trickle.
Fiona pulled her knees into her chest, drawing herself in tightly. Even if she was inclined to piss in public, which she would never do, there was no way of doing it without revealing herself as a woman. That was neither smart nor safe.
Neither of the trusted friends whom she would normally turn to were in any position to help her.
Benedict was in Abingdale with his very pregnant wife.
John was in the Americas.
Talking to the jailers had accomplished nothing. All she could do was hope she was dragged in front of a magistrate soon, so she could convince him that while she had attended the protest against the current inequalities in the parliamentary system and the lack of fair representation, she’d had no involvement in the rotten fruit being thrown at Palace of Westminster guards. The tomato she’d thrown had been directed at someone else entirely. It was bad luck that her elbow had been knocked at just the wrong time.
