“She will have a steak for dinner,” Marie commanded.
“What of Granville?” Andrew asked; his pique had calmed once he knew his sister was unharmed.
“On his way to the runners, escorted by my brother,” Loretta stated.
“The Spaniardwill own his properties within days,” Andrew opined.“That man cares nothing for rank; if you owe, you pay, or he claims your collateral. Gambling is a fool’s game.”
“He frittered away generations of accumulated wealth in the matter of a few years, and then he looked to our Lizzy to save himself. The man we knew at Cambridge is long dead. He is lucky that he did not manage to lay a hand on Lizzy. I was ready to lay into him and would have, had even his finger touched our sister,” Richard told the group. Granville would have had a lot more than his dignity hurt if Richard had been required to act.
“Will is going to want to gallop to the gaol and call the man out when he finds out,” Andrew verbalised what any who knew Will was thinking.
“Why would I want to do that?” came from the doorway.“Did something happen to Lizzy?” Will asked, feeling his fury mount at the possibility until he saw she was well and smiling at him.
The morning’s adventure was explained to him, and like Andrew had stated, Will did want to jump onto Zeus and find the man and rip him end from end.“Will, I am completely well,” Elizabeth assured him.
“What a good dog you are, Aggie,” Will lavished her with praise and kneeled down and scratched her chest when she rolled onto her back, her hind leg kicking the air as she was scratched in the place she loved best.
“If there is even a whiff of scandal that Lizzy was compromised, then I will hie to the Archbishop’s offices, acquire a special licence, and we will marry as soon as may be!” Will stated firmly.
“In that event, which I doubt will happen, then yes, that will be an acceptable solution, as long as Lizzy is agreeable to it,” Andrew allowed.
“If need be, and you and Father Bennet give your consent, I will marry Will earlier than planned. In that respect, Granville would end up doing me a favour,” Elizabeth said as she looked at Will lovingly.
“Yes, he would be very useful in that respect,” Will winked at her.
“There was no one near to witness his cowardly attempt other than us, Wes, and our employees, soifthe attempted attack is spoken of when Granville is tried, we will be able to control the narrative. It has long been that no one in the Ton gives credence to anything that waste of a man says,” Richard reminded everyone.“I know in this case that you two,” he looked at his sister and cousin,“would prefer there was a reason to advance the date of your marriage, but I am confident you will be disappointed.”
As they talked about the possibility, or lack thereof, of an early wedding, Wes de Melville entered the drawing room.“Granville is gone,” he said simply.
“How?” Will, Andrew, and Richard asked simultaneously.
“One of the footmen was leading him by the rope that secured him. When we were close to Bow Street, a carriage was approaching at speed. Granville ran into the footman, causing him to drop the rope, and took the coward’s way out by throwing himself under the carriage wheels. The driver attempted to halt the team, but it was too late. By the time we reached him, he was no more,” Wes related.
“No early wedding, Lizzy,” her mother said with evidently false sadness, thereby lightening the news. She knew it was only months away, but that was better than a few days.
“I wager he could not live with the shame of losing his family’s legacy. A small mercy is he had no blood relatives alive. As he never married and sired an heir, the Granville line is at an end and shall only be remembered for the ignominy of his actions, and Lizzy’s name will never be aligned with him. If anyone asks, we will let it be known that he attempted to rob a gentleman and was being arrested when he took the cowardly option,” Andrew stated.
All present agreed that what Andrew said made sense. There would be no one to mourn the last Earl of Granville. When London woke up to the news of his death the next morning,The Spaniardfiled the paperwork to take possession of the man’s property. Within days the estate and townhouse were on the market asThe Spaniardwanted cash, not property. There were none in society who cared enough about Granville to enquire about the circumstances of his final downfall, so the story about an attempted robbery was not needed. To Elizabeth and Will’s chagrin, there was no reason to marry right away.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
At dinner that night at Bennet House, the Bennets and Darcys were informed of the day’s events, and then the name Granville was never mentioned again. Preparations were made for Elizabeth’s and Georgiana’s birthday and for the betrothal all knew would happen as soon as Will walked to Matlock House the morning of the fifth of March.
Chapter 10
March fifth, 1809
Elizabeth had had a hard time falling asleep the previous night. In fact, by the time she finally gave in to her tiredness, it was after midnight. She was eighteen, and it was the day that she would get one of her wishes granted, to become betrothed to Will. Like a good number of nights when alone in her bed, Elizabeth daydreamed of Will, of her being with him like she had often thought about over the last months especially.
As she imagined being kissed by him, much more thoroughly than the one kiss they had shared the day she accepted his offer of courtship, Elizabeth felt warm all over. She knew that there was more than just kissing, but she was not educated beyond the cold, clinical descriptions she had read in some books. Those descriptions did not excite her passions like thoughts of Will did, but clinical had its uses. She still felt like a wanton when she gave in to her desire to relieve the pressure, imagining it was him that was touching her so intimately. When she finally felt the release, and after she calmed down, she succumbed to her exhaustion and fell asleep.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Across the square, Will was preparing for the biggest day of his life so far. He patted his waistcoat pocket where his late grandmother Darcy’s ring was in the velvet-covered ring box. His mother had chosen the ring her late mother wore, and until his father retrieved the ring from the vault, it had not been worn since his grandmother’s time. As his man Carstens completed his work on the cravat, Will thought back to the conversation he had had with Uncle Thomas the day before.
Will had walked across to Bennet House in the morning, and when the butler opened the door, Will requested to see the master. Knowing that his master was waiting for the young man in his study, the butler announced him to Bennet and withdrew, closing the door behind him.
“Good morning, Will, would you like some coffee?” Bennet offered as he sat.
