CHAPTER 1
“They are staring at us.” Mary pressed her gloved fingers against the lace of her skirt and resisted the urge to turn around.
Behind the vestibule doors, the low hum of two hundred guests had shifted into something sharper.
Whispers.
The kind that traveled through pews like fire through dry grass.
Her father, the Earl of Langham, adjusted his cravat for the fourth time. “They are not staring. They are admiring. You look lovely, my dear.”
“They are whispering, Papa.”
“People whisper at weddings. It is what they do.” Lord Langham tugged at his cravat again and glanced toward the doors. His face had turned a shade of gray that appeared whenever something threatened his reputation. “Now, stand straight. Lord Grentport is expecting a bride, not a wilting flower.”
Mary stood straight. She had been standing straight for the better part of an hour while the ceremony was delayed for reasons no one had bothered to explain to her. Her wedding gown, a confection of ivory silk and seed pearls that her father had selected without consulting her, pinched at the waist and pulled at the shoulders.
The veil itched. Her bouquet was too heavy.
She was twenty-one years old, and she was about to marry a man she barely knew because her sister had vanished four months ago.
And because their father needed the scandal buried beneath something respectable.
Lord Grentport was respectable. That was the kindest thing Mary could say about him.
The vestibule doors swung open. Mary’s breath caught, expecting the processional music, expecting the signal to begin. Instead, Lord Grentport strode through the gap with his jaw set and his eyes hard.
He was not walking toward the altar. He was striding toward her.
Mary’s stomach dropped.
“The wedding is off,” Grentport gritted out as he stopped before them.
Mary blinked. Beside her, Lord Langham made a strangled sound.
“I beg your pardon?” her father sputtered. “Grentport, what on earth?—”
“One scandal, Langham.” Grentport held up a finger. His face was flushed beneath his carefully groomed whiskers. “One scandal I could weather; your eldest daughter disappearing before her wedding was irregular, but I was willing to overlook it for the sake of the match. But two?” He shook his head. “Two isbeyondthe pale.”
Mary stepped forward. “What are you talking about?”
Grentport looked at her as though she were something unpleasant he had found on the sole of his boot. “The Duke of Blackholm’s doorstep, Lady Mary. A baby was left in a basket this very morning with his brother’s handkerchief and your sister’s engagement ring. Every person in the church is talking about it.”
He gestured toward the doors, where the whispers had grown loud enough to push through the wood.
“They are saying the child belongs to your sister and the Duke’s brother. And I will not attach my name to a family that breeds scandal the way other families breed spaniels.”
The floor tilted beneath Mary’s feet.
A baby. Charlotte’s ring.
She gripped her bouquet and forced herself to breathe. “That cannot be true,” she said.
“It is all over London.” Grentport was already turning away. “I wish you well, Lady Mary. But I will not be made a fool.”
Lord Langham lunged after him, catching his sleeve. “Now see here, Grentport. We can manage this. These are rumors, nothing more. If you would simply?—”
Grentport wrenched his arm free. “Unhand me.”
