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Ella was shocked. Normally, her aunt couldn’t even meet her husband’s eyes, but now she was screaming at him.

Motherly love had turned her from a mouse to a lion.

Thankfully, the viscount was no longer drunk. Like many bullies, he crumpled in the face of stout opposition.

“I suppose I shall go,” he sighed, with a long-suffering air.

“Ella will accompany you,” his wife stated.

“I am exhausted,” Ella said, alarmed, “and after the ball last night, not to mention our impending move, I have much to do.”

“You must! We shall let it be known that you and Fulvia were together,” her aunt ordered. “The three of you joined the Prince of Wales for a charming breakfast at … at what was that place she mentioned in her letter?”

“The Mad Bishop,” the viscount supplied. “His Majesty loves the inn, though I’ve always maintained that their food is tolerable at best.”

Ella swallowed hard, clearly seeing, not for the first time, the place she held in the family. She was the one who existed to fix things, no matter the cost to herself.

“I cannot get in that coach,” her aunt said. She put a hand to her stomach. “I wouldn’t survive the nausea, given the exhausted springs. You must go in my stead, Ella! You don’t mind, do you, dear?”

Ella did mind.

They were off to save Fulvia’s reputation, so that her cousin could marry the man whom Ella wanted more than anything in the world.

“If the news leaks, we could always say that Ella ran off with His Majesty,” the viscount mused. “It’s not as if anyone cares about her reputation, after all.”

Ella’s eyes blurred, but she reined in her tears. She had nowhere to go. “I’ll only do it if you give me back my mother’s pearls,” she said to the viscount.

He frowned. “Pearls? You said they were false!”

“They were my mother’s.”

His face darkened. “You lied to me!”

He hadn’t picked up the circlet.

Ella drew in a shuddering breath.

Jarvis must have salvaged her pearls, so at least she’d have a nest egg for the day when the viscount shoved her out the door.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

WHERE IS FULVIA?

When Ella ran out to the coach a half hour later, she found the viscount arguing with his coachman.

“Drive at high speed, I won’t,” Mr. Snagsby said obstinately. “This here is an ancient vehicle. I’ll fly into a ditch if it breaks to pieces.”

The coachman was a stout, sharp-eyed man who wore the viscount’s aged livery with a certain flare. He was a good driver, but he had often told Ella that keeping the coach on the road was as miraculous an act as walking on water.

“If the coach veers into the ditch, we won’t fare well inside,” Ella told her uncle.

“Nonsense,” he said, climbing into the vehicle.

“I’ll go easy on the corners,” Mr. Snagsby said to Ella. Then he added, in a low voice, “They be saying below stairs that Miss Fulvia has run off with a duke.”

“ ‘With a duke?’ ” Ella repeated, startled.

“The carriage that took her away this morning had a ducal crest,” he confirmed.