Page 45 of Bewitching Benedict (The Lovelorn Lads #1)

T here had been music, Claire realized: soft romantic music, played to accompany and emphasize the announcement Graham had been in the midst of making. There had been music, and she became aware of it because it ended with a shocking violin squawk that underlined Miss Hurst's outburst.

Graham's hands turned icy in Claire's, though her own had gone so cold it was a wonder she could tell.

His heart must have stopped entirely, she thought, or maybe started working in reverse, drawing all his blood back into it, for him to be so cold so quickly.

They did not look at one another, both frozen into immobility.

Perhaps, Claire decided, they had been struck with Miss Hurst's legendary cool gaze so strongly that they had become sculptures of a man and a woman, carved of ice.

The whole room had been struck by ice, in fact: not a single breath had been drawn in the eternity since Miss Hurst had cried out.

Not even Miss Hurst was breathing: she stood as though a blow had been struck to her belly, her body curved around a pain she could not hide.

One hand stretched toward Graham as if seeking support, and the second time she spoke it was a broken whisper, a desperate plea: "No.

Jack, I know everything. I know about Juliet.

I know about the children. I always have.

I only waited for you to tell me, and you left me instead.

Please, I cannot bear this. I do not care.

I do. Not. Care. I cannot live without you, Jack.

I cannot let you marry Claire, I cannot stand by and watch another woman raise the children.

I swear to heaven that I will take the children myself and flee to America if I must, begin a new life there, but I will not see this happen! "

Terrible things came to life inside of Claire: hope and dread, each of them as awful as the other. Here was the chance for everything to be made right; here was the chance for ruin. Her own ruin as much as anyone's, for?—

" Children ?" Aunt Elizabeth's voice cracked across the room, shattering the silence that held everyone else. "Jack Graham has children ?"

A heartbeat too late Priscilla Hurst recognized the downfall she had laid for others and cried, "No! No, they are not his—!" and Uncle Charles bellowed, "You don't mean to say they're yours , girl!? My God, Fairburn, what kind of woman are you marrying?"

"I'm not," came Fairburn's faint rejoinder, and that was no better than before: equally outraged, Uncle Charles demanded, "Cast her off at the first sign of trouble, will you? What sort of man are you?"

"I broke with him!" Miss Hurst cried, choosing first to protect his reputation, then, belatedly, adding, "The children aren't mine," as so much of an afterthought that she was generally believed, though the room was already filling with the din of excited gossip.

By the time the story left the room—and it would—Claire feared half the Lads would be implicated as fathers and she herself?—

She herself was now visibly engaged to a man who had some kind of scandal, perhaps utter ruin, attached to his name, and yet Claire could not yet hold to that particular horror. Something else had her attention, and she dropped Graham's hands to whirl toward Benedict Fairburn. "What? When ?"

"Three days ago," Benedict said helplessly. "The day I asked you to drive with me in the park."

"And you didn't tell me?" Claire knew she sounded as hysterical as Miss Hurst—well, nearly—but she could no more control her voice than the other young lady could. "You allowed me to believe that—that?—!"

A modicum of wisdom stilled her tongue; she was already engaged to one man who was now saying, as loudly, slowly and clearly as he could, to anyone who would listen—which was no one—that, "The children are my sister's.

Oh, Juliet, I am so sorry to darken your name now, but to keep silent would be worse!

She was ruined, the unwed mother of twins," he proclaimed to the room, then shot Claire a slightly wild glance, pleading for her silence as he made an attempt to salvage his family's honor by claiming something that lay far from the truth he'd told her: "and my family ruined in trying to care for her.

I have nothing," he said directly to Priscilla, who again cried, "I don't care! "

They were a sight, Claire thought unclearly.

Miss Hurst's color was high and blotchy, not at all beautiful.

She stood what seemed an impossible distance from Claire and Graham, though it was no more than a handful of steps.

She had not yet dropped her pose of pleading, one hand reaching.

Now Graham stood similarly, as if striving to cross a terrible divide.

Claire was nearly between them—as she had been for weeks, she thought, and laughed aloud, sharply.

Between them, but she had already turned away from Graham.

Her back was nearly to them both, the two of them visible to her only if she turned her head sharply to see them.

It was as if she had already shut herself away from them.

She felt very alone there, a sensation worsened by the fact that Benedict stood within a circle of Lads, as if they held together and protected their own in the very worst of times.

Indeed, everyone else seemed to have some kind of support: Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Charles veritably clung to one another as if one might have apoplexy and the other, vapors, but Claire could not say which might have which.

The Fairburn mother and elder sister were unified, gaping with splendid profiles from their son and brother to the woman to whom he was no longer engaged.

Amelia Fairburn looked terribly guilty, her hands pressed against her cheeks and her eyes enormous above them, as if she'd known more than she could tell about the entire dreadful situation.

Miss Hurst compounded matters by crying, "I have nothing either!

" to Graham. "That is the irony of it all!

Once my grandfather's successes might have offered us all safety and comfort, if only you had not left me without a word!

But it's too late now, the money is all gone, I have nothing left but my love for you!

I cannot bear it, Jack! I will not live without you! "

An astonished gasp rose up, most loudly voiced by Benedict's mother.

Claire could all but see the furious calculations going on in Mrs Fairburn's mind as she attempted to determine how to sort it all out with the least damage to the family name.

How she could not have known was beyond Claire, and yet clearly she had not.

Surely the Fairburn women had wished to discuss the wedding with Miss Hurst, but then, perhaps Priscilla had demurred upon the topic when pressed, under the sensible assumption that she should not have to be the one to tell Benedict's family of the relationship's end.

Perhaps, Claire thought dismally, Benedict had still harbored hopes of repairing the engagement, and had kept its demise largely to himself.

Or perhaps he had been so devastated at its end he had left London entirely without telling anyone.

And yet that same day he had kissed Claire!

She thought she would swoon with the exhaustive emotion of it all, except to do so would add even more fuel to gossip's fire.

Indeed, as party attendees were gathering together, gleeful with the acquisition of gossip, she thought it best not to feed that any more at all, if possible.

They were already half-shouting to one another, inventing new details of the scandal to pass around Society circles.

Even the musicians huddled together as one, discussing whether the risk of being known as gossips would affect their employment prospects adversely or if they would indeed be all the more in demand if they let it be known they had actually been at the most scandalous party of the Season.

Only Worthington also stood alone, and he, of course, was not someone upon whom Claire could throw herself for comfort or in hopes of defense. His gaze, though, when it met hers, was tremendously kind and supportive, as it had always been.

"Then marry me!" Jack Graham cried out, and dropped to one knee before Priscilla Hurst. "Dear God, Pris, marry me! If it must be nothing but each other at the last then let it be so! I will always love you!"

Miss Hurst burst into tears and flung herself into Graham's arms, sobbing an assent that left Claire twisting with happiness and horror as the meaning of it all sank in.

Hurst and Graham had simply cast it all away in their passion.

It was admirable and profoundly romantic, if one was not among the things cast off.

To be jilted by one's fiancé was bad; to be jilted publicly, dreadful.

To be jilted publicly, for another woman, with the hint—no, not hint, but certainty —of scandal attached… .

Claire was ruined. It came home to her with a gentleness that was almost worse than a blow.

Standing over Graham and Hurst, she tried and failed to imagine a way out.

No one would have her, not now. Not under these circumstances.

The most she could hope for would be to return home as quietly as possible and pray that the gossip faded before she died an aged spinster.

If she lived quietly enough it might not affect her brother George's prospects for marriage, though she would clearly have to give up hunting and any other behaviors that were in the least bit unusual.

If she was fortunate, perhaps the elderly and the poor at home would not turn their noses up at her visits, so that she would not be entirely without companionship, but she could never again hope for friends and acquaintances of her own age or class.