Page 5

CHAPTER THREE

“ Y ou are supposed to be the sensible one!” Julianna wailed, pressing a handkerchief to her trembling lips.

“You were meant to be the one I did not have to worry about! In three years, you have barely said a handful of words to any man, and on the rare occasion you have danced, you have danced as if you wished to be as far from your partner as possible. Now this! Oh, what am I to do with you?”

Teresa rested her feverish brow against the cool pane of the carriage window, closing her eyes, not even grimacing as the carriage bounced and jostled, making her forehead knock against the glass.

“Mother, please let me have some peace,” she whispered. “We can discuss this in the morning. No good can come from speaking of it now.”

Julianna snorted defiantly. “I will talk about it now. I will because I must. I have been working tirelessly to find a husband for you, and now you, you silly girl, have gone and ruined everything!” She heaved out a sigh.

“If you had just made friends with those ladies, they would have kept your secret! But the scandal will be halfway around that ball by now and will be all the way around society by morning.”

Teresa squeezed her eyes tighter. Had it been anyone other than Lady Juliet and her entourage who had walked into the room, Teresa might have survived the scandalous event with a little earnest pleading, but the other gentleman—the unknown fellow who had spoken unkindly about her first—had decided to bring them back with him.

Why them, of all people? Why did it have to be them?

“This is because of all those books,” Julianna ranted on.

“They have filled your head with foolish notions, and now you have sentenced yourself—and us, I might add—to scorn and ridicule. No gentleman will want you now. Not even the baronets. I should have burned all those books long ago; I knew they would bring trouble, I just knew it. Honestly, I would never have expected this of you, Teresa! All of my hard work for nothing. All of my plans, now?—”

“Have you ever bothered to look at me during those endless introductions?” Teresa snapped, whirling around to face her mother, who sat directly opposite. “Have you ever bothered to notice my discomfort, my displeasure, my unease?”

Julianna blinked in astonishment. “If you were more social, you would not be so ill at ease.”

“It is not about my ability to be social,” Teresa shot back.

“The gentlemen you have paraded before me are all old or infirm or rude or utterly disinterested in me, if not outright repelled by me. It is… humiliating, Mother.” Her voice cracked, tears pricking at her eyes.

“It is devastating to have to stand there and witness the way they look at me, their noses turned up; or hearing them speak about what will be expected of me: to be silent and obedient, to be nothing more than a vessel for carrying their children, to ‘do something about my appearance’. If every insult were a wound on my skin, I would be covered in scars.”

Shaking her head, Julianna muttered, “Do not be so dramatic.”

“I am not,” Teresa replied fervently. “For once, I am being honest. I do not deny that you have worked ceaselessly to find me a husband—any husband—but you have never paused to ask if it is what I want. You have not once considered that I might… wish to fall in love, that I might not be content with… whoever will have me.”

Crossing her arms over her chest, Julianna turned her gaze toward the shadowed countryside moving past the windows.

“I was doing the best I could. You have never lacked beauty, in my opinion, but you do not speak, and you have created a reputation for being difficult. Reclusive. Dull. I know you are not dull or difficult, but public opinion has made it… terribly challenging to find suitable matches for you.”

“It has never been my intention to be difficult,” Teresa murmured. “I just… do not have a talent for society, like Isolde or Beatrice.”

“If you could have managed to be somewhere between yourself, your sister, and Beatrice, you would have been fending off suitors with a stick,” Julianna said, expelling a strained breath.

“Not that any of that matters now. Prudence is supposed to debut next year—what chance will she have, after all of this?”

Guilt snaked around Teresa’s chest, squeezing.

“I doubt Prudence would have had much luck anyway,” Julianna replied to herself, grimacing. “She is… Well, she is Prudence.”

It did nothing to alleviate Teresa’s guilt.

Although, she could not help wishing that she were a little more like her youngest sister.

If Prudence had been sitting there, in Teresa’s situation, she would have shrugged it off, cackling about the look on everyone’s faces.

Indeed, if Prudence was told that she had to marry, and she did not want to, she would likely kiss every gentleman she could find in order to prevent it.

Or she would elope with the gardener. She would never settle for less than what she desired.

“I… did not mean to ruin everything,” Teresa croaked, her remorse, her embarrassment, her wishes, all caving in at once, threatening to suffocate her under the weight.

“I know I did. I know it is all my fault. I know that nothing I can say will fix what I have done. I know that any slim chance I had of finding love is now gone, and I must live with that.”

All of this, and I never even got to experience a kiss. It felt like the cruelest twist of all, for her to be so severely judged for nothing whatsoever.

“I should have known better,” she murmured. “I should… never have gone into that room.”

What good did it do? So what if he scratched a line through my name?

She clenched her hands into fists, digging her fingernails into her palms to try and hold back the tears that wanted to flow.

She had lost so much for the most foolish reason of all: pride.

All that man had done with his quill was what the rest of society did with their sly looks and whispers and insults.

She should have dealt with it the way she always had before, by ignoring it, retreating to a quiet corner.

Cursing herself under her breath, she hastened to brush away an errant tear that had snuck free. Yet, she could do nothing to suppress the trembles that shook her from top to toe.

“There, there,” Julianna said softly, moving over to Teresa’s side of the squabs.

In a gesture that broke the dam of tears, Julianna put her arms around Teresa and hugged her, gently stroking her hair as she whispered soothing words.

“Perhaps, it will not be so bad. Perhaps, the gentleman will do the proper thing and propose.”

Teresa buried her face in her mother’s shoulder, not entirely for comfort, but so her mother would not see the doubt etched upon her face. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that that gentleman would not be made to do anything he did not wish to.

What if Vincent demands a duel?

Her blood ran cold, remembering an earlier thought: the man in the lion mask was not the sort of man who retreated from anything. Nor did he seem like a man who often lost. If it came to a duel… She shuddered, refusing to think about it. Not until she had to.

“You realize what you have to do, do you not?” asked Silas Rowland, the Duke of Merrowfield, as he swirled his brandy and cast a pointed look at Cyrus.

“He does not have to do a blasted thing,” Anthony interjected, knocking back the contents of his brandy in one go.

“Why should he be held responsible for the brazen behavior of the Wilds girl? The way I see it, there are only two reasons that an odd creature like that would attempt to compromise our friend here: she sought revenge from wounded pride, or she is so desperate for a husband that she decided to trap him in a scandal.”

Silas gestured with his brandy glass. “Which, however you consider the reasoning, she successfully managed to do. There has been a scandal and, like it or not, Cyrus must do the honorable thing.”

Cyrus let them argue his fate between themselves, his own glass of brandy untouched.

The liquor clouded his head, and he needed his mind clear.

The noise of his two friends was already a distraction, destroying the customary peace of his study.

Still, at least he was at his own estate, rather than stuck in the clamoring chaos of that wretched masquerade ball.

“He must let the Wilds girl take advantage of him?” Anthony scoffed, getting up to pour himself a fresh measure. “Balderdash! If he permits her to do that, every desperate lady in society will be trying it and no gentleman will be safe from their schemes.”

Silas shook his head. “I thought you said the Wilds girl was the most wilted wallflower of them all? Why would you assume she did this on purpose? It hardly sounds like the actions of a hermitess—if that is even a word.”

You are right, it does not. Cyrus’s attention drifted to the fireplace as a log crackled loudly, spitting a spark onto the floor. And neither of you saw her face…

When the door had opened in the private library, her eyes had opened so wide that they filled the eyeholes of her bear mask completely, her mouth gaping in abject horror, her grip on his lapels so tight that her knuckles had turned to ivory.

Frozen in fear, clinging to him only because she had not known what else to do, or perhaps hoping that she might be able to hide behind the bulk of him.

I was not fast enough. Instinctively, he had turned at the sound of the door opening, and with that movement, the ladies that Anthony had brought with him had glimpsed the bear mask. Within a second, one of the ladies was shouting, “Lady Teresa! My goodness, it is her! It is Teresa Wilds!”

“I do not think it was deliberate,” he said, at last. “I cannot explain why she was in the walls, but I doubt it was a snare.”

After all, it was not like he was the most eligible bachelor of the Season. If it had been an ordinary ball, without masks, no woman would have wanted to go near him. No mother would have shoved their daughter into his path. No father would have suggested a ‘meeting’ over tea or something stronger.

“But she did try to kiss you?” Anthony pressed, returning from the side-table with a full glass and a scowl upon his face.

“I do not know what she was doing,” Cyrus replied, though that was not entirely the truth.

She had seemed like she meant to kiss him and he, in turn, had done nothing to push her away or prevent her.

It was why he could not risk so much as a sip of brandy, for his mind was already struggling to forget that moment, when she had grasped his lapels and risen up on tiptoe, leaning in with those soft, plump lips.

She had been so close that, if he thought about it too hard, he could still feel the tickle of her breath on his mouth… and the slow release in the back of his neck, where he had begun to bend his head into that potential kiss.

Why did I not stop her? He had asked himself the same question over and over since leaving the ball, yet no answer would come: Because she had not been afraid of him?

Because it had been a long time since he had been that close to someone?

Because he had been curious? Because she had not been repulsed?

“Yes, well, the Earl of Grayling is not someone to be trifled with,” Silas pointed out, reclining in the armchair. “If it was my sister in this kind of situation, I would be at the door, challenging you to a duel.”

Cyrus nodded slowly in agreement. If he had a sister, he would have done the same. Indeed, though he did not know much about the Earl of Grayling, he would think far less of him if he did not make such a demand.

Although, he might not need to.

“So, does this mean we are toasting to a marriage?” Anthony asked drily, his eyes glassy with inebriation. “I suppose she has saved you the bother of searching for a bride, when she has rather advantageously stumbled into your lap. No need to find a wife now, when one has thrown herself at you.”

Lifting his glass to his lips, Cyrus looked at his two friends, realizing he was at a somewhat treacherous fork in the road: if he asked Teresa to marry him, he feared he might ruin her life far more than any scandal would, but if he did not ask her to marry him, her life would be ruined anyway, and only one of those options came with the possible risk of death: his or Teresa’s brother’s.

He took the long-awaited sip. “I will propose,” he muttered, as the liquor burned down into his stomach. “First thing tomorrow.”