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Chapter Three

The Rejected Groom

S tanford Williams stood at the altar listening to the buzz of whispers that slowly grew to a deafening roar. What had happened? What the devil had just happened?

“Sir, will the young lady be returning?” the minister asked.

“I’ve no notion what she’ll do,” Stanford snapped. “And she’s no lady. Clearly. No lady of breeding would have dared behave so poorly.”

“Perhaps she is ill,” the minister suggested. “Young lad—women have such delicate constitutions and are quite prone to hysteria. I’m certain things can be corrected.”

They couldn’t. Because he couldn’t marry her now. Not after such an embarrassing incident. That sort of scandal was the very last thing he could have. His only hope was to turn it all around on her. To make her the villain.

“No. This insult will not be forgiven,” he said. “I have steadfastly stood by her, ignoring all the whispers and rumors of her fast behavior. I longed to give her the benefit of my trust and to deny that she was indeed her mother’s daughter. Alas, I can no longer.”

There was a shift then in the tone of the whispers that filled the church. There was certainly still shock and no amount of enthusiasm for the drama that was unfolding, but there were also whispers of assent. Whispers of misdeeds long past but never forgotten.

With his head high, Stanford left the church, walking past the stunned guests as he made his way to the street. His carriage was waiting there. And as he glanced across the street, he saw her. Astrid, Lady Crowden. She wore an expression that could only be described as gleeful. Stupid woman, he thought, with no small amount of bitterness. She’d been useful to him. But she longed to be loved and adored. She craved adoration the ways one craved food, water, or even opium. The need for it was an affliction of unparalleled strength. And he’d used that. But now, there was bitterness. After all, she had been the one to suggest that he pay court to Marina Ashton, the one who had told him in the strictest of confidence about the ridiculously generous marriage portion her uncle had settled upon her. In short, Astrid, his lover and partner in the Machiavellian scheme, had failed him.

Without acknowledging her presence, he simply placed one foot in front of the other and strode away in the opposite direction. There were other wealthy women he could woo and wed. Women who would be far more malleable than Marina Ashton ever would have. He’d get himself one of those. They wouldn’t have the same degree of social currency. After all, bastard or no, Marina was the niece of a powerful lord and was doted on by numerous powerful and well-regarded family connections. Marrying her would have given him the sort of power and social cachet that he’d been scrabbling to attain throughout his life. It had been within his grasp and slipped through his fingers as ephemeral as smoke.

It wasn’t simply anger or even wounded pride that kept his blood hot in those moments. It was a sense of being wronged, of being denied the very things he was entitled to by virtue of having been willing to sully himself with one born so low. He’d followed her around like some callow youth, making a fool of himself, only to be rejected in the most public of fashions. That was an affront he would not forgive. And once he’d paid his own debts, he’d extract his pound of flesh from those who had wronged him. Astrid and Marina, as well.