Page 100 of The Ladies Least Likely

“I’ve never seen our Mal so angry.” Beatrice drew the damp sheet from the wringer and stretched it to its full length. Amaranthe grasped one corner and helped her drape it over a forsythia bush in its last stage of yellow bloom.

Bea shook her head. “Can you imagine the nerve of that Sybil! Coming back to demand the estate and guardianship of the children, after she stole from them all and left like a thief in the night.”

“Mal will stop her.”

He’d left with the evening mail and a whisper in Amaranthe’s ear. “Don’t mention to Bea that you found my mother’s marriage lines. I want to tell her myself, in my own time,” he’d said.

She’d agreed again, as she had agreed with his decision to say nothing to the children.

He wouldn’t change his mind, and in truth she couldn’t fault him.

Claiming his own legitimacy would disinherit Hugh and make the Delaval children bastards.

They’d already been left, orphaned and starving, in their own home.

What would it mean to take their birthright away too?

He’d taken the document with him. He’d also given her, despite his new guardedness with her, a swift kiss, a dazzling, searing kind of kiss.

A kiss that assured her, in every possible way, that the shadow of Reuben no longer had any hold on her.

All she felt when Mal held her—in truth and in her imaginings—was him.

His heat, his strength, and her overwhelming desire to belong to him.

“She can’t have a leg to stand on, can she?” Bea fed another sheet into the wringer and turned the crank. “Even if she was the duke’s wife. After all, she’s a woman. And a thief, at that.”

A woman and a thief, at that . Much like Amaranthe herself.

Who would believe me ? Mal’s face had been so bleak.

Amaranthe went to the washtub full of linens and plunged her hands into the cold water to lift out another sheet. He hadn’t said anything more, but the words stuck in her head like a burr.

Did he believe the marriage lines were real?

They’ll accuse me of making it up .

He couldn’t think that document had been manufactured somehow.

He’d been there when she found where Marguerite had hidden the page, glued to the back cover of her Book of Hours.

He’d seen her lifting the parchment. He must know that no one could conceivably accuse him, Malden Grey, of making so skillful a forgery.

But he’d seen Amaranthe’s work. He knew she could mimic any hand. And if she could do that, it was not such a leap to suppose she could create a document that looked like a set of marriage lines that a betrayed woman had claimed existed but no one had ever found.

He might think she had forged his mother’s marriage lines.

Amaranthe stood as if caught in the stare of a basilisk. That would explain his sudden reserve.

He might very well think that somehow, in the course of an afternoon, she had created an official-looking document and tucked it away in a book that elsewhere bore the signature of Marguerite, Lady Vernay, which would make it appear valid.

To gain what?

Why, to make the bastard, the would-be barrister who’d offered to marry her, into a legitimate duke.

He didn’t believe her.

It was such a shocking discovery that she could barely believe it herself.

Yet she was an antiquarian. Her field was full of stories of treasures found in the spines or margins of ancient books, of priceless volumes unearthed in the unlikeliest places.

It was perhaps the one field aside from archaeology where spectacular discoveries were almost routine.

But to the outside world, of course it would look like a coincidence too wild to be believed.

Amaranthe fed a heavy, sodden sheet into the wringer. Her heart flopped painfully about her chest. Mal had left to travel alone. Perhaps he meant to withdraw his offer of marriage. Just when she understood what he meant to her, he was trying to extricate himself from what they’d shared.

The knowledge shredded her. Through tears she focused on the task at hand. What could she do to make him believe her?

“What church did you say Marguerite was married in?”

At Bea’s curious glance, Amaranthe smiled. “Prying again, I know. But after getting her book back, I am more curious than ever. And I think you said the church she was married in was not the church where her memorial lies.”

Bea leaned on the crank, squeezing out the last bit of water, and pushed a lock of damp hair away from her face. “St. Mary Redcliffe, that Gothic old church across the river. I think it’s naught but a gloomy old wreck, but Marguerite always loved those ancient, spooky things.

“I was there, you know,” Beatrice said quietly after a long moment had passed.

“As her witness. Our parents were so angry about the match, it broke her heart. They knew a tradesman’s daughter could never be a duchess.

The high folk wouldn’t allow it; they would hound our poor delicate girl to her grave.

But she loved him so much, was so wild to marry him—I couldn’t break her heart further by abandoning her, too.

“Signed the register with my mark, or thought I did, me and one of young Vernay’s friends.

I told her to bring a copy away, knowing the old duke would storm and threaten, and right I was, wasn’t I?

But when she couldn’t find her copy, and all my searching could turn up no trace—I went to the priest and asked to see the register.

” Beatrice dabbed at her eye with her apron.

“There was no record in it. I don’t know what I signed, or what happened to that paper, but it was all a charade after all. ”

Amaranthe laid a hand on the other woman’s arm, squeezing gently. “What of the priest who married them? Or the other witness?”

Beatrice sniffed and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “The priest said perhaps Marguerite was better off where she was. And I had to agree. The duke was so powerful, so outraged—he would have made her life a misery, and Mal’s too. At least here she lived among people who loved her.

“It broke her to bits when he left her, but she had some moments of happiness in her life. I don’t know if she’d have had a minute of that, had she gone with the young lord. He never returned for her while she lived, did he? She was just a lark to him. He couldn’t have loved her true.”

Amaranthe bit her lip to keep from blurting anything that would not, in the end, prove a solace. Beatrice believed she had done right and had come to terms with it. The proof had disappeared, and Mal wanted to go on that way.

And possibly he didn’t believe the proof, because Amaranthe had produced it.

“Will you marry him, then?” Bea asked after they had stretched another set of linens to dry and the sun wheeled high above the yard behind the inn.

Amaranthe ducked her head and busied herself draping pillowcases over the bushes. It was a good day for drying, the spring sun high and warm, but the flush in her face was not due to sunshine.

“We’ve not settled anything.”

Of course he didn’t want to marry her, now that he’d had time to consider.

Now that he’d seen her roots, her humble past, knew how Reuben’s treatment had soiled her.

He’d only proposed marriage because that man from the Middle Temple advised him to marry.

The moment she’d trapped him into it, creating a ruse to delude Reuben, he’d seen the folly of his ways.

And now his situation had changed. He was likely to win guardianship of the ducal children, and that responsibility would prove his steadiness to the Benchers. He’d be called to the bar with or without a clever wife.

“But you want to.” Bea snapped a sheet and the white linen leapt through the air, shading her for a moment from the sun. “Marry him, that is.”

Amaranthe didn’t answer, but her heart ached with a truth she didn’t dare say aloud.

Oh, yes, she wanted to marry Malden Grey.

He had won her completely, heart and soul.

She was ready to change her entire life, give up her many subterfuges for him, and he might have already moved on.

The thought cleaved her like a sword, leaving her gasping.

He might decide she was not the wife for him after all, and she would be left desolate, loving him her whole life, hopeless and alone.

Horse hooves clattered in the coaching yard, but without the creak of a wheeled vehicle or the blowing of a horn announcing the arrival of a coach.

That meant a traveler on horseback, perhaps a wealthy one.

Bea wiped her hands on her apron and straightened her cap, heading toward the covered passage that led from the back gardens to the innyard.

Amaranthe dawdled, feeding another sheet into the wringer, when she heard Bea exclaim.

“Mr. Illingworth!”

Joseph, here? Amaranthe dropped the sheet, picked up her skirts, and pelted through the passage. Joseph swung down from a hired horse, his coat dusty from the road, his boots dull with dirt, his expression worn and grim.

“Joseph! What’s happened? Where is Miss Pettigrew?”

“Miss Pettigrew!” He spat onto the cobbles, and the horse shied and snorted as the ostler came forward to take it by the bridle. “Miss Pettigrew,” he said with a sneer, “is on her way to the Scottish border, to Gretna Green I don’t doubt, in the company of Viktor Vierling.”

“Captain Vierling? Mal’s friend? Why?” Amaranthe cried in bewilderment.

“Why do you think?” Joseph shouted. “She’s in love with him!

The whole time I was courting her, she was letting him dangle after her.

He came after us on the road and walked into the chapel where I was waiting to say our vows.

” He strode angrily toward the common room of the inn, and Amaranthe hurried after him.

“Her family doesn’t approve, of course. A Hessian? A military man, when they are people of peace? So she’s gone with him to Gretna Green, and I’m the fool left at the altar in my best coat with all that money spent on a special license.”

“You were in the chapel?” Amaranthe echoed. “You were to marry, and I wasn’t there?”

Joseph didn’t seem to hear her, nor notice how her steps checked as he strode into the coffee room. “Your Littlejohn will serve spirits at this hour, won’t he? I mean to drink my troubles away.” He looked around. “Where’s Grey?”

Amaranthe pressed her hands to her cheeks. She felt like screaming. First, Mal was a duke but wouldn’t tell anyone, and she’d said she would marry him when she couldn’t, and now her brother had been left at the altar by a woman he thought an angel come to earth.

“Mal—Mr. Grey went back to London to see to the suit about his guardianship. There’s been a new development.”

Joseph marched to the bar and pounded on the counter to draw someone’s attention. “I want to return to London as well,” he said. “As soon as possible. I never want to set foot in Gloucestershire again, or anywhere near it.”

“Of course,” Amaranthe said, sweeping her own concerns aside. She had always done so for Joseph. Her life had always centered around Joseph, from birth, following the example of their parents. They were kind to Amaranthe, but Joseph was their son and the rock they would look to in their old age.

Their father had included Amaranthe in lessons so she might be a companion to Joseph and a help in his work someday.

Their mother had planned meals and outings and holidays around what Joseph wanted, and Amaranthe had learned to do the same.

He was the elder, but she looked out for him.

She had no idea how to heal a broken heart, but whatever he asked of her, she would do.

Her parents hadn’t lived to see their pride and faith in their son proven, or to have him as the prop of their old age. It was her task to help him become the man he was meant to be.

“We can leave on the next stagecoach, if you wish it,” she said dully.

Never mind that Joseph hadn’t written to tell her he was to marry, much less invite her to the ceremony.

She would let him explain his reasons later, when he had his temper on a leash.

At least they were returning to London, and Mal.

Though she wasn’t certain if Mal wanted to see her, either, considering she was the bearer of a secret he didn’t want known.

Their lives had been so quiet, mere weeks ago. Steady and soothing, just as Amaranthe liked. Now love had swept through and turned them both upside down, shaking away their serenity, shattering them in pieces. And neither of them would be the same again.