“Across the Aegean. I know it all sounds unbelievable and wild but the truth is, I’ve discovered my old friend is being held a prisoner and about to be forced into marriage against her will. Only
now has she finally got a message out that reached me. She needs my help.”
“But can’t someone else help her?”
Lord Ludbridge looked censorious for a split-second, before his expression softened. “I know this is difficult for you to understand, especially in the wake of my marriage offer. But Bella is my childhood friend. I am the one person she is able to trust. Please allow me the time I need to salvage my conscience. After that, you will be my entire focus in life. When I return, we will make arrangements for our wedding to take place in just the three weeks required for calling the banns, though you are at liberty to announce to whomever you choose that I have vowed to wed you on my return. I will write to you every day. I promise.”
Araminta couldn’t believe it.
He rose, though she’d snaked her hand up his arm to try to elicit another bout of passion. It seemed, though, that he had made up his mind to put aside all possibility of carnal delights.
Her brain was in a desperate whirl. She had to make him change his mind. At least before he left. “When are you going?”
“I leave on the dawn crossing tomorrow.”
“So soon!”
“The sooner I leave, the sooner I’ll be back.” He smiled as if this would please her, drawing her toward the door, toward the destruction of her dreams, her best-laid plans. “Bella is in terrible trouble. I may not in fact be in time to avert the disaster that threatens to destroy her life. I know this sounds very dramatic, but please be assured that all my loyalties lie with you, Araminta...my only true love.”
At the door, he drew her up against him, and rested her head against his chest. “I have to behave as honor dictates.” Softly, he stroked her hair. “I have found you. It seems incredible to me, but you have saved me. Now we can look forward to a long and wonderful life together. You have made me the happiest man, and I thank you for that.” His voice was thick with emotion. “But first I must do what is right. This other long-distant part of my life will not interfere with our happiness but the only way I can live with my conscience is if I set to rights what I have been asked to do. And what it is in my power to do.”
“So you leave...in the morning?”
“Yes. But my love, I have sent a letter to your father, requesting that I might visit him upon my return. I’ve also brought my journey forward by several days in order to reduce the time I will be away. I felt that was preferable.”
“Oh no, I’d have rather have had another couple of days together. I...can’t bear it, Teddy. I’ll die without you!”
He chuckled and hugged her closer against him, shaking his head at her attempts to claw him into another passionate kiss. “Too dangerous, my precious,” he whispered. “And we have been away long enough. Come, let us return to the merry throng, where we can announce our news.”
“Perhaps my father should give his consent first.” She felt dead inside, her words wooden, yet her brain was in a whirl as to how she could manage this death knell to her hopes and dreams. So he would leave in the morning? She couldn’t let him just go like this without...
He took her hand and drew her outside. “Of course, you are right. My goodness, look at those fireworks. I shall always remember this as the happiest night of my life. The night you consented to be my wife.”
Araminta nodded, tears threatening at the back of her eyes, her throat nearly closed up with the bitter taste of impending doom.
As a shower of sparks lit up the sky, she felt as if she too were about to burst into a million tiny fragments.
Chapter Eighteen
Once again, Lissa rattled the doorknob of her attic bedchamber and called for help. Through the grubby glass, she could see the attic rooms of many of the four-square houses about her but no frightened faces pressed to any of them. No faces at all.
The servants could hear her, she was certain. The attic was only one floor up from the nursery and two floors up from the family’s bedchambers. Perhaps the children had been removed so they’d not remark upon her surely audible cries. Perhaps the servants had been cautioned not to make contact.
Perhaps she’d be imprisoned here forever.
She heard the clock chime 9 p.m. Then ten.
Cosmo had left her three hours since, triumphantly bearing the sketch she’d tried to hide from him. A lie. An evil lie and if only she could get a message to Ralph, those in high places would know it too. Cosmo had laughed when he’d come upon her portfolio of work, a sketchbook filled with likenesses of various personages.
“Oh my, just look at those feathers drooping down to tickle that turkey neck. It’s Lady Smythe to a tee,” he’d remarked, becoming conversational when he’d discovered this resource that gave him such an edge. “You never told me about these.”
Lissa just sat hunched on a chair by the window. “They were for practice only,” she muttered. “I never intended that anyone should see them.”
“Indeed, you could hardly have induced Her Ladyship to pay for something that so cruelly exposed her dubious claims to beauty. Such clever caricatures, I will give you that.” He’d continued to turn the pages, shaking his head and frowning as he’d assessed each sketch. It was only when he turned to the final page and beheld the sketch she’d done of Sir Aubrey in company with Lord Smythe that he nodded approvingly.
“You appear to have caught them in earnest conversation. Or perhaps in the midst of plotting the government’s downfall, they look so serious.” Without asking, he neatly tore the page from the sketchbook. “Thank you, Miss Hazlett. I think this will please Lord Debenham. At least it’ll get me off the hook.”
“And what about me?”