And with that, he gave her a bow and a worried look, then headed to the door. He paused. “Send word to me if you need assistance.”
She nodded, and she knew he would return immediately if she called. It was one of the reasons she adored him.
And then he was gone. Full of purpose, as ever.
She took Margaret by the hand and led her into the morning salon. Forbes, who was trailing behind like a worried mother cat, hesitated at the door.
“Please send tea at once,” she instructed. Relieved to be given a task in the face of female distress, he headed off.
Beatrice clasped Margaret’s hand in hers, guided her to a settee, and eased her onto it.
But immediately, Margaret popped up and began striding about.
Alarm rattled through her.
Margaret did not stride. She usually glided with feminine elegance.
“I have been thinking about this since the day of your wedding,” Margaret began. “I can’t stop thinking about it. And…I cannot marry.”
Margaret kept saying this, and each time, she seemed to grow more resolved. Still, Beatrice would not leap to conclusions. She would stay calm. She had to. Otherwise, disaster could ensue.
“Your marriage is in but two days’ time,” she reminded gently.
“No, it is not,” Margaret declared firmly, stopping, swinging a gaze so hard Beatrice nearly gasped at her. “I will not marry Kit,” she announced, her delicate hands balling into fists.
It was all she seemed to be able to say. Repeating the same firm maxim again and again but not explaining why.
Beatrice stopped her cousin’s striding by gently but firmly touching her arm. “I understand you will not marry him. But…why?”
Margaret’s face twisted with anger and pain. “I have tricked him into marrying me. It is false.”
“No, it is not,” Beatrice protested. “Kit loves you.”
“He loves some image of me that is not true,” she rushed. “I am not the heiress he believed, Beatrice. He has no idea what I truly am.”
Her heart began to beat wildly in her chest. She didn’t know what to say to Margaret’s claim.
She’d never thought that Margaret would feel so strongly. After all, Kit had declared his love for her, and Margaret for him, even before her father had lost all their money.
This was an astonishing happenstance, and she began to feel the ground slipping out from under her feet like sand at the seashore.
“Margaret, perhaps you are being rash in this,” she urged. “You do not wish to reject Kit, do you?”
“Indeed I do,” she said, her voice breaking. “It is a mistake. Marrying him is a terrible, terrible mistake. When he asked me, he thought I was an entirely different person.”
“You haven’t changed at all, Maggie,” Beatrice insisted. “You’re just…”
“Financially ruined?” Margaret ground out fiercely.
She did not cry.
There were no tears in Margaret’s eyes; there was only outrage.
“And Father kept this from me,” she stated. “And William, even though he knows, would keep it from me. Only you, Beatrice, are honest, and that’s because you’re a woman.” Margaret’s face transformed into a veritable firebrand. “I have no wish to marry into the world of men, where men betray ladies daily.”
Beatrice did not know what to say, because she wasn’t entirely certain she could argue with her cousin.
The terrible, unrelenting truth was, most men did deceive women. In little ways.