“Mr. Metcalf!”
Simon realized he’d started to rise again when the doctor growled at him. He subsided, but didn’t shift his attention from Lydia’s troubled expression. He loathed the scouring shame he read in her eyes. Between them, those wretches Berwick and the late duke had scarred his girl’s spirit. Heaven grant him time and care to heal all her wounds.
“I do indeed know why.” Simon pitched his voice so that everyone standing around him would hear. He disregarded the doctor who still fiddled with the wound. “You’re not going to marry Berwick because you love me, just as I love you. You’re not going to marry him because you’re going to marry me.”
Over her shoulder he caught a flash of satisfaction on Cam’s aristocratic features while anger darkened Berwick’s broad face. Then Simon’s attention focused on Lydia. This matter was purely between him and the woman he loved. Devil take the rest of the world.
Her face pale, she drew back to sit on her heels, burying her hands in her crushed and stained skirts. Her amber eyes were dazed. “M-marry?”
“Yes, of course, marry. What on earth did you think I intended?” He stretched out his uninjured arm to catch her hand in his once more.
She still looked as though someone had hit her with a hammer. What the deuce was wrong with the girl? He was the one lightheaded from loss of blood. Surely she must have known he sought marriage, if not when she first saw him again, then definitely last night. At Simon’s side, the doctor’s busy hands had fallen still as he hung on every word.
“Lydia, you are committed to me!” Grenville puffed up like an angry adder and stepped closer, as if intending to haul her to her feet and back to Town. “I refuse to release you from your obligations.”
Hauteur settled on Lydia’s features as she regarded her former betrothed. Briefly, in spite of differences in coloring, she looked exactly like her autocratic brother.
“I am not your possession, sir,” she said coldly. “You don’t own me like you would a horse or a hound. My heart and my hand are mine to dispose of as I wish. And you, Sir Grenville, are no longer my choice.”
Berwick staggered back as though she’d shoved him. The bluster fled his manner just like air escaping a bellows. Simon found it in him to experience a twinge of sympathy for the fellow. “You don’t mean that. We were set to become the most brilliant couple in London. Together, there was nothing we couldn’t accomplish. You’re throwing away a glittering future for the sake of a pair of blue eyes, madam. I hadn’t thought you so foolish.”
Simon saw Berwick glance at Cam and realized that at least part of Lydia’s appeal for the ambitious baronet lay in her closeness to the influential Duke of Sedgemoor. The brief flash of pity evaporated. She’d always deserved better than this self-serving cur.
“Perhaps.” The ice melted from Lydia’s voice. Her grip on Simon’s hand firmed as if she drew strength from him. “I can’t marry you, Grenville. Not when I love someone else. Surely you don’t want a wife who pines for another man.”
Temper flared in Berwick’s eyes and he lunged in Lydia’s direction. “You have treated me ill, madam. I should expect no better from a woman whose mother’s name is a byword for harlotry.”
“Dear heavens…” Lydia whispered, ripping her hand from Simon’s and scrambling out of reach. Her cheeks were ashen.
Simon at last made it to his feet, breaking free of the doctor. Striving to stay upright, he sucked in a shuddering breath and glowered at Grenville. Nobody spoke like that to the woman he loved. “Watch your tongue, sir. I still have a bullet in my gun and the right, by God, to use it.”
/> Lydia rose to stand at Simon’s side, her hand pressed to his back. “Grenville—”
“Any insult to my sister is an insult to me.” Cam’s tone was frigid enough to strike chips of ice from the air. “I find myself delighted that you won’t be joining my family after all, Sir Grenville.”
Berwick scowled at the three of them, then with a curse, flung the exquisite little gun to the ground so hard that it bounced on the wet grass. “Be damned to you, sir. Whatever your exalted name, in reality, you have no idea who your father is. And as far as your lightskirt sister goes—”
“That’s enough, Sir Grenville,” Cam said in a voice that made even Simon shiver. He suddenly seemed impossibly tall and threatening. “It’s time for you to return to Town.”
Berwick exhaled in disgust, but for all his belligerence, his answer emerged defeated. “Aye, I’ll return to Town and bless the day I broke with the mongrel Rothermeres.”
He turned on his heel and stalked toward his carriage. His second had waited far enough away to miss the details of the conversation, but he must have seen his associate receive his marching orders. After a dismayed look at Cam, he scurried after Berwick.
“Good riddance,” Cam said softly.
Simon lurched around to curl his good arm around Lydia’s shoulders, despite the doctor’s protests at the movement. “He isn’t worth the dirt beneath your feet, beloved.”
“And he’ll find himself without a seat after the next election if I have any say,” Cam said harshly. “Sir Grenville Berwick has risen as high as he’s going to.”
“I jilted him. You can’t blame him for being angry,” Lydia said in a subdued voice.
“I can blame him for forgetting that he’s at least nominally a gentleman,” Cam retorted. He turned to the doctor. “Dr. West, you are welcome to share my carriage back to Town if you have no wish to travel with Sir Grenville.”
The doctor bowed. “Thank you, Your Grace. I still have to tend to my patient.”
“Leave your infernal meddling,” Simon insisted. “You can wait five minutes.”
The doctor cast him an offended glare before he stepped back with obvious reluctance. He clearly relished sharing in the dramatic events surrounding Lady Lydia Rothermere’s broken engagement. The story wouldn’t suffer in the retelling either, Simon knew, wishing the nosy sawbones to Hell.