“I just still feel guilty, letting him believe his debts will remain unpaid. ”
“You know he never would have left otherwise. ”
“I know. ” She bit her lip. “Will you have a difficult time finding another buyer?”
“I don’t expect so. It’s a choice piece of land, even if the cottage is modest. The Earl of Vinterre expressed some interest in it. Wants to tear down the place and build an Italianate palace overlooking the river. ”
“Oh, dear. I may vomit. ”
Laurent passed her the basin. It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d been ill on this journey. Nor even the second, or fifth. Apparently her unborn child didn’t enjoy coach travel any more than she did.
Afterward, he soothed her back. “Don’t be upset. I’ll find another buyer. ”
“No, don’t. ” She pressed her sleeve to her mouth. “I think it would be easier to see Briarbank razed than inhabited by another family. Sell it to Vinterre, and do it quickly. ”
The sooner all the dealings were completed, the sooner Jack’s debts could be paid. And the sooner that happened, the sooner Amelia could return to Braxton Hall, pockets empty but heart undivided. She would set about convincing her husband that she was devoted to him, above all.
The coach made its creaking turn into Bryanston Square and soon lurched to a halt before the house. Laurent helped her alight from the carriage.
At the door, they were met by a wild-eyed Winifred. After sparing Amelia a brief nod, she latched on to Laurent’s arm. “Oh, thank goodness you’re finally home. I’m beside myself, utterly. We need to order more wine—whole casks of it, likely. And spirits for the gentlemen. ” She pulled her husband into the house, and Amelia followed them over the threshold.
“The fish course is a horrid dilemma. Naturally this would happen on a Monday, when there’s no decent fish to be had for gold or silver. Naught but common oysters in the market. ” Her voice pitched a half-octave closer to hysteria. “I can’t serve oysters to a duchess!”
Amelia laughed. “I shall do just fine with oysters, thank you. You’ve served them to me many a time before. ”
Her sister-in-law turned to her, wearing a puzzled expression. “Forgive me, Amelia. But of course I didn’t mean you. ”
Of course not. Amelia sighed.
Winifred’s voice lowered to a whisper. “Her Grace, the Duchess of Hampstead will be joining us for dinner. I’ve just received the note from one of my dinner guests, Mrs. Nodwell. Her cousin is married to Her Grace’s nephew’s adopted brother, you see?”
Amelia didn’t, but she nodded politely anyway.
Winifred turned back to Laurent, pulling him into the Rose Salon, where servants were removing porcelain cherubs from the shelves and pushing the furniture to the sides of the room. “Obviously,” she said, “I couldn’t decline. And then Mrs. Petersham sent a note round, asking if she might bring her cousins visiting from Bath. I couldn’t say no to them, either. And now these cards keep coming …” She gestured toward the row of calling cards propped on the mantel. “I do believe tonight we’re going to be overrun with Quality. ”
“But …” Amelia shook her head to dispel her confusion. “At this time of summer? Why?”
“For you, of course! They all assume you and Morland will be in attendance. Everyone is desperate to see your first public appearance in London since the marriage. ” She lifted an eyebrow. “There are some very interesting”—she pronounced each syllable distinctly, EEN-ter-est-ting—“rumors coming out of Oxfordshire, you know. ”
A bittersweet smile curved Amelia’s lips. She’d known there would be gossip, after that display at the Granthams’. The memory of that night—the dancing, the lovemaking, the conversation and sweet embraces lasting into morning—it wrung her heart with surprising ferocity. The pain made her think of Spencer’s broken ribs. She hoped they were healing well.
Lord, she missed him, with everything she had.
Moving to the side of the room, she took a seat on a recently relocated footstool. “Well, I fear your guests will be disappointed,” she told Winifred. “I’m not feeling well enough for socializing this evening, and the duke is not even in Town. ”
“But he is!”
Amelia’s jaw dropped. “He is?”
“Yes, he arrived this very morning in Mayfair, and the news has already appeared in the afternoon papers. ” Winifred snapped her fingers at a footman. “Not there. By the window. ”
Amelia quietly reeled, trying not to betray the magnitude of her shock. Spencer was here in Town? Could he have any idea of her own arrival? And what about Claudia? Where was she?
As Winifred went into another flurry of instructions for the servants, Laurent crouched at Amelia’s side. “Shall I have the carriage take you to Morland House?”
“No, no. ” She couldn’t see him like this, not yet. She wasn’t prepared. She wasn’t even certain he’d want to see her. “I will send him a note. ”
With a few more snaps of Winifred’s fingers, a lap desk and quill materialized before Amelia. The paper was a terrifying expanse of white. She was afraid to lay her pen to it at all, fearful of marring that blank perfection with the wrong word and mucking up everything again. In the end, she simply wrote:
I am here in Town, at my brother’s house. You are invited to dinner this evening.
—A.
There. If he wished to see her, he would know where to find her. Laurent dispatched a runner with the note, and Amelia passed two fretful hours unpacking in her old, modest bedchamber whilst Winifred renovated the downstairs. Finally, just as light was fading, she glimpsed the runner through her open window as he made for the house’s back entrance. She rushed down the service stairs to find the boy.
“Well?” she asked him breathlessly, once she’d collared the youth. He held a folded paper in his hand. “Is that my reply?”
He shook his head no. “The duke weren’t at home, ma’am. Footman told me he’d gone out for a game of cards. ”
A game of cards? He’d come back to London just for a game of cards?
“Go back there,” she told the boy. “Find out where he’s gone, and find His Grace to give him that note. Don’t bother coming back until you do. ”
“Yes, ma’am. ”
She released the lad, and he darted off the way he’d come.
Circling one palm over her belly—a habit she’d already developed, even though her abdomen didn’t protrude yet—she took deep breaths and tried to remain calm.
Hours later, she was panicking.
Laurent’s house was crushed, wall to wall, with guests. They’d begun arriving shortly after sundown and continued to stream in even now. The entirety of Bryanston Square was congested with coaches and teams. Most of the recent arrivals didn’t even seem to understand they were lacking an invitation. Amelia wasn’t certain they knew whose house they were at; they were just following the crowd. Winifred’s food had run out hours ago, much to her despair, but her reinforcements of wine and spirits were holding strong for the moment. No one showed the slightest inclination to leave.
In the hall, the hired quartet gamely played over and through the din of rumor and laughter. A few couples carved out enough space to dance a cramped quadrille.
Amelia couldn’t imagine why they all hadn’t given up and gone home hours ago. The duke’s absence was obvious, and tonight she lacked the spirit to compensate with flirtation and witty remarks. Even with every window thrown open to the night air and the barest minimum of candles burning, the air in the rooms was exceedingly close, and Amelia had done her best to seek out the few pockets of relative seclusion. Whenever someone asked after Spencer, she murmured a few words of excuse. Recently arrived in town, delayed by business … et cetera.
She was on the verge of slipping out entirely and hiring a hack to Morland House, where she could perhaps find some restful
quiet and wait for Spencer in peace. Then the musicians struck up the first few bars of a waltz, and a raucous male voice called out, “Not yet! Not yet!”
Bemused, she watched as every head in the room swiveled toward the ancient clock, where the short hand wavered just on the brink of twelve. A collective hush amplified the tick, tick, tick … as then the long hand swept past the ten. Amelia suddenly understood why the guests wouldn’t give up on the duke and simply go home.
They were waiting for the hour of twelve, of course. Breathless with anticipation to see if the Duke of Midnight would remain true to his name.
And that realization began the longest ten minutes of Amelia’s life.
She passed the first five minutes asking after and then slowly imbibing a glass of tepid lemonade.
By straightening every seam of her gloves, she managed to while away another two.
Then there came a dark, endless minute in which guilt and regret swamped her, and doubt followed close behind. Perhaps he wouldn’t come because he was still angry and didn’t want to see her. Perhaps he had no use for her now, since she was already with child.
Another minute ticked past, and she scolded herself. If he didn’t appear tonight, it meant nothing. Except that he was off somewhere else, and she would see him the next day. Or the next.
And then the entire assembly passed the final minute simply waiting, watching, listening to the clock’s inexorable ticks. When the slender minute hand finally clicked into unison with the squat hour hand, the room went dead silent. And then the clock’s cuckoo bird popped out from its window and cheerfully mocked them all.
Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Twelve. Dratted. Times. The wretched little wooden creature had probably never enjoyed such a rapt audience.
It was midnight. And no duke had arrived.
Well, that was that.
Now the party was truly over. The musicians struck up a waltz, as they’d no doubt been bribed to do, but no one cared. The guests murmured amongst themselves on mundane, uninteresting topics, in the way people do when they’re thinking of leaving a party.
A week’s worth of fatigue settled on Amelia’s shoulders. For heaven’s sake, she needed to rest. She pressed forward through the packed drawing room, heading for the little pocket door behind the pianoforte. It led to a service corridor, and she could use it to make her escape upstairs.
“Amelia, wait. ”
The deep voice rang out over the crowd. Over the musicians. Over even the violent pounding of her heart.
“Wait right there. Please. ”
Well, that couldn’t be Spencer. She’d just heard the word “please. ” She wheeled around anyway and felt positively biblical when the crowd thronging the hall parted like the Red Sea. And there, standing at the other end of that freshly carved valley of humanity, was her husband. The tardy Duke of Midnight.
“It’s ten past,” she couldn’t help but say. “You’re late. ”
“I’m sorry,” he said earnestly, starting toward her. “I came as soon as I could. ”
She shook her head, astonished. Not only “please,” but “sorry” now? In public, no less? Was this man truly her husband?
But of course he was. There was no other man on earth so handsome.
“Stay there,” he said again. “I’m coming to you. ”
He took an awkward, hobbled step in her direction, and then another. A grimace pulled at his mouth. His injuries were clearly still paining him. As gratifying as it was to watch him at long last moving across a dance floor toward her, and not some preening debutante, she realized this was going to take far too long.
“For heaven’s sake, stay put,” she said. Her heel caught on the carpet fringe as she hurried toward him, and she would have fallen to the floor without the well-timed assistance of a smartly dressed gentleman in green velvet. It made her conscious, as she met her husband halfway and he pulled her into a tight embrace, that they were being observed by one and all. And “all,” in this case, referred to hundreds.