The Honourable Fortune Hunter (Scandalous Miss Brightwells 5)

Despair overwhelmed her, making her limp.

If this was what marriage was about, then Lizzy wanted none of it.

Chapter 19

Theo took the long way from Quamby House on his way to the village to check on the chaise-and-four. He could have cut across the fields from the back, but a more gentler meandering route around the lake would take him past the folly where he’d last seen Lizzy.

If he passed her on a walk and she was alone, he could apologise. He’d like one final opportunity to hopefully convey something of what he felt, without committing too much of his heart and compromising his integrity. For the truth was, he was marrying against his inclination but doing so for his honour.

And Amelia’s safety. That, after all, was what this was about.

On a small knoll by the folly, he stopped to watch a mother duck shepherding her ducklings across the flat surface. A weak sun bathed the landscape in its glory, and all was silent and unmoving.

Except the ducks. The gentle scolding and splashing of water reminded him of home. Watching the ducks in the pond at the bottom of the garden of his own childhood home had been an enjoyable pastime when he’d been a boy and he and his sister would launch their paper boats to watch the ducklings scatter.

Such pleasure at these ruminations was interrupted by a noise that was at odds with nature’s rustles and birdsong. He raised his head and listened. The sound issued very distinctly, yet muffled, from the nearby folly.

He tensed as he heard it again. He’d thought it was a cry, the first time, but now it sounded more like a moan. Theo hesitated, embarrassed at having perhaps interrupted some trysting couple, but immediately he remembered that Lizzy had come this way. And that Dalgleish had preceded her. He thought of the two of them the previous night, laughing together, and his gut clenched.

Lizzy’s inclination for Theo had been superceded by Dalgleish’s charms, and although Theo knew he should have felt pleased for her, the truth was that jealousy speared him.

He was on the verge of moving away when the cry was repeated, and this time it was plainly one of protest, not ecstasy.

Theo’s senses were suddenly on high alert. Was Lizzy within those walls? Suffering something she did not want at the hands of Dalgleish?

Spinning on his heel, Theo leapt over the uneven riverbank and tore across the snow-encrusted grass towards the folly. The air frosted in front of him and the cold seared his lungs as he ran, hoping he’d soon find that his instincts were wrong.

If Dalgleish were doing something against Lizzy’s will, then he wouldn’t know what had hit him. Lizzy, a total innocent, would have no idea of what it was to be ruined—until it was too late.

And Theo was not going to let that happen if it was within his power.

Throwing open the door, he hesitated as he oriented himself in the dim light. The curtains were drawn, but a candle burned on a low table. It took him a second to locate Lizzy pressed against the wall, Dalgleish supporting himself with one hand against the stonework while the other fumbled with Lizzy’s skirts.

Her frightened eyes stared over Dalgleish’s shoulder, straight into Theo’s, but they registered nothing, and for a moment, Theo wondered if he’d inadvertently stumbled upon what might have been a prenuptial act of mutual passion.

Until a second glance confirmed that Lizzy’s eyes were glazed with horror, and that she was standing mute and unresisting as this man who’d won her trust was attempting to do the unspeakable.

Suddenly, he was reliving Catherine’s horror all those months before, after Jane and Amelia had sent him in pursuit of the man who’d stolen her at the behest of her uncle. The man who intended to wed her the following day, but who was laying claim to her early so she’d be in an impossible position to say no.

Theo had been too late to save Catherine.

But he was not too late to save Lizzy.

“Get your hands off her, you filthy swine!” he bellowed, hurling himself onto Dalgleish and knocking him to the ground.

With a whimper, Lizzy slid down the wall, crawling towards the bed as the two men grappled with one another.

“How dare you interrupt a lover’s tryst,” snarled Dalgleish, throwing Theo off and rising to his feet with his fists clenched.

The sight of two buttons undone on the front fall of Dalgleish’s breeches was more than Theo could take. “You took advantage of an innocent girl who trusted you!” Theo leapt forward, ducking as Dalgleish swung a meaty fist in his direction. “You call yourself a gentleman?” He stepped back, adroitly missing a second thrust, pivoted, then landed a satisfying blow to the other man’s nose.

Blood spurted and Dalgleish lunged, grasping Theo round the neck as his full weight took them both to the ground. “Lizzy and I are to be married. She came willingly,” Dalgleish hissed in Theo’s ear just before Theo broke free, staggering to his feet and swinging round to check on Lizzy.

Shocked and pale, she clung to the four-poster. “I didn’t mean this to happen!” Her voice shook. “Stop it, please! Both of you!”

“Did he hurt you, Lizzy?” Theo asked, his question cut short as Dalgleish came up from behind, grasping his neck linen in an attempt to choke him as he pushed him back against the wall.

With Dalgleish holding the advantage and using his full weight against Theo, Theo realised he must now be experiencing the same desperate, choking feeling as Lizzy had, just moments before. Struggling, he ground out, “Release me! I welcome your advances as much as Lizzy did, Dalgleish!”