by Merry Farmer
“We don’t have a chance of winning now,” he said, moving to stand between her and the house. “Malcolm is fit to be tied, and Alex isn’t much better. We’ve lost the letter, which means our problems are just beginning.”
To Armand’s surprise, Lavinia glanced down, her cheeks going pink, but not in alarm or panic. “I suppose you’ll want to go off with your friends to make things right, then,” she said instead.
“Of course,” he said. “We’ll need to put Malcolm’s plan into motion by writing another letter and sending it to the press. We may all have to return to London earlier than anticipated.”
Lavinia glanced up at him, her expression pinched. “India. London. Where to next? Peru?”
Inwardly, Armand winced. “I mean for you to come to London with me, of course. I need you to find a suitable place for us to live.”
She nodded, but he had the distinct impression his words hadn’t actually made anything better. “I’m sure Mama already has half a dozen places in mind.”
“I’m sure.” Armand attempted to grin, but instead of turning into a moment they could share, Lavinia glanced off over the cricket pitch.
“It appears as though the match has ended,” she said with a sigh, then met his eyes. “You’d better go back to your friends.”
“Lavinia.” He took a step closer to her, reaching for her hands. “It feels like whatever I say is the wrong thing and whatever I do only makes a bigger muddle of things. Please, tell me what I can do to make things right between us.”
She glanced up at him, a spark of hope in her beautiful eyes. He squeezed her hands harder, praying that she would say something that he could act on. He was ready to abandon everything else but her if she told him to.
“I need to know that you’re committed to—”
“My lord, Mr. Croydon needs you immediately,” Maxwell called as he dashed across the lawn toward them.
Armand cursed under his breath, cursed his title and position as a peer, cursed Parliament and its machinations, and cursed the blasted day he befriended Malcolm, Alex, and Peter as they’d all lain in their cots in the Crimean battlefield hospital.
“You need to go,” Lavinia said, slipping her hands out of his. “And so do I.”
A chill passed down his spine, making him wonder what she meant. “As soon as this is taken care of, I’ll come find you so we can talk.”
She lowered her eyes and nodded, then turned and headed on to the house.
Everything within Armand wanted to go with her. He wavered on his spot for a moment, debating telling Alex and Malcolm what they could do with their stupid letter.
“My lord?” Maxwell prompted him.
Armand growled and turned away from the house, jogging with Maxwell by his side back to the cricket pitch. As much as he hated it, in that moment, affairs of state needed his attention more than his marriage. The spectators were already leaving and the Indian players were packing up their kits when he arrived.
“I believe this is the prize, gentlemen,” Miss Pennington said, standing from her seat behind the scorer’s table and handing the letter to Shayles.
“Bad luck, lads,” Shayles laughed as he took the letter. “Looks like Gladstone is going to have a tempest on his hands come November. Sooner than that, really.”
“That letter will get you nowhere,” Malcolm snarled at him, the picture of fury. “We’ll have the press believing that letter is a fake in no time.”
“Your plot will fail,” Alex added. “Your club’s days are numbered.”
Shayles continued to laugh. “My club will still be alive and kicking years from now, though I can’t say the same for all of you.” He sent Armand a pointed glance.
It could have been another of Shayles’s baseless, bold threats. The man liked to hear himself talk, especially when he could frighten others by doing it. But Lavinia’s cautions hung in the back of Armand’s mind. Though with Dr. Maqsood away receiving medical treatment, it didn’t seem likely that he was in danger.
“We should leave,” Gatwick said from his standard place by Shayles’s side. “All this country air disagrees with me.”
“You’re right,” Shayles said, still looking at Armand instead of Gatwick. “I trust you’ll allow us to exit your estate without impediment?”
“Over my dead—” Malcolm started.
“Yes, of course,” Armand grumbled. The sooner all of them left Broadclyft Hall, left him and Lavinia alone, the better.
“Come along, then, Gatwick,” Shayles said. “We’ll collect Miller on our way through the village.” There was a menacing note in his tone that made Armand glad he wasn’t Dr. Miller.
“Should we warn Miller that Shayles isn’t in a good mood?” Armand asked a few minutes later as he and his friends and Rupert cleaned up the last of their team’s things.
“Let’s leave them to sort it out amongst themselves,” Alex answered, his eyes narrowed.
It took them half an hour more to set everything to right on the cricket pitch and to direct the servants to take down the tables and chairs that had been brought from the house. By the time Armand started up the hill to the house, Malcolm and Alex walking in silence with him, the sun was already low in the sky.
“We need to get a new letter sent tomorrow,” Alex said as they made their final approach to the front door of Broadclyft Hall. “We need to act faster than Shayles can act.”
Armand surprised his friends by saying, “I want you all out of my house by tomorrow.” When they glanced to him, stupefied, he said, “My marriage has suffered enough already. I need to be alone with Lavinia for a while.”
“I’ll gladly be out of your hair tonight if you tell me this means there will be no India,” Alex said.
Armand sighed. “There was never going to be an India.” He could see that now. Whether by Dr. Maqsood’s alleged alliance with Shayles or simply because he would rather spend his time with Lavinia than patients, India was out of the question.
He was on the verge of explaining as much to his friends when the front door opened. Katya stepped out, carrying her own suitcase and dressed for travel. But to Armand’s distress, Lavinia stepped out after her with a bag of her own, her traveling coat buttoned up tight.
“Lavinia? What are you doing?” he asked rushing ahead of his friends and up the stairs.
“I told you,” she said, her face a mask of misery. “I need to go.”
Chapter 19
Armand rushed up the steps to stand face to face with Lavinia, resting his hands on her arms. “You don’t have to leave,” he said, more passion in his voice than he was used to. “That’s not what I meant at all.”
“No, Armand,” she contradicted him in a quiet voice, her eyes downcast. “I do have to leave. This whole thing was a mistake.” She glanced up at him, an inner strength in her eyes that took him by surprise.
He took a step back. “Mistakes can be corrected,” he said. “I can do better.”
She shook her head. “I thought I could cope with a loveless marriage, but I was wrong.”
Armand’s heart sank and misery tightened every muscle in his body.
“If it was simply a matter of waiting for time to work its wonders and for the two of us to find some degree of love, I could have been patient,” she went on. “But we both know that’s not it. You are a physician, Armand. You will always want to be a physician. I saw the way you treated Lord Malcolm’s knee on the field just now. You loved it. That part of you will always be missing, and I can’t fix it.”
“I don’t—”
“The least I can do is to give you the freedom to pursue the life you want,” she cut him off before he could protest. She attempted to smile. “And this way, I can have the life that I want as well.”
Armand let out a breath, his shoulders drooping in defeat. “You want to be an independent woman,” he said. It’s what she had told him before their lives careened so wildly off track.
She nodded, blinking rapidly as her eyes gre
w watery. “And thanks to you, in a way, I’ll be far better situated to have that independence as Vicountess Helm than I would have as Lady Lavinia. I’ll start my new life at Starcross Castle, and we will both be able to have what we wanted.”
Except that, as she spoke, the gnawing feeling that the picture she was painting wasn’t the life he wanted at all consumed him. He wasn’t sure what he wanted anymore, only that he didn’t want to continue the way things were.
“Mama, what are you doing with that suitcase?” Bianca Marlowe’s question cut through the miserable tension on the stairs. Bianca and Natalia approached Broadclyft Hall’s front entrance looking exhausted and put out as they accompanied their dejected brother up from the cricket pitch. Katya had moved down the stairs and had her head together with Marigold, but she glanced up from the intense tête-à-tête at Bianca’s question.
“Lady Helm and I are leaving for Starcross Castle,” Katya told them. “I’ve instructed Mrs. Ainsworth to have your things packed and to send you along tomorrow.”
Immediately, the two young women broke into sharp protest. “I like Broadclyft Hall,” Natalia whined.
“I want to stay here.” Bianca followed suit.
“Do you need me to travel with you, Mama?” Rupert asked. “Give me half an hour and I can wash and change and have a bag packed.”
Katya looked hesitant for a moment before saying, “All right.” Rupert dashed into the house as she turned to her daughters. “I’ve left the two of you on a long leash for more than long enough. You’ll do as your told and prepare to leave tomorrow. Malcolm can bring you out to Cornwall.”
“Oh no.” Malcolm stepped forward with a wry laugh, limping slightly. “I’m not letting you out of my sight. Besides, if you’re going to Starcross Castle, then I’m coming with you so I can tell Peter all about what just happened here.”
Katya crossed her arms, stepping into Malcolm’s path when he tried to enter the house. She had a mischievous glint in her eyes that increased Armand’s sense of having lost control of the situation. “I think I know a damn sight more about what just went on here than you do,” she said.
“Do you think so?” Malcolm snapped back at her. “We just lost the match with Shayles. He has our letter, and he’s leaving for London immediately.”
“That’s quite right, I am,” Shayles himself said as he stepped out of the house, Gatwick behind him, Carl bringing up the rear with their baggage. Rage joined with the misery tearing through Armand, making him feel even more impotent. “Do forgive us if we fail to stay around for lengthy goodbyes,” Shayles went on, passing them all with barely a side glance as he rushed to the carriage waiting in the drive. “We’ve places to go and people to blackmail. I mean, see.”
It was a sign of just how defeated Armand and his friends were that none of them tried to stop Shayles as he bolted into the carriage. Gatwick climbed in behind him without so much as a word of goodbye. He did send a quick glance to Lavinia, though, if Armand was right. Armand peeked at his wife out of the corner of his eye to find her waving to Gatwick with a weak smile. A sudden burst of jealousy filled Armand. Had something developed between his wife and his cousin in the last few days? Had he been so busy worrying what sort of corrupting influence Shayles would be on Lavinia that he had failed to see the threat Gatwick might pose?
That didn’t feel right either. He tamped down his errant assumptions, reminding himself that he was distraught about too many things and likely seeing things that weren’t there. Although Lavinia had defended his cousin at the cricket match. She’d insisted Mark was the one who warned her of the threat to his life.
As soon as Carl had the baggage secured, Shayles’s carriage rocked into motion, pulling away from the front door. No sooner had they rounded the corner of the drive to the straightaway leading to the road than the horses switched to a run. Shayles was in a hurry to leave. The dust from his departure hadn’t settled when a second carriage, one of the ones that had brought everyone down from Winterberry Park, pulled up.
“This one is ours,” Katya said, nodding to Carl as he jogged over to take her bag. Katya turned to Lavinia. “Are you ready?”
Lavinia drew in a long, shuddering breath. With clear reluctance, she turned to face Armand. “Everything will be better once I’m gone,” she told him. “Your life will return to normal. And while the offer to practice medicine in India might have been false, I’m sure you have the will and the resources to find a way to be the man you want to be regardless.”
“This doesn’t feel right,” Armand said, stepping closer to her and cursing the fact that they still had a full audience of their friends. “I wish you would—”
“What is going on here?”
Armand swayed back and rolled his eyes so hard that he was surprised he didn’t fall over as Lady Prior stormed out of the house. Medicine, female independence, and the trials of Shayles be damned. The real reason he and Lavinia struggled so much to make things work was because of the tsunami of interference they’d been plagued with every second of their married life.
“Lavinia, I demand you go back into the house and change out of that ridiculous traveling costume at once,” Lady Prior demanded.
“Mama, no,” Lavinia said, rubbing her temples and looking as aggravated as Armand felt.
“Don’t you ‘no’ me, girl,” Lady Prior went on, marching up to Lavinia and shaking a finger in her face. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“To Starcross Castle,” Katya answered for Lavinia.
“And I suppose this is your doing?” Lady Prior shrieked, looking like an avenging fiend. “A woman’s place is with her husband,” she snapped at Lavinia before taking on Katya once more. “I never should have let her associate with you in the first place. I was wooed by your lofty title and what I thought it might be able to do for my daughter, but I was wrong. You are the worst possible influence my daughter could have.” She turned back to Lavinia. “Get into the house at one.”
“No, Mama,” Lavinia said with a strength born from being at her wits’ end. “I’m going to Starcross Castle.”
“Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?” Lady Prior turned to Armand. “Stop her at once. She’s your wife.”
“Yes, she is,” Armand said, frowning. He offered his arm to Lavinia. “May I escort you to the carriage?”
Lavinia burst into a grateful smile. “Yes, please.”
She took his arm, and Armand led her down the stairs to where Katya’s driver held the carriage door open. “You’ll still have to wait a bit for Rupert and Malcolm,” he said, “but something tells me you’ll find more peace waiting in here.”
Lavinia nodded and stepped up into the carriage. Behind Armand, Katya and Lady Prior were still bickering, but that gave the two of them a moment of peace. “I’m sorry about all this,” Lavinia said.
Armand huffed a laugh. “It seems we’ve done nothing but apologize to each other in the entirety of our short marriage. I wish we’d had time to truly get to know each other instead.” He lifted her hand to kiss her knuckles before he let it go.
For a moment, Lavinia glanced at him with desperate, pleading eyes. It was enough to make him want to yank her from the carriage and into his arms so that he could hold her and kiss her and promise her that he would never leave her, that things would be different. But how could they be different? Their friends would always crowd around them. His duties to the nation would take him away from her as surely as a ship traveling to a hospital in India. There simply wasn’t an easy way for them to be together.
“Thank you, Armand.” Katya’s tap on his shoulder shook Armand out of any second thoughts he was tempted to have. “I’ve told Carl to let Malcolm and Rupert know that we’re going on ahead now and that we’ll wait for them tonight at an inn in St. Austell.”
“Very well.” Armand gave Lavinia’s hand one final squeeze before stepping back and making way for Katya to climb into the carriage.
Before she did, she reached for hi
s hand. “Everything will work out for the best, you’ll see,” she said. With a glimmer in her eyes, she leaned in and whispered, “Hope may not be as lost as you think it is.”
She backed away from him and climbed into the carriage, leaving Armand puzzled over what she could mean. As far as he could see, there was no hope. He’d lost the letter, he’d lost any chance to defeat Shayles, and he’s lost his wife. And most of it was his own fault.
“Drive on,” he called to the driver once Katya was seated inside.
“What are you doing?” Lady Prior shouted as the carriage rolled away. She rushed down the steps as though she would strike Armand, preventing him from watching as the carriage drove off. “You wretched man! You can’t just let her leave.”
Armand turned to her, pinching the aching spot between his eyes. “Lavinia is not a child. She is a grown woman who has a right to make up her own mind.”
“No, she isn’t,” Lady Prior insisted. “She’s a woman. We never have a right to make up our own minds. That right belongs to our fathers and our husbands.”
“Then who makes up your mind, Lady Prior?” he asked, perhaps harsher than he should have.
Lady Prior jerked back. “Why, I act on full authority of my husband,” she insisted.
“Really? Then where is he, madam?” Armand asked.
“He’s in London,” Lady Prior fumbled. “He doesn’t like the countryside. He has chosen me as his envoy in all things concerning our daughter.”
“Or have you chosen yourself?” Armand said. Lady Prior began to protest, but he shook his head and walked away, heading into the house.
“What are you going to do?” Alex asked, falling into step beside him, Marigold on their heels, as they crossed through the front hall and toward the grand staircase.
“I’m going to have a bath,” Armand grumbled. “Then I’m going to change clothes. After that, who knows?” He let out a heavy breath.
“We have to decide what to do about Shayles, now that he has the letter,” Alex went on, following Armand as he began to mount the stairs. “If we could just—”
