The words hummed around her in her ears, distorted.
“You’ll see. Once you’ve spent some time away from your sister, you won’t even miss her anymore.”
She stared at the painting Julia had made of Dionysia for Amelia two birthdays ago. The colors blurred as tears pooled in her eyes, threatening to fall. It was a nightmare. She was in a nightmare, and any minute she would wake up.
By the time Amelia made it back upstairs, Julia was practically climbing the wainscoting. She was frantically checking the windows on both walls when Amelia came into her room.
“What happened? Why did everyone leave early? I heard a scream earlier.”
“Lord Bellamy hit Embry.”
Julia’s eyes flew wide. “Why?”
Why, indeed. “Embry is not the man we thought he was.”
If anything, her sister’s eyes managed to get even wider. “What on earth happened?”
Amelia collapsed on the chaise in a puff of silk. “Embry’s cousins are awful.”
“Awful how?”
“If they worked for us, we would let Papa fire them and we wouldn’t feel at all badly about it.”
It was all the explanation Julia needed. “But that’s not Embry. So his family is horrid. That’s not the end of the world.”
“He just stood there,” Amelia shouted. “And he agreed with them!”
The frown on her sister’s face was difficult to read. Julia couldn’t want Amelia to marry so badly that she would accept his complicity in his cousin’s behavior, could she? Years of helping Julia hold mock-debuts, imaginary introductions to the royal family, and playing the role of a handsome duke during make-believe piled up in Amelia’s throat, making it difficult to breathe. That was what Julia wanted, but she wouldn’t force it on Amelia. They knew each other better than that.
“I told Embry I couldn’t marry him.”
“Oh, Mia.” Disapproval dragged down the corners of Julia’s mouth.
“But he wouldn’t accept it. He said he’s going to sue Papa into poverty if I don’t marry him.” Amelia waited for Julia’s enraged outburst.
It didn’t come. Instead, her sister took a deep breath and nodded. “Maybe it’s for the best.”
“What?” Certainly she hadn’t heard her right.
“Now there’s no way to back out. You can stop second-guessing yourself. You’re going to be Lady Montrose. It’s time to start taking it seriously.”
Julia was actually taking Embry’s side.
For the first time in Amelia’s life, she felt completely, truly alone. Everything they’d shared, the impenetrable partnership their father joked about, was a lie. Her life was all about what everyone else wanted. Amelia could accept it from their mother, from Embry, but Julia? A nauseating ache took up residence in her gut.
“Mother will be thrilled. She can stop sending herself into hysterics, worrying he’s going to call it off. It’s obvious that’s not going to happen if he’s willing to take Papa to court to keep you.”
The last bit broke through Amelia’s despair. She was on her own, but that didn’t mean she had to give up and accept her fate.
What would she have to do to make herself undesirable to Embry?
It wouldn’t be easy. She needed to think it through, alone. Amelia didn’t need Julia figuring out what she was up to and trying to sabotage her plan. “I’m going to bed.”
“Mia. Please don’t be mad. I only meant—”
“It’s all right,” Amelia said, rushing to the door in a flurry of silk. “It’s been a long day. Good night.”
If Julia responded, Amelia didn’t hear it. She was already down the hall with a half-formed plan in mind. Without Julia’s help, she was going to need all of her concentration to pull it off.
Because it had to work.
She wasn’t going to marry Embry, or anyone else for that matter. Amelia liked her life exactly the way it had always been, and she wasn’t going to let anyone change it.
Chapter Six
Nicholas and Jasper chose to brave the late winter chill rather than share the tense confines of his parents’ carriage. Lady Wakefield was in fits—of course that Bishop girl would find a way to foul things up—and Nick was afraid of what he’d say if he had to listen to it for even the short distance home.
In contrast, Jasper was in glorious spirits. “I’ve never been on the honorable end of a challenge. I feel like we should celebrate.”
“Do you think she means to break it off?” She couldn’t possibly want to go through with it after tonight—Amelia had been more upset than he’d ever seen her. If only he knew what had actually happened between them.
“You know her better than I do.”
He would never want Amelia to be unhappy but, since the catastrophe had already occurred, if she happened to end up unattached he couldn’t claim he would be disappointed. Amelia deserved a husband who adored and understood her, not some clod who made her cry at her own engagement party.
“Will you declare yourself if she does?”
He wanted to, desperately, but it might not be that simple. She obviously had no idea how he felt, and she had pulled away when he’d reached for her. “I—”
“Because if you don’t, you deserve the life of misery that will inevitably follow.”
“Tell me how you truly feel,” Nicholas choked out around his surprise.
“Always.”
When they reached the house, Lord Wakefield was waiting for him in the foyer. Nick’s laughter died out.
“Nicholas, I need to speak with you.”
Jasper raised and lowered his eyebrows before heading upstairs, leaving them alone.
“Of course.” Nick studied his father’s face, trying to gauge which version he was dealing with. He’d been lucid at the party, but Nick was learning the changes could happen with disturbing quickness.
“Nicholas,” Lord Wakefield began. “I’m certain you’re aware that the Wakefield name has never been touched by scandal.”
“I am.” That didn’t help. The myriad lectures on the subject from his childhood meant they could be in any time in his father’s mind. His expression while delivering them hadn’t changed since Nicholas was a boy of five.
“And I’m certain you’re also aware that any interference in the Bishop girl’s engagement would result in scandal of more than one variety.”
The present then. For the first time, Nicholas wished his father would fall into a different time.
Lord Wakefield pinned his youngest son with a stare honed by generations of Marquesses. “I hold our family’s reputation to the highest standard. Your mother has relentlessly protected the Wakefield name while I have been unwell. You will not be the first to bring shame upon us.”
Nicholas squared his shoulders. “Do you feel I tarnished our reputation this evening?”
The Marquess took in his son’s stance and lifted chin. “Do not think I didn’t notice with whom Lady Amelia returned to the ballroom.”
“Amelia and I are friends.” Saying it was starting to taste like ashes in his mouth.
“Lord Montrose and his intended were happily on their way to the altar, and now there is discord. My mind might not be what it used to, but it has not become so derelict that I cannot see what is in front of my face.”
“The falling out tonight wasn’t about me.” Nicholas wished it had been, but Amelia had no idea how he felt. Even his overt attempts at flirting with her were brushed aside as teasing.
“Do you pretend to claim you do not harbor feelings for Amelia Bishop?”
There it was, in the open. For years they had existed in a silent understanding—his parents did not ask and he did not impose upon them a confession of his affections—but no longer.
“I do not.”
Lord Wakefield sighed. “Your feelings may not be under your control, but your actions are. You will not involve yourself in the Bishop girl’s engagement.”
Nicholas didn’t have an immediate response. F
ortunately, none was required.
The Marquess of Wakefield had made his declaration; the only possible outcome was for his son to abide by it. Lord Wakefield nodded his head—obligation satisfied—and took himself off to the library.
It didn’t take long for Jasper to find him after Nick returned to his room. The Viscount of Bellamy’s understanding of the human need for privacy was almost nonexistent.
“What did he want?”
Nick untied his neckcloth and tossed it on the dressing table. “You know, in mannered circles, one knocks before entering a room.”
“Mannered circles are boring, populated with boring people who have sticks lodged firmly up their backsides. And not in the exciting way.”
“There’s an exciting way to have a stick in your backside?”
Jasper’s grin was wicked. “You left Paris too soon. There is a great deal of the world that you still don’t know about, Master Wakefield.”
“If it involves being sodomized, I left just in time.”
“Matter of opinion. With a properly deviant partner, it can be quite…” Jasper sprawled out across Nicholas’s bed. “No. I’ll not be distracted. What did your father want?”
“To declare that I will not be involving myself in Amelia’s engagement.”
“He must have been pleased to discover that you have been grossly passive.”
“I haven’t been—”
Jasper waved his arm in Nicholas’s direction. “Tell me one thing you’ve done to secure your future happiness with Amelia Bishop.”
“That’s not…” Nicholas couldn’t think of anything, because he wasn’t supposed to be securing anything with Amelia. “Our future happiness will be as friends.”
“You’re in love with her.”
He very much was, and always had been. “But she doesn’t love me.”
“You wrote her every day we were in France.” Jasper threw his hands in the air. “You look like you’re about to tear her clothes off every time you see her.”
“That is decidedly none of your concern.”
Jasper arched an eyebrow. “Wakefield, what did you say to me when we first met?”
“Get out of my train car, you drunken nuisance.”
“After that.”
Nicholas sighed. “I wish there was more to my life than being a dutiful son.”
“That’s right, and I swore to make sure you live a life full of misbehavior—”
“At the time you said adventure.”
“—and die exhausted, well pleased with the memories you had collected.”
“But that was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before I was called back home. Before my father became ill.”
Jasper squared his shoulders, full of affront. “Do you think a duke’s promise is so lightly discarded?”
“You’re not a duke yet.”
“And won’t be for many years to come, God willing, but it will happen and I’ll still have promised.” Jasper stood up, pacing and riffling through Nicholas’s belongings. The pocket watch Philip had given Nicholas when he finished at Oxford landed with a clatter. “Well pleased, I said, and you are obviously not pleased. You’re more dismally dutiful than ever.”
“My family needs me.”
“Only so they can avoid inconveniencing your brother.”
It was pointless to try to explain. Jasper was a creature devoted to seeking his own pleasure. In Jas’s mind, the title existed to serve the holder, not the other way around.
“We have to stay out of it, Jas.”
Jasper’s eyebrows leaped upward as a pair. “We don’t have to anything. I make my own decisions.”
“Fine, but I—”
“Amelia needed you tonight and you did nothing,” Jasper interrupted. “The man she is promised to spend the rest of her life with threw her to wolves. Hell, he invited the wolves. Hide your feelings behind friendship if you insist, but a friend would have stood up for her. A friend did.”
The words sank into Nicholas and settled like rocks in the pit of his stomach. Jasper had only known Amelia for a few days, and he had come to her aid. In typical, dramatic Jasper fashion, but he’d acted. Nick had wanted to act. It had been his first instinct, and he’d intended to follow it through. He shouldn’t have let himself be dissuaded. Jasper was right. He’d been a coward.
After everything he’d learned being away, was he truly allowing himself to settle back into old behavior? Worse behavior, even. He’d never let his parents stop him from being a true friend to Amelia before.
“You’re right,” Nicholas admitted.
“Obviously.”
“But what do I do? How do I make it up to her?”
“First,” Jasper announced, in jolly spirits again now that he was getting what he wanted, “we find out how things stand. A great deal hinges on the current status of her engagement. Once we know, we can make a plan.”
The hope that crackled to life inside him made him wonder why he’d waited this long.
The candles burned low as Amelia stared into space with the end of the pen between her teeth. Her writing desk was covered in wax and she wasn’t much further than she had been in Julia’s room. She was trying to organize her thoughts onto paper, but the problem in front of her was daunting. Masterminding was Julia’s bailiwick. Amelia’s talents leaned more toward assisting.
Something cracked against the window. Amelia looked up. A second crack sounded. What the devil? A rock. Someone was throwing rocks at her bedroom window.
There was only one person it could be.
Barely illuminated by the light coming from the ground floor windows, Nicholas stood on the side of the house with a handful of stones. Amelia pushed the window up in its casement—quietly. It wouldn’t do to have anyone coming to investigate.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, shivering. She wrapped her arms around herself to block the cold from cutting through her nightgown. How could he stand to be out there at this hour?
“I need to talk to you,” he whispered back. “May I come up?”
Could he come up? Of course not. It was…well, fair play after what she’d done the other day, but that was beside the point. “It’s very late.”
“It’s important.”
Nicholas might be able to help with her present difficulty. She was at her wits’ end. Whispering out into the darkness while they both froze to death was less than ideal. Amelia inspected the wall outside her bedroom. There was no way he would manage to climb the tightly fitted bricks without breaking his neck. “Use the back stairs.”
Nick disappeared around the corner of the house. Grabbing a wrapper, Amelia tiptoed to her bedroom door and peeked out. So far so good. She sent up a silent prayer of thanks that she didn’t have to pass Julia’s room on her way to the back stairs.
At the end of the corridor, she slowly pushed the servant’s door inward. Nothing. No sound, no Nicholas. Amelia’s heartbeat raced. No one had sounded any kind of alarm, so he hadn’t been discovered. Unless he had, and he was trying to talk his way out of it. Would Mrs. Polk keep his secret if she came across him below-stairs? She wouldn’t let him come up, that much Amelia was certain of. How long should she wait?
Muffled scuffing sounds came from the steps just below where Amelia was waiting. “Ni—”
The new maid’s head came around the corner.
“—ora. Haven’t you gone to bed yet?”
“Just finishing cleaning up the party. Did you need something, my lady?”
“No, no. Just thought I heard something. Must have been the wind.”
Nora mumbled something Amelia didn’t catch as she was closing the door. She leaned against the wall. She would count to one hundred. If it took Nick longer than that, that was too bad. Her nerves couldn’t take it.
One. Two. Three. …Thirty-four. Thirty-five. Thirty-six. Was that a creak? She didn’t dare open the door to check. If it was Nora again, she’d have a devil of a time explaini
ng herself.
The door slid inward a crack. “Mia?”
“Nick.” Amelia let out a huge sigh of relief—and sucked it back in. They still had to make it back to her room. Oh God. What if her mother—what if her father came down the hall? “Hurry. And be quiet!”
“I know how to sneak.”
“Shh!”
They were halfway back to her room when the latch on Julia’s door at the far end of the hall clicked. It was too much. Amelia abandoned stealth and ran for it. Nicholas was right behind her. They darted inside and Amelia locked the door behind them. She tried to listen for her sister coming after them, but she couldn’t hear over her own labored breathing.
“She didn’t see us.”
Amelia wasn’t prepared to take his word for it. She waited a little longer, but there was no inquiring knock on her door. “Let’s never go through that again.”
“I’ve gone through that every time you’ve climbed into my room.”
“In the daylight! It’s much less illicit during the day.”
“I beg to differ,” Nicholas said. “I’ve lost entire years off my life with the sun still high in the sky. If either of our parents discovered us—being discovered by your father at our age—”
“Don’t.” Amelia pressed a hand to her chest to try to slow down her heart. “Don’t even think it. We still have to get you back out.”
Nick groaned.
Amelia couldn’t agree more. Worried that her knees would buckle any minute, she sat on the end of her bed. She motioned for Nick to take the chair that was still pulled out at her desk. “So, what was so important it couldn’t wait for morning?”
“Are you still engaged to Montrose?”
Even hearing his name made her furious. “Yes.”
“Oh.” Nick’s face fell.
“But I’m not going to marry him.”
“What?”
“I tried to break it off, but he won’t let me.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
It truly didn’t. In a rational world she would have declared the engagement over, and that would have been that. But there was nothing rational about the situation she found herself in. Amelia stood up. Anger drove away her nerves and made pacing preferable. “He won’t accept my termination of our engagement. He threatened to sue my father for breach of contract.”
The Importance of Being Scandalous Page 9
