by Rose Gordon
“I participated,” she said weakly then took a deep breath, still unable to look at him. “It wasn’t just him.”
He gently squeezed their interlocked fingers, a sweet gesture that made her want to sob harder.
Taking another shaky breath, she blinked back her tears and began to confide the blackest secret in England. Well, perhaps that was an exaggeration, but to her, it was.
“I’m ruined,” she sobbed. “Completely. Thoroughly.”
Simon released her hand and wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her near.
Snatches of memories of that fateful afternoon flooded her mind. Warm sunshine. Deep blue sky. A cool creek. A rushed picnic. Coarse sheets… She shivered.
“It was a few days before we first met.” Those words tasted bitter on her tongue. What a difference it might have made with Simon that first Season had she not been keeping such a secret? She swiped at her tears and started again. “It was only a fortnight before I was set to go to London to participate in my first Season.”
Rae breathed in a sharp, painful breath, the one vivid memory of that day fresh in her mind: lying in Mr. Fisher’s bed, clutching that rough sheet to her chest as she watched his retreating form leave the room as he told her she was the most foolish girl he’d ever met and wished her luck in London as she tried to find a gentleman who didn’t mind a soiled dove.
Her mind spun and she blinked back her tears. “Everything happened so quickly. I can hardly remember all the details.” She idly kicked at a stick with the toe of her slipper. “When I was fifteen and Juliet had just married, Mr. Fisher started showing me attention when I came to town for anything. He’d walk me down the lane and offer to carry any purchases I was making for Mama.” She shrugged. “It was innocent, but he was sweet. Always complimenting me for this and that. Papa said he’d heard from a neighbor I’d caught his attention.”
“Was he in favor of the match?”
Simon’s question put a sour taste in Rae’s mouth. “Yes. Said I’d be fortunate to make such a match.” She blew out a deep breath. “He has his own business. For a girl from my family, that makes him a good match.”
“But your sister is a viscountess.”
Rae almost laughed at his naivety. “Yes, but Drake only married her to settle a debt my father owed him for lending him money to send Juliet to a girls school.”
“To make a match?”
Rae nodded. “It worked, too. Unlike the rest of us, she learned to read and write and be able to do sums beyond what was needed to know what you’d owe for a pound of lard or a yard of fabric.” She kicked a rock. “I suppose she learned some other pursuits as well. When my father couldn’t settle his debt, Drake made her his wife in name, but a governess to his daughters in deed.”
“I see things changed on that score.”
“Indeed.” She swallowed hard. “But not soon enough.”
The sadness in her tone tore at Simon’s heart, and against all logic, he hauled her into his lap and pulled her close to his chest. “What happened?”
“A few weeks before I was to leave he invited me on a picnic by the creek. I went and gushed all about Mama’s new baby—Jacob—and my suspicion that Juliet had a love match after all. I can’t remember, but I think I might have even mentioned something about going to London the next Season.” She bit her lip, hesitation in her eyes. “I can’t remember exactly what I said, if I didn’t say it, he must have known that would happen because he suddenly became very adamant about his feelings for me and that he’d already spoken to my father—” She broke off, her voice becoming hysterical.
She swallowed convulsively. “I believed him,” she whispered hoarsely. “I believed he truly loved me and that he’d already secured the match with my father.”
Another sharp pain pierced Simon’s chest. Rae loved Mr. Fisher.
“He insisted I refuse to go and stay and marry him. I told him I was too young to have a say, that I must do what my father commanded.” Only a deaf man would have missed the bitterness in her tone. “I should have known.” She used the tips of her fingers to wipe her eyes. “If he’d truly made arrangements with my father, he wouldn’t be worried about me going to London, My father might not have a shilling in his pocket most days, but he keeps his word.” She sniffled. “I was just too excited about his declaration of loving someone such as me that I didn’t think about it and instead I let him talk me into making him a promise that I’d go to London to satisfy my father, then I’d come back and marry him.
“But it wasn’t enough?” he guessed.
She stared off into the distance, her lower lip trembling. “He wanted more than my word.” She clenched her hands into fists. “I suggested if my word wasn’t enough, that we just run away right then and go to Scotland. He said no, he couldn’t just walk out on his work or he’d lose business.”
Simon rubbed her back with his open palm. Though they both already knew the end of the story, it didn’t make it any easier for her to tell.
“I told him no, but he insisted. I reminded him my mother was the most fertile woman I knew. He just shrugged and said there are precautions a man can take.” She sighed. “He had an answer for everything: we’d go to his house which was so far out no one would ever know; he’d take precautions to avoid conception; this was the only way he’d know I’d come back to the one who loved me and would be waiting for me at the end of the summer. I should have said no and ran home, but I was afraid of losing him.”
“You didn’t think you’d have a successful Season?”
“No.”
Simon’s jaw dropped at her simple answer and hysterical tone. She was the most beautiful debutante London had ever seen. How could she not see that?
“Your set is full of marriages that are based on connections and money, not love.”
Simon snorted. “I shall have to introduce you to my parents when we return.”
“But they’re not—” She coughed. “Excuse me.”
He gave her a little squeeze. “Nobles,” he finished for her, winking. “No, but my…er…half-brother, Giles, is.” Those words almost killed him to say. He forced a smiled. “Wait until you meet the young lady he’s marrying.”
Rae knit her eyebrows. “Exceptions.”
“Juliet and Drake? Your guardian and chaperone, Lord and Lady Townson?” He arched an eyebrow. “That lady’s family is full of love matches—her sisters, her cousins, her parents, her friends.”
She swatted him on the shoulder. “Lady Townson isn’t my friend. She’s my sister’s friend and therefore she’s kind enough to tolerate me. Same with Ladies Sinclair and Watson.”
Something about her statement arrested Simon. Rae didn't have any friends. He’d never thought about that before. She was always the most beautiful lady in the room, but he’d never actually seen her standing near the same set of ladies more than once. He’d bet that Lucy and Isabelle would be glad to have another friend—if either of them would ever speak to him again, that is.
“I can see your mind is working, likely calculating all sorts of ways for my assignation with Mr. Fisher to end, so let me just assure you this, it was not pleasant nor favorably memorable. He took me to his…” she cocked her head to the side and curled her lip up in disgust— “shack.” She shuddered. “He gave me a brief tour that ended with us in his bedchamber where he reminded me about commitment and promises and life together…trust…and love.” She practically spat the word, leading Simon’s heart to fully break for her. Another round of tears started pouring from her eyes. “Then everything happened so fast in a whirlwind of rough hands and sloppy kisses and a horrible pain that makes me wonder if Juliet is addled when she remarks about enjoying marital pleasures or perhaps something is wrong with me.”
“Nothing is wrong with you,” he assured her, wishing in vain he could erase all of her pain. He reached up and wiped the tears from her left eye with his thumb before fully pulling her against him as tightly as he could. “He deserves to hang.”<
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“No,” she said on a sob. “I’m the fool who believed him.”
“Does anyone know?” He had a feeling he already knew of one person who knew.
Beneath his arms she stiffened. “My father,” she said, confirming his suspicion of the man’s expression earlier.
Simon brushed a kiss atop the crown of her head. “Is he the only one?” He found it hard to believe she’d told her father and not someone else.
“Lady Townson.” She gripped his coat and pressed her face into the fabric of her shirt. “I had to tell her or else I’d have been married within a week!”
Another time and circumstance Simon would have howled with laughter at her words. “Is that why you wanted to come back? Was she unsympathetic?”
“No, not at all.” Rae straightened and blinked back her tears. “She said I wasn’t the first ruined young lady to grace Almacks and fight off suitors with her fan.”
“With all of the husbands she’s had a role in snagging, she would know,” Simon said lightly.
“Actually, she said the last unvirtuous lady has the most devoted husband in all of the land,” Rae said with a doubtful, self-deprecating smile.
“I don’t doubt her on that score, either.” He pressed his forehead to the top of her head. “Ruined doesn’t mean unmanageable.”
“But he refused to marry me,” Rae said, choking on another sob. “He knows nobody else will have me now, but he refused to do right.”
Simon ground his teeth. “Why the hell do you insist on wanting to marry him?” He didn’t mean to sound so unkind, but truly, why would she want to attach herself to that arse for the rest of her life?
“I don’t,” she said with conviction. “It’s everyone else who thinks I do.”
“Because you’ve led them to believe that,” he pointed out.
Rae lowered her lashes. “I know,” she said at last. “I thought if everyone believed I didn’t want to court because my heart was otherwise attached, they’d leave me alone.”
“How has that worked for you?”
“Very well,” she said with a wobbly grin.
“But are you happy?”
Rae’s countenance fell. “I will be once Juliet allows me to be a spinster.”
Simon didn’t believe that. He tapped his fingers against her left hip. “Why haven’t you told her the truth?”
“I can’t.” Her voice was barely audible.
“Are you afraid she’ll be upset that she can’t play matchmaker with every gentleman on the Mart?”
“No, I think she’ll be disappointed in me.”
Simon studied the odd young lady he held on his lap. “You’re more concerned about your sister’s opinion of you rather than your father’s?”
“I didn’t tell him by choice,” she admitted softly. “When I got home, he saw me before I could get into the house. He just knew, I suppose. He told me the next day that he’d spoken to Mr. Fisher and he refused to make things right. He suggested we ask Drake to force his hand, but I didn’t want to bring such humiliation to their doorstep so I agreed to go to London with Juliet and let her think I just didn’t find anyone I thought might suit.”
“But what if one did suit?”
She looked at him as if he were a simpleton. “He didn’t. None of them did.”
“If you speak of that old goat I saw you with at that unsightly museum, I can understand your feelings. But what of the others?”
“What others?” She laughed shakily. “There weren’t any others.”
“Hmmm, and here I thought I was the only one you rebuffed.” His lips itched to kiss her cheek, but he refrained. “I wish you had told me you didn’t have any interest in Mr. Fisher before I wasted so many nights this week dreaming up ways for you to snare him,” he teased. “Alas, your future is not nearly as bleak as you might think. Your Prince Charming is out there. We just have to look a little harder.”
“We? Don’t you think you need to be looking for your own Princess Charming?”
Not unless you’re offering yourself for the position.
15
Rae frowned at Simon’s strange expression followed by his sudden coughing fit.
“I know you think I’m charming and humorous and all of that, but your reaction is a little much, wouldn’t you say?”
Simon held up a single finger and coughed one last time. “I wasn’t laughing,” he clarified, his face a dark red. “I was choking.” He sliced a hand through the air before resuming his hold on her. “Never mind me. Let’s just say my search for my Princess Charming as you’ve termed her is just a wee bit more complicated.”
“Oh, are men who have lost their virginity considered unfashionable this Season?”
The left side of his mouth tipped down into a frown. “No, but virgins who unknowingly pursue married ladies and their mysterious half-brother’s betrothed are.”
Shame washed over her. While she’d been able to keep her own misdeed covered up, London was still buzzing about Simon’s pursuit of Lady Belgrave. She placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said on a sigh. “I’ve muddied these waters myself.”
“Would you care to talk about it?” She didn’t realize until she’d said those words just how much she wanted to hear his side of things. Not because she wanted some juicy gossip to share around town, but she was truly interested.
“No, I don’t wish to drive you to tedium with tales of my stupidity.”
“It might make you feel better to talk about it,” she said, running her knuckle against his chiseled jaw. “I know I feel better telling someone.” She dropped her hand back to her lap and gave him a slim smile. “I gave Lady Townson a much abbreviated version consisting of the words: I’m ruined in truth. Then let her overactive imagination fill in the details.”
A wide grin split Simon’s face. “All right, you win.” He reached one of his ungloved hands up and finding a loose tendril of her hair, wrapped it around his finger. “It all started out with the best of intentions.” He released a hollow chuckle. “Unfortunately, it ended up worse than an overturned carriage.” He shook his head. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”
Rae wiggled her bottom a little against his lap and then leaned her head against his chest. “I have the most comfortable seat I could imagine.”
“Well, I don’t,” he said under his breath.
Panic and a tinge of embarrassment shot through Rae. Did he think she was too heavy? She attempted to scurry off his lap, but his strong hands held her there.
“Stop,” he ground out. “It’s that gentleman’s curse again. But it’ll stop if you’ll stop.”
Rae searched his eyes. He didn’t appear upset and if he truly wanted her off of his lap, he’d have let her, wouldn’t he?
“In April, I met Isabelle Knight,” he began, heedless to her thoughts. “My father suggested I befriend her as she was new to London and shadowed by a scandal that would keep her from having a friend in the world—no matter how large her dowry.”
Rae settled back against him, listening to his heavy breathing.
“At first she was just an acquaintance—”
“But you always danced with her.” Rae covered her mouth with her fingers. “Sowwy,” she said against her fingers.
Simon pulled her hand away. “It’s all right. I asked you questions.” He intertwined their fingers and then lowered their hands to her lap. “My mother is as bad as Lady Townson,” he said as if that explained everything—and it did. “She was just a friend, if you could call her that—” he shrugged— “but when Giles came…”
His jaw clenched and a muscle ticked in his cheek.
“Giles is Lord Norcourt, your half-brother from your mother’s first marriage,” she said more so he wouldn’t have to. Though she, and perhaps many others in the ton, wondered if there wasn’t a little more to that story.
He nodded once. “My mother married Lord Norcourt when she was younger than you. She nev
er spoke of either of them while I was a child only of my father—and me. When I was a wee lad I asked her if I’d ever have any brothers or sisters.” A shadow covered his face. “Her eyes grew distant and she said that she’d had one other child but he’d been born with his life’s cord wrapped around his neck…” He shook his head once. “That’s all she said and I just assumed…”
Rae’s chest constricted painfully. Though he’d told her as much the other day, it seemed different this time. He seemed different this time.
“That’s all she ever said about Giles.” He scoffed. “I don’t think she even ever mentioned his name. Then one day he just appears and she’s now being titled as Lady Norcourt and playing his hostess.” The raw emotion in Simon’s voice sent chills down her spine and she understood why this telling was different: it had been more than just Giles’ appearance that had cut him so. He swallowed audibly. “I was afraid,” he said raggedly. “In less than ninety seconds my entire existence had been altered. My mother had taken on a new identity. My father, who’d always been my closest ally, stood back and watched in awe as she gushed and showered motherly attention on a stranger who looked exactly like me…and him.”
Rae ached for him.
Licking his lips, he continued, “I was losing my family and didn’t know what else to do so I—” he pressed his lips together and lifted his eyebrows— “proposed to a married woman. Of course I didn’t know she was married. It seemed like the best option for both her and me. She needed someone and with my entire family structure crumbling about my ears, it seemed the most logical solution. We agreed to have an abbreviated courtship at a house party and if we thought we could tolerate the other for the rest of our lives, we’d marry.”
“Did it work?” She couldn’t believe she asked that, but something inside her needed to know. “I mean, before you knew she was married.”
“No.” His response was quick, concise, and definite. He sighed. “She’s pretty to look at, but that’s where it ends.” Something flickered in his eye that made her insides flip. “Well, at least where I’m concerned. When she and Lord Belgrave are in the room she transforms into someone else.”
