“Wonderfully well expressed,” Miss Goddard said.
“A rake may never be reformed,” Angeline said, “for most men believe it is a manly thing to be and something to which their gender entitles them. But they are not villainous for all that. Or, if they are, then they have put themselves beyond the pale of mere rakishness.”
Lord Windrow and Miss Goddard both smiled at her—just as the door of the private sitting room crashed back against the wall and then slammed shut again.
Between the two swift, deafening actions the Earl of Heyward appeared in the room.
Angeline clasped her hands to her bosom. Miss Goddard spread hers on the table. Lord Windrow, who had been sitting with his back to the door, got to his feet and turned.
“Ah, Heyward,” he said. “Come to join us, have—”
Lord Heyward punched him right on the point of the chin. His head snapped back and he would have tumbled backward if the table had not been in the way. As it was, his back bounced off the lid of the teapot, sending it rolling across the table and clattering to the floor. The teapot tipped and spilled its contents over the cloth.
“Edward.” Miss Goddard clutched two fistfuls of the tablecloth.
“Lord Heyward.” Angeline lifted her clasped hands to her mouth and bit into one knuckle.
“You!” Lord Heyward, eyes blazing, grasped the lapels of Lord Windrow’s coat and hoisted him upright. “Outside! Now! I have had enough of you.”
“I rather thought that might be it, old chap,” Lord Windrow said, touching his jaw rather gingerly with his fingertips. “It is one of those occasions when fists have already spoken louder than words.”
“Lord Heyward!” Angeline cried, jumping to her feet. “I was wrong.”
Oh, she was going to do a terrible disservice to Miss Goddard, whose idea this had been. She was going to have to confess all, Angeline decided. She really had not expected that fisticuffs would be the result of her deception.
“Edward, no!” Miss Goddard was also on her feet. “Oh, Lord Windrow, I had no idea this would happen. How foolish of me not to have foreseen it. Edward, all is proper, as you can see. I am with Lady Angeline as a chaperon, and my maid is traveling with us too. We are indeed going to Norton Park to dine with Lady Windrow. I really, really ought not to have written that letter. Oh, now I know why deception is so very wrong. I am dreadfully sorry.”
What letter?
Lord Windrow flexed his jaw as Lord Heyward’s hold on his lapels relaxed slightly.
“I would be delighted to meet you whenever and wherever is convenient to you, Heyward,” Lord Windrow said, “but I would really rather it not be today, if it is all the same to you. I may already have a bruise to explain away to my mother, whose health is not of the soundest. She may well have a fit of the vapors if I appear before her with bulbous nose and bloodshot, blackening eye—or perhaps even eyes—and a missing tooth or two. Besides, there are ladies present.”
“A fact that did not seem to deter you last time,” Lord Heyward said from between his teeth. But he dropped his hands to his sides, and some of the fire went out of him. “I will not have you bothering Lady Angeline Dudley, Windrow, now or ever. Even if she is properly chaperoned. Is that understood?”
Lord Windrow brushed his hands over his lapels.
“I suppose,” he said, “you will not take a step back until I say yes, Heyward, will you? Yes it will have to be, then. I feel a certain discomfort with my nose a mere inch from yours.”
Lord Heyward took a step back and turned his head to glare at Angeline.
What had he meant by saying Lord Windrow must not bother her? What about Miss Goddard?
“I shall remove myself entirely from the lady’s presence,” Lord Windrow said. “Miss Goddard will doubtless hold me steady if my legs should decide to wobble. Miss Goddard?” He turned to offer her his arm.
She looked pointedly at him as though there were a thousand things she wished to say. But then she closed her eyes briefly and shook her head slightly, took his arm, and allowed him to lead her from the room.
Angeline swallowed.
“I have a confession to make,” she said. “I am so sorry. Not a word of that letter I wrote was true.”
“What letter?” Lord Heyward’s eyes narrowed.
“The one I left for you,” she said. “The one Cousin Rosalie’s butler was to give you at four.”
“There seems to have been a good deal of letter-writing going on,” he said. “Who gave the letter to the butler?”
“Miss Goddard,” she said.
“Ah,” he said. “I begin to understand that I no longer know Eunice to even the smallest degree.”
“But you love her,” she said. “And she loves you. This was all her idea, though admittedly it was I who originally suggested that you must be encouraged to acknowledge your feelings and the truth that you cannot live without her. What better way to realize that than through fear for her safety at the hands of a rake? And what better person to make you feel that way than Lord Windrow? I asked Rosalie to invite both him and Miss Goddard to Hallings so that I could arrange something—and make your family see that she is not vulgar at all, even if she is not strictly speaking a member of the ton. But I found I could not do it alone and so I took Miss Goddard into my confidence. She was both willing and eager to help implement my plan. But the first part did not work. Instead of going to rescue her from Lord Windrow when we were out walking yesterday, you insisted upon helping me get rid of the stone in my shoe instead, even though there was not really a stone in it at all. It was all a ruse. Miss Goddard said today that we needed more drastic action, and suggested this and the letter I left for you. And I did it, though I realize now I ought not to have, for there have been too many lies, and even apart from those I have been very unfair indeed to Lord Windrow, who has never treated either me or Miss Goddard with disrespect—well, except for that very first time. But no real harm was done then, was it? As soon as you pointed out his error to him, or almost as soon, he apologized—after you had insisted—and went on his way. And now I have caused him to get hurt. You hit him very hard. And it was all my fault. And nothing has worked as it ought, has it? Here you are talking to me instead of to Miss Goddard. Or, rather, here I am talking to you instead of sending you after her. Oh, why does nothing work?”
And when, during her lengthy, muddled speech, had he stepped closer to her—closer even than he had been to Lord Windrow?
“Perhaps,” he said softly, “because you have everything wrong, Angeline.”
No Lady before her name?
She swallowed and gazed into his very blue eyes. She had no choice, really. There was nowhere else to look unless she stepped back, and there was no way of doing that without tripping over her chair.
“Do I?” she said.
“It is not Eunice I love,” he said.
“Oh?”
She dared not hope. Oh, she dared not. Perhaps he only meant that he did not love anyone. Not in that way, anyway. Perhaps he had not changed. Perhaps he never would.
She sank her teeth into her lower lip.
“It is you I love,” he said.
Oh.
Ohhh!
It was precisely at that moment that they both heard the unmistakable clopping of horses’ hooves, and the rumbling of carriage wheels over the cobbles of the inn yard and out onto the street and along it until the sounds gradually faded into the distance.