Chapter Fourteen
Isabel gasped in horror at the gaggle of people now staring into the room, looking at Matthew, looking at her. Even half-hidden behind him, she knew her identity was obvious. Especially when her uncle pointed a finger across the room and shouted, “You see! I told you that bastard was up to no good. He is attacking my niece.”
Matthew made a sound of utter horror deep in his throat. He cast her one look, and it was no longer the one of desire. The one of need and passion. No, he glanced at her with…uncertainty.
As if he thought she might be part of her uncle’s attack.
“No!” she cried out without thinking of the consequences as she hurried around Matthew. “That is not what is happening.”
That only seemed to make it worse, for the stares of those in the hall became accusatory. She could read the slurs in their eyes. The judgments that she would offer herself so easily.
And from the glare of Matthew’s friend, the Duke of Brighthollow, she guessed she would find no friends amongst those who had intruded on this scene between them.
“His Grace was just…I was…we were…” she stammered.
She looked at her uncle then, in some way hoping for help, for support. But he met her stare, then looked past her toward Matthew, and he…smiled. A smug expression of triumph. And she knew in that moment. She knew.
When he’d spoken of hurting Matthew, when he’d talked to her about her future…those two things were linked in his mind. He had planned to use her in this very way. To destroy her if it meant destroying Matthew, too.
“I suggest that everyone leave the room right now,” Brighthollow said, spearing those in the hall with a dark glare that could have frozen Hell itself. “Lord Hasselbreck, take them, please. I will remain behind with Mr. Winter and His Grace to ensure they do not come to blows.”
Isabel flinched, for at that moment it looked like Brighthollow would not mind raining a few blows down on Uncle Fenton, himself.
“This is my home, Your Grace,” Hasselbreck began.
Brighthollow turned his ire on him and snapped, “And I suggest you manage it.”
With that he gave Hasselbreck a shove and closed the door behind him, leaving the four of them alone.
Isabel’s hands were shaking as she approached her uncle. His gaze, which had been so firm, so celebratory, now fluttered away from hers. A sign of guilt, perhaps, but not so much that he didn’t use her as a pawn in this game of his.
“You did this,” she whispered, hating how her voice cracked. “You arranged this intrusion, didn’t you? For how long?”
Matthew caught his breath and she looked to see him staring at her and her uncle. Both of them with the same expression. Betrayal. Distrust. Her eyes swelled with tears, but she blinked them back. It was too late for that now.
“Answer me!” she shouted.
Uncle Fenton shrugged. “How could I arrange what this person, this thing, brought to bear on himself? Did I tell him to pin you against a wall and practically rut with you in public?”
She turned her face at the coarse description. Her stomach turned.
“You have hated me for years,” Matthew said at last, his eyes narrowing on Fenton. “What is the purpose of this…manipulation?”
Isabel held her breath as she awaited that answer. Wishing it would be something that didn’t break her heart. Knowing it would.
“You are seen as such a paragon of virtue, aren’t you, Tyndale?” Fenton hissed, spittle flying from his lips as he sneered in contempt. “Well, they see you for what you are now. They’re talking about it in that hall. How the great, good, decent Duke of Tyndale just flattened a girl half his status against the wall and nearly fucked her. Without benefit of marriage. Without thought to how it would destroy her reputation. No matter what you do now, that will follow you, won’t it?”
Matthew wrinkled his brow. “And her. It will follow her—does that not matter to you?”
Isabel stared at him, the uncle she had loved all her life. A man she had mourned with and trusted. A man she had tried to save from his darkest impulses.
And walked into a trap where she was bait.
“He doesn’t care,” she whispered, and frowned as a tear slid down her cheek. She wiped it away and turned her back on all three men. She could not face them. Not when they all thought so little of her.
The room was silent, heavy, and then Matthew let out a sigh. “You must have known more than what you say.”
Brighthollow stepped forward. “Matthew,” he began.
Matthew held up a hand to silence him, his gaze still fully focused on her uncle. “Being caught in such a compromising position would tarnish my reputation, of course,” he said. “You win on that score. But you must have also known what I would be forced to do next.”
“What’s that?” Fenton’s tone was sing-song. Mocking. Isabel gripped her fists against her legs, leaning over slightly as she was overcome by dizziness and nausea.
“I’ll arrange a special license,” Matthew said, his voice flat and dark.
She spun around, her eyes wide, her heart throbbing so hard she feared it could be heard by all in the room.
“Tyndale!” Brighthollow shouted, crossing the distance between them in a few long strides. He caught Matthew’s lapels and shook him. “What the hell are you doing?”
Matthew shrugged away, smoothing his coat as he looked not as his friend, but at her. His expression was utterly blank. Utterly distant, like she was someone he didn’t know.
“What I must,” Matthew said softly. “You saw their looks, Brighthollow. By the time we leave this room, this story will have spread to every corner of that chamber and out into the world. It will multiply and change until what we were caught doing was far worse than the truth. There’s no other choice but to do what is honorable.”
Brighthollow lifted a finger in her direction. He did not look at her, but he pointed, his hand shaking. “She does not deserve to be saved by you. She was likely part of his plot from the first moment it was hatched.”
Isabel turned her face, but she didn’t respond to the accusation. At this point, there was no reason to do so. Matthew would believe what he did. Thanks to her uncle’s deception, why would he think anything but exactly what his friend accused?
And if that kept him from making a mistake she knew full well he would regret, then so be it.
“You are looking out for my best interests,” Matthew said at last. “And I love you for that. But I will not base the level of my behavior on the wrongs of someone else. That is not how a man of honor behaves.”
“As if you would know anything about honor,” Fenton muttered.
Matthew glared at him, and then he said, “The special license will be arranged. I will tell you when it is done and we will choose a date right away for the wedding. Come, Hugh, I’ll need your help.”
Isabel stared as the two men moved toward the door. He was saying he would…marry her. Marry her as soon as possible. For honor, if nothing else. For honor, even though he suspected her of a betrayal far deeper than when she’d merely kept the truth of her identity from him.
Brighthollow stepped from the room, but at the door, Matthew stopped. He looked over his shoulder, his gaze meeting hers. Then he shook his head and walked out without so much as another word for her.
As soon as he was gone, she buckled against the back of the closest chair. Fenton had the gall to look pleased.
“You knew?” she whispered. “You knew, or else why would you arrange for us to be found in such a manner?”
He glanced at her and some of his glee faded. Under it was now at least a flash of guilt. But also anger. Directed at her.
“I knew you were sneaking out,” he said. “Doing something I guessed you ought not. But you were a widow, not an innocent, and I had no energy to chase after you and force you to guard what you would not protect of your own volition. But it was not until the night of the Callis ball that I understood the depth of your secrets.”
Her lips parted. “The Callis ball.”
He nodded and took a step toward her. “I didn’t know that bastard was there. I avoid his company whenever I can, but he must have been a late addition to the party.”
She folded her arms, trying not to go back to that night when Matthew had uncovered the truth and confronted her. And kissed her. And made her want him all the more. Just like he had tonight.
“I turned and there he was, lurking around. Pretending to be the saint that he is not.” Fenton’s eyes went cold and blank, and it struck utter fear into the very heart of her. “I saw him approach you and I was ready to call him out. I saw him haul you from the room and I raced to your rescue. But by the time I found the parlor you were in, you were already in his arms. Kissing him like a wanton. The man who murdered your own cousin.”
She lifted her chin. “I don’t believe he did any such thing, uncle. There has never been any evidence about the night Angelica died except that it was a terrible accident.”
His jaw set. “He killed her and you fell into his arms like it was nothing.”
She huffed out a breath of frustration and pain and fear, mixed together in the worst possible combination. She stared at him, trying to find the man she’d known all her life beneath this thing he had become after years of festering grief.
“Are you saying you hatched this plan of yours that night?” she asked.
He jerked out a nod. “The seed of it was planted, yes. And it grew as I realized you two were more connected than even I realized.”
She shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
“That day at the bookshop. I followed you. I know you met with him. I saw you talking, heads so close, through the window.”
Her stomach turned. “You were following me?”
He shrugged. “You have very little call for outrage, my dear. After all, I was only a concerned chaperone, wasn’t I? Looking out for my dear charge as I should. At least that is how the world will see it.”
“You look out for me by exposing me to the gossip that will follow. By revealing me in the worst light possible.”
“It is what I must do. In fact, I will encourage the worst of the rumors, remind people of my old suspicions that have been dismissed all this time. I will make that man a pariah, I will make him a scandal.”
He looked so pleased, he looked so satisfied, and Isabel couldn’t keep the tears from her eyes this time. One slid down her cheek as she stepped up closer to him.
“And me,” she whispered. “You would destroy me to hurt him. You would put me in the path of a man who you truly believe killed your daughter.”
His face fell a fraction and he turned it away from her. “Sacrifices must be made, my dear. But don’t worry. This won’t go on for long.”
He turned away and she stared at his retreating back, horror gripping her at his last declaration. “What does that mean?”
“Come, there is much for us to do. A wedding to plan,” he said over his shoulder.
“Uncle!” she called out, but he ignored her, too driven by his plan to pause or consider her. “Uncle!”
He was gone, down the hall, heading back to the ballroom where he would say God knew what in order to stir the pot of rumor and scandal.
With a shudder, she sat down in the nearest chair and covered her face. When she was a girl, she had pictured getting married. Books had given her the fantasy that she could find true love and happily ever after. Reality had been very different. She’d accepted it once, she’d been ready to accept it again after this brief period where passion had reigned.
But now…now she would marry again. This time to a man who not only stoked a fire deep within her, but one who did not trust her. Probably didn’t even like her.
A man who was being forced to the church at the tip of a spear.
This was how she’d marry. And she would have to protect him against all the attacks her uncle was about to launch. Even though he didn’t want her.
Matthew sat in Ewan and Charlotte’s parlor, a drink in his hand. He could hear voices in the hall, murmuring his name. Hissing Isabel’s. And he sighed as the door opened and his friends and their spouses marched in.
“This is ridiculous,” he said, setting the drink aside as he rose to greet them. “It’s the middle of the night—no one needed to be pulled from their bed to deal with me, Hugh.”
He looked at the faces of his friends, drawn and concerned, and rolled his eyes. This was going to be a longer night than it already had been, and his head was throbbing.
“Are you going to tell them what happened or am I?” Hugh asked, his tone as dark and angry as it had been since the moment he had dragged Matthew from the party and back to Ewan and Charlotte’s home.
“I’m tired of explaining everything,” Matthew said, waving his hand at Hugh. “You might as well tell the story this time.”
“Fenton Winter has enacted some kind of revenge plot on Matthew at last,” Hugh spat. “And he arranged for him to be caught in a compromising position with that niece of his, Isabel Hayes. The two of them have hatched a plot for Matthew to wed her. And he has agreed to it.”
There was a collective gasp that moved through his friends, and Matthew flinched at the sound. Flinched as all of them started talking at once, shouting out questions. He let it go on for a moment, then raised a hand.
“Enough,” he said, and the cacophony didn’t grow quieter. “Stop!” he said louder, more firmly.
They stopped talking at once, exchanging looks with each other, pity and worry, fear and regret. He hated it all. He remembered it too well from all those years ago when these same men had rallied around him after Angelica’s passing. It was both a comfort and a vice around his heart.
“It is true that Winter arranged for a dramatic moment tonight, where Isabel and I would be caught,” he said softly. “But what was happening in that room when the door opened was no one’s fault but my own.”
He flashed back to those moments, of Isabel’s mouth on his, her body pressed between him and the wall. Her soft moans of pleasure as he treated her with an animal lack of control. That was not him. It never had been. But the moment he touched her it became…feral.
“My apologies to the ladies in the room,” Robert said, stepping forward. “But isn’t it possible this woman manipulated the scenario? To…trap you?”
Matthew bent his head. Just as it had always been from the first moment he realized who Isabel really was, his thoughts on her were complicated. Of course it was possible that she was in on the betrayals of her uncle. He knew that—he was no fool. After all, she would benefit greatly from a marriage to a duke. Many a lady had attempted the same thing in many a closed parlor.
And if she still suspected the same thing her uncle did, despite the hesitations she had expressed to Matthew in the past, she might even be willing to sacrifice her reputation to avenge the cousin she’d clearly loved.
The idea that nothing between them had ever been real turned his stomach. And yet, it wasn’t the only feeling he had. He remembered the look on her face when they’d been interrupted. The wavering shock in her voice when she confronted her uncle. The way she had thrown herself in front of Matthew and denied that she was being accosted.
“I don’t want to believe that. I want to believe that she is just as innocent a party as I am. After all, she asked me to come to the parlor to warn me.”
Now it was Lucas, the Duke of Willowby, who moved forward. He had spent years as a spy for the government, and in that moment it showed on his face, which was suddenly hard. “Warn you?” he repeated.
His lips parted. “She was trying to tell me that her uncle wanted to hurt me. I played it off. You all know how long he’s been railing against me, declaring I should be destroyed for what he thinks I’ve done. But it seems he has made good at last. And this is his first step in some larger plan.”
Lucas’s wife Diana reached out to take her husband’s hand. Her expression was just as troubled as the others, despite her being the newest addition to their group. “You think there is danger.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps. And if Isabel is truly an innocent in Winter’s plans, then that danger might extend to her, as well.”
His stomach tightened. He already knew what it was like to lose someone he cared for. He had experienced the pain of screaming out someone’s name and getting no answer from the limp body in his arms.
He never wanted to repeat that. Never.
“So you will marry this woman,” Charlotte said, resting her hand on the swell of her belly she shook her head sadly. “Oh, Matthew.”
He shrugged. “There is nothing else to do about it. Not after what happened tonight. He has forced my hand, and now it must play out. I’ll arrange for a special license tomorrow and have the wedding as soon as possible.”
James, Duke of Abernathe and long the leader of their group, grabbed for Matthew’s arm. “Don’t rush this, Matthew.”
“I must,” he said, staring into his friend’s eyes. Seeing the pain James felt for him. “For her sake, for my own. At least it will remove Isabel as a pawn in his game.”
“Or put her squarely in position to take everything,” Hugh snapped. “You are a fool if you consider her a pawn and not an all-powerful queen on the board.”
Matthew flinched. It was easy to think of Isabel as a queen, in truth. Just not the kind who would come into his world and destroy it. And he could only hope he was correct in that assessment.
“I appreciate the concern and the pitying stares and all that,” he said to the group at large. “But this is happening now. And the best thing you can do for me is to just support me in it.”
“Or course,” Baldwin said, reaching out to squeeze Hugh’s arm before he offered a hand to Matthew. “Congratulations, my friend.”
There was no denying the mournful tone of Baldwin’s voice, but Matthew took the offering. They shook, Baldwin’s eyes holding his steady and true. He nearly buckled beneath the support. And when the others came up to offer the same, he felt their strength and their love flowing through him, buoying him as it had so many times before.
“It’s the middle of the night,” James said when everyone had taken their turn. “I suggest we all go home and regroup tomorrow.”
“Yes,” James’s wife Emma said as she took his arm. “It will look better in the morning, it always does. Come along, everyone.”
Matthew smiled as the group said their goodbyes and filed from the parlor in a buzzing line. In the end, it was only Charlotte and Ewan left. Charlotte let out her breath in a long sigh.
“I’m sorry, Charlotte,” Matthew said. “I had no idea Hugh would haul everyone from their beds in an emergency meeting. You need your rest and it was unfair.”
Her brow wrinkled. “You think I do not fully support this impromptu gathering of the 1797 Club?” She shook her head. “You took my mind off my child kicking me all night at any rate. So, I thank you for that.”
She glanced at Ewan, and a world of unspoken communication flowed between them. She signed out a few little movements of her hands, the language of love the two of them had developed over years of friendship and longing and then true and powerful love. Ewan smiled briefly, then leaned in to kiss her cheek.
“I leave my husband to reassure you further,” she said as she took Matthew’s hand. “Goodnight, my dearest friend. As sweet Emma said, it will be better in the morning.”
“Good night,” Matthew murmured as she left the room.
He turned to find Ewan observing him closely. Reading him, as his cousin had always been able to do. Normally he didn’t resent the almost brotherly ability, but tonight he felt raw and he didn’t want Ewan to see that.
He was glad when Ewan broke his stare and pulled out the little notebook from his pocket. He scribbled a message and handed it over.
“Do you feel anything for her at all?”
Matthew tensed. That was the question, wasn’t it? The one he was trying to avoid answering because he didn’t fully know it. But here, with Ewan, he could be honest in that.
“Desire,” he said softly. “In spades. It wasn’t her who started what happened in that parlor tonight. It was me. When I’m near her it is…fire. I’ve never felt anything like it.”
Ewan nodded, as if he understood. Matthew assumed he did. He’d certainly caught glimpses of plenty of passionate kisses and hidden moments between his cousin and Charlotte since their marriage.
But there was still trouble lining Ewan’s expression. “Desire is a start,” he wrote. “But I’m asking how you feel.”
“Conflicted,” Matthew choked out. “How the hell am I supposed to marry Angelica’s cousin? How the hell am I supposed to figure out the truth from all the lies that started out between us? Is she the swan I seduced in a hell? Is she the manipulator Hugh is certain she is? Is she the girl in the bookshop who blushes over gothic novels? Who is she?”
Ewan considered that a moment, then wrote, “She may be all of those things. You are more than your grief, are you not? Or your desire? Or your friendship with our group?”
“This is why I don’t talk to you,” Matthew said with a little smile. “You are so rational.”
“Talk to Robert for irrational,” Ewan wrote. Then he frowned. “Or Hugh, as of late.”
Matthew let out a long breath and bent his head. “This was not the plan, Ewan. This explosion that just went off in my life was not the plan.”
“The best things start that way. Now, is there anything I can do?”
Matthew read the note with a smile and reached out to squeeze his cousin’s shoulder. “Just…be you. Supportive and watching. Kind and so damned logical.” Ewan didn’t smile in return, and Matthew sighed. “He’s got me trapped now. Until we see why, that’s all you can do.”