Mark of Distinction (Price of Privilege) (56 page)

“If it’s not in by Friday, I’m giving it to the
Times
.”

Mr. Forrester’s mouth looked like the food in it had suddenly soured. “You swore I could have the story!”

“Why should I wait when every paper is nipping at this opportunity?”

“Because you promised, that’s why.”

My father made a growling noise. “Friday, Robert. Friday!”

He knocked James from his path as he left the breakfast room.

Forrester picked up
The Standard
from the bottom of the pile. “What’s using him up?”

“Excuse me,” Isaac said to me, snagging another roll before hastening after my father.

I rose too, but Forrester pinned my dress with his foot.

“Are you drunk? Get your boots off my dress,” I ordered.

He obeyed, keeping his gaze on the paper. “Greenham was at the tavern.”

I dropped my heavy skirts. “And?”

Mr. Forrester propped his feet on the cushion of a chair next to him and continued to read. “It’s his opinion, if you marry Isaac, he wouldn’t live to see another month.”

An eerie feeling, similar to a shiver, worked its way up my spine. “You think Macy would kill him?”

He turned a page. “Oh, I have no doubt about it now.”

The room suddenly felt empty. I waited, but Mr. Forrester only discarded his paper and then took up
The Token
and started reading anew.

“That’s it?” I demanded. “That’s all you have to say?”

“Yes.” He flipped a page. “Unless, that is, you agree to help me get rid of Macy.”

“Kill him?” I backed away, remembering Macy’s tender face as he tended my wounds.

“Only a true Macy girl would jump to a conclusion like that, though Greenham swears Macy took no pains to train you.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “It’s entirely possible you are the most unlucky person walking the earth. The moment you first drew breath, you became the most tempting bait on earth for Macy.”

I paused, his words painting anew Mama’s story of how the midwife nearly dropped me in my fury. Though I did not fully grasp Forrester’s meaning, his tone communicated that perhaps it was with good reason I had kicked and screamed that day. “I don’t understand.”

In answer, he reached into his waistcoat and withdrew a velvet pouch, which he placed on the table. When he unrolled it, I nearly gasped in amazement.

Inside was a necklace consisting of five individual chains. The base was thin blue enamel, which looked almost like something only royalty would wear. A strand of pearls, a strand of rubies, a strand of opals, and a gold filigree chain all looped at varying lengths and were held in place by gold flowers with large pearls.

It was so delicate and beautiful that I reached out and touched it before I remembered my manners.

“Take it.” He shoved it across the table. “It’s yours.”

“Mine?” I couldn’t help but lift it.

“It’s the replacement necklace Macy offered to buy you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He sent a note after murdering Eramus. He offered to replace the broken necklace. I spent half a day searching for something this costly, curious to see how much he’d pay.
I bribed the shop owner to send a note to his house, stating that you’d admired it and were inquiring to see if he was willing. I set it up so that if Macy was, it’d be sent to Lady Northrum’s under the guise of a repaired piece.”

“And he purchased it?” I looked at the beautiful necklace, stunned.

“Guess at its cost.”

I tied the ribbon, sealing it back in its burgundy folds. “You shouldn’t have done this.”

“Thirty thousand pounds.”

The knowledge I held an empire in my hands was even more breathtaking.

Mr. Forrester finally set aside the newspaper, turning his full attention on me. “He’s never spent that much on anyone except himself before. He’s serious about keeping his wife. You need me if you’re ever going to be freed from him. I am one of the only people in the world who finally knows how to contain him.”

“Why do you need me, then?”

“Need you? All I want from you is the satisfaction of checkmating him with his own queen.”

I shook my head, backing from the chamber.

Mr. Forrester chose another newspaper. “Eventually, you’re not going to have a choice. Macy will never relent. I can wait as long as you can.”

THAT MORNING, not knowing what else to do with myself, I sat in the window seat of my bedchamber and stared at Eastbourne. Forrester’s words kept echoing in my head:
“Eventually, you’re not going to have a choice.”

When he’d spoken them, I almost shrieked with laughter. When, since joining my father’s household, had I had a choice?

I was weary of intrigue, of my father’s bullying temper, schedules that I had no say in, the endless parade of new faces. I’d been pushed step-by-step in a direction I never intended to take—pushed so gradually that I scarcely knew how it happened.

My heart beat in angry jerks. The idea that I had say in my life was an illusion. And what had the illusion won me? Was I any freer? I wasn’t certain who I was anymore. I knew the smiling, masked version of myself. But she, too, was only an illusion.

What did I want?

My first thought steered toward the impossible—Edward and Mama. But knowing they were unattainable, I thought smaller. What if I decided whom I’d visit for once, or what I would wear
that day? What would I have wanted to do right then, before I came here?

The answer was so obvious, I felt like a simpleton.

I hadn’t breathed fresh air in ages, nor been warmed by the sun’s rays on my skin. Each time I daydreamed about Edward, had I not also yearned for the outdoors? I needed to walk in the wind, to feel grass beneath my feet. To wander in solitude.

While in London, I’d become so conditioned to submit and obey that guilt enwrapped me as I made a decision without first consulting my father or Isaac. I would walk to the ancient oak tree that Edward had found our first morning here.

Deciding my impotency was the illusion, I donned a walking dress, the plainest dress I could locate, then wrapped myself in a shawl and hastened outdoors before anyone could stop me.

The frost that had glittered over the landscape this morning had dissolved, leaving behind piebald patches of mud. Mist enshrouded the fields like a distant wall providing me with longed-for isolation.

Mud caked the bottom of my skirts, and my legs burned as I climbed up the hill. I could have spread my arms and spun in circles. I felt freer than I had in months. My body felt a strange mixture of temperatures—cold in the nose, ears, and toes, but tingly warm everywhere else.

When I spotted the first spiralling branches of the golden oak, however, I hesitated and nearly lost my resolve to finish. The thought of sitting at the tree without Edward was painful. But then, determined to at least touch the trunk, I picked up my skirts.

I wiped my nose with my sleeve. I’d been so full of hope the last time I’d been here. I thought I’d win my father, see Macy defeated, and find my way back to Edward. Would I have come had I known my old life would be entirely stripped from me?

I’d nearly touched the trunk when a cold wind lifted something from the ground, a brown fabric, which flopped, then
fell. My stomach lurched upon realizing a vagrant lay propped against the mossy bole. My first instinct was to flee, but the head turned, revealing Edward’s distinctive locks curling around his boyish face.

It was so unexpected that for a moment I thought myself dreaming.

Twigs and leaves were intertwined in his mussed hair, much like the time when we’d played soldiers and crawled through Mrs. Hodges’s thicket. Only this time, Edward’s breathing was too rapid and his cheeks too flushed.

Dampness soaked through my skirts as I knelt by him.

He grinned, his wonderful lopsided grin, reserved just for me. “I read in the paper you’d left London.” He attempted to sit forward but couldn’t lift his head. He relaxed against the trunk again. “I think I have a fever.”

I smiled, trying not to show my alarm. “You do look it.”

He shut his eyes. “You can’t tell by looking. You’re supposed to kiss my forehead. If it feels heated, then it’s a fever.”

I laughed, managing to keep tears from my voice, then removed my glove and felt his brow with the backs of my fingers.

His skin scorched mine.

“How long have you been here?” I asked. Sparks of alarm rushed through me as I recalled that the temperature had plummeted during the night.

He swallowed instead of answering.

I pressed my lips against his forehead, brushing aside his curls. “Edward, darling, can you walk? With support, I mean?”

He opened his glazed eyes and studied me a long minute. “Am I too late?”

I looked down, not certain if he was asking about us or for him. Therefore, I was at a loss to answer.

“Have you married Lord Dalry?” he clarified.

“No.” I could barely choke out the words. “But . . . but I’m engaged.”

“Do you want to be?”

I shook my head.

He gave a weak chuckle. “This keeps happening to us, doesn’t it?”

I sank fully to the ground, feeling as though a gentle rain refreshed my soul, feeling whole again. “Rather.”

“Well, at least you haven’t married this one yet. That much is in our favor. We’ll have to trust God for the rest.” He shut his eyes. “I’m sorry, Juls, but that’s all the sermonizing I can manage.”

“Well, I appreciate the effort. I’ve embraced Christianity now, you know.”

A smile tugged over his lips. “Don’t become alarmed, Juls, but I fear I’m now delusional. I’d like to tell you what I thought you said, but it might get me socked.”

I kissed his brow again, then his temples, not caring about my duty to Macy, my father, or Isaac. “Don’t worry, darling; there aren’t any apples about.”

He gave no response, seemingly asleep.

I drew a deep breath, worried. I picked crumpled leaves from his hair, surmising that while my engagement to Isaac was being celebrated by all but me, Edward slept in the cold and in the leaves, waiting, trusting. How could he have known I’d come? What if I hadn’t?

I pressed my cheek against the top of his head, not certain how to fit Edward’s arrival into my newfound faith. What would my surrender look like now? Was I supposed to do nothing, to fall blindly and trust, or was I supposed to rebel and fight my father with every ounce of energy? It was my first crisis of faith, albeit far more wonderful than I could have imagined. At least—at
least
—I had Edward during it.

“Ed.” I kissed the crown of his head. “I need you to come with me. You have to stand. I’ll support you. The house isn’t far.”

He opened his eyes and stared as if his thoughts came
slowly. Then he nodded and struggled to sit forward again. Wrapping his arm about my shoulder, I helped him stand. He shifted more of his weight to me than I expected, making us both wobbly.

I did not allow myself to feel emotion as we stumbled toward Maplecroft. Haltingly we made progress. Beads of perspiration dotted his brow, making fear clutch my heart. After what seemed like hours, Maplecroft, with her false offers of sanctum, loomed into view.

They must have noticed I was missing and had been searching, for the front door flew open and James raced toward me, his white periwig bobbing as he made haste.

“Help me carry him to a bed,” I ordered. “Then send William for my father’s surgeon.”

“Your father—” he began.

I met his protests with a look that was feral. “I don’t care what my father thinks. You will obey me! And if my father protests, fetch me and I’ll handle him! Am I clear?”

Instead of hurt or anger, his eyes sparkled with pride as though he’d been waiting for this moment. The whites of his teeth flashed. “Perfectly!”

It took about forty minutes before Edward was in bed and an apothecary was sent for. Once satisfied that Edward was in good hands, I went to my father.

Clutching my shawl against me, I knocked on the library door. Then, with annoyance, I realized my skirts were muddy and my hair stuck up in wisps.

“Enter,” my father’s stern voice called.

I tried to press down the freed hair that surrounded my face while I nudged the door open. My father sat sideways in his chair behind his desk, waiting for me with a dour expression. Seated nearby, Mr. Forrester watched with a wicked grin.