Jack glanced at the two women across from him and knew exactly how Sir Gareth felt.
“Ashley, calm down. Everything will work out,” Lady Madeleine said.
Jack snorted at her misplaced optimism. Nothing would work out. Not anymore. He was beyond help.
She ignored him and looked at Dover, now seated beside him. “Mr. Dover, I regret that this is not turning out as we had anticipated. If you have reconsidered and wish to call off our elopement, I will understand.”
Jack looked at Mr. Dover, who sat with his pocket watch open on his lap. Some part of him wanted Dover to bail out. Even though Jack knew he would never have Lady Madeleine, he didn’t want Dover to possess her either.
Dover looked up. “My lady, if you will still have me, I am most willing to undertake this journey. I gave my word, and I do not do so lightly.”
Lady Madeleine nodded soberly, and Jack rolled his eyes. He felt miserable, and Dover’s flowery speech wasn’t helping.
“Ashley,” Lady Madeleine said to her friend, “I don’t know how your father found us, but it’s not too late for you to go home.”
“What, and let you have all the adventure?” the blonde said. Jack coughed. He would have to watch this one. She was the female equivalent of his brother.
“It’s not an adventure,” Lady Madeleine corrected. “It’s practically a fiasco. You should go home now and—”
“She can’t go home,” Jack broke in, his misery doubling. “Not anymore.”
Lady Madeleine turned her stunning blue eyes on him. “Why not?”
“Because I’m marrying Miss Brittany in Gretna Green.”
There was a chorus of dissent in the carriage, and Jack wished he could join it. More than anything, he wanted to get the hell out of the carriage and never see any of them again. Including his brother.
But they’d sped right past that fork in the road.
His course was set now, and, little as he liked it, he was stuck with it.
“I’m marrying Miss Brittany in Gretna Green,” Jack repeated over the noise. He was impressed how easily the words came out, especially when his stomach heaved at the very thought.
“No you’re not!” Ashley shrieked.
Jack wanted to cover his ears. Dover, on the other hand, merely nodded. At least someone understood that this was the best and only way. Lady Madeleine obviously did not fall into that camp. She was gaping at him.
Damn, even that wide-eyed innocent look he hated on women was attractive on her.
“But—But why?” Lady Madeleine asked, her shock evident. “Before, you said—”
“That was before,” Jack interrupted. “Before her father ambushed us and your friend there basically forced me into this elopement.” He gestured to his fiancée—God, the very thought of having a fiancée made him want to empty the contents of his stomach—and she sat up indignantly.
“I did not force you to elope!”
“Then why the hell did you tell your father I was eloping with you? I might have convinced him I had nothing to do with this and gone on my way.”
Ashley Brittany shook her head. “I was trying to help. I surmised that if he thought you were important to me, then he wouldn’t hurt you. I don’t want to marry you.”
“Well, you’re stuck with me now.”
Lady Madeleine shushed her friend, cutting off Ashley’s next remark. From the look on Ashley’s face, that was probably for the best.
Lady Madeleine gave Jack a long look. “So you do have a sense of honor.”
He laughed. “Honor be damned. I’m saving my own neck. Now that the chatterbox over there claimed me as her fiancé, I’ve all but ruined her. If I go back to London and we’re not married, her father will shoot me. Hell, any peer with an eligible daughter will shoot me. I’ll be labeled a defiler of young girls.”
Lady Madeleine actually looked sorry for him, which almost made Jack laugh. He hadn’t thought he could be any more disreputable.
