Maddie bit her lip and looked down at her fingers. “I don’t think I should answer that question. I haven’t been a very good friend.”
“Why?” Ashley asked. “Did you kiss Blackthorne?”
Maddie peeked at Mr. Dover, noted the man was still asleep, his glasses now perched precariously on the end of his nose.
“I have.”
“More than once?”
Maddie nodded, then looked at her friend. “I’m sorry. I know he’s your fiancé, and I didn’t want to do it, but I—I couldn’t seem to make myself not do it.”
“I know what you mean.”
Maddie’s mouth dropped open. She had expected anger, outrage, or hurt. Not understanding. “You know what I mean?”
“Lord Nicholas affects me the same way. I tell myself I won’t ever kiss him ever again, that I won’t even to think of him, but I can’t seem to help it.”
“But you have to help it, Ashley, you’re supposed to marry Lord Blackthorne.”
Ashley raised a blond brow at her. “And you have to help it, Maddie, you’re supposed to marry that expert dog breeder.” She gestured to Mr. Dover, and Maddie sighed.
“It’s for the best,” she said with a sigh. “Lord Blackthorne and I would never suit.”
“Nor Lord Nicholas and I.”
Maddie blinked. “But Lord Nicholas and you would suit perfectly. You two are exactly alike.”
“Madeleine Fullbright, I resent that. I am nothing like that odious lout.”
“If you say so.”
Ashley crossed her arms defiantly. “Fine. And if we are alike—just a tiny bit—do you think that’s a good thing?”
Maddie hadn’t considered the matter that way—the difficulties of marrying someone too much like oneself. Was Mr. Dover very much like her? She glanced at him, noted the way his nostrils flared with his soft snores, and decided no, they had commonalities but were not terribly alike.
They were not as different as, say, she and Lord Blackthorne, and perhaps that meant she and Mr. Dover would make a good match.
“Ashley,” she began, “do you think it’s better to marry someone like you or someone opposite you? My father always says like should marry like.”
“‘Similar interests and similar dispositions,’” Ashley quoted. “Yes, I’ve heard him say that.”
“Do you agree?”
Ashley shrugged. “I don’t know. I think every marriage has its challenges.” She gave Maddie a long look. “I think the real question is, why are you asking?”
Maddie looked down at her fingers.
“Say the word, Maddie, and I won’t marry Blackthorne,” Ashley whispered. “If you care for him, then I won’t be the one to stand in your way.”
The one to stand in your way.
And who or what would stand in her way, then? Certainly Mr. Dover, to whom she’d made a promise. Certainly her father, who was undoubtedly on his way to intercept them at this very moment. Certainly Lord Blackthorne, who seemed to look forward to a marriage between himself and Ashley.
Blackthorne might have kissed her and touched her this morning, but he hadn’t proposed marriage, and she was under no illusion that he would do so. Ashley was the beautiful one. Ashley was the adventurous one. Ashley was the woman every man wanted.
And what would happen to Ashley if they were caught before they reached Gretna Green? What would happen to herself, for that matter? Along with their cousins Catie and Josie, she and Ashley had always been the girls Society whispered about and shook its head at. They were too wild for their own good. They set a bad example.
But Maddie knew that if she did not make it to Gretna Green in time to marry, she would never go about in Society again. It was one thing to have Society whisper about you. It was quite another to have them hurl insults and blatantly cut you.
