“Why do you think he is pursuing you, Lady Arabella?”
She stiffened. “Perhaps, he likes me. Is that so outlandish to you?”
“You are a Duke’s daughter. He is a Baron.” Henry sighed, offering an apologetic smile. “I know we never discussed limitations, but I think we ought to implement some. I cannot say for certain that Lord Powell’s intentions are selfish but to someone like him, you are the equivalent of an open invitation to the Royal Mint.”
Arabella gaped at him, no longer feeling merry at all. “So, I am only worth my dowry, is that what you are implying? Do I have no merits that a gentleman might find enchanting?”
“I am sorry, Arabella.” Henry tried to take her hand, but she snatched it back as different, unhappy tears pricked at her eyes.
“Do you not think I have had enough of being boiled down to my financial and societal value?” Her breath hitched as the first, hot tear spilled down her cheek. “Am I so very… unremarkable to everyone? Is that why my mother sought to put me in a garish gown so that, for once, someone would look at me, even if it was for the wrong reasons?”
Henry seemed panicked. “Please, Arabella, do not cry. I am so very sorry. I spoke out of concern, but I did not consider how it might make you feel. Please, do not be upset.”
“Lord Powell made me feel seen, Henry,” she breathed, her throat tight. “He prevented my humiliation at Lord Chisholm’s ball. He told me I looked beautiful. I would not expect you to understand what that meant to someone like me. Now, if you will excuse me, I feel rather unwell.”
She got up on shaky legs and offered a rushed apology to Lord Talbot, who sat at the head of the table. He looked like he might try to get her to stay, but she did not give him the opportunity as she raced from the dining room, determined to keep the rest of her tears from falling until she was out of this place.
“Milady?” Cassie, who had been waiting in one of the smaller rooms earmarked for the chaperones, jumped up as Arabella beckoned for her to follow. “What’s wrong, Milady?”
Arabella shook her head, saying nothing as they ran across the entrance hall and out of the townhouse. Crossing the road, they reached the carriage, where Arabella called to the driver to take them home. A barely awake footman helped the ladies into the carriage, rubbing his eyes as he closed the door and clambered up onto the driver’s box.
Once inside, Arabella sucked in breath after breath, struggling to calm herself.
“What happened, Milady? Why are you crying?” Cassie took a handkerchief and dabbed gently at Arabella’s cheeks.
But Arabella could not explain, not with one terrible question spinning around in her head. What if Henry was right? What if Lord Powell was only pursuing her because of what she was, rather than who she was? What if her societal value really was all she was worth?
“I just want to go home,” she whispered, pulling out the tiny, beaded daisies that had been prodded into her hair. “Please.”
As the carriage trundled away, she wondered if a nunnery might not be such a bad choice, after all.
Chapter Twelve
Grumbling along the country road that took him reluctantly away from his beloved London, and the sights and adventures that kept boredom at bay, Henry tilted his head from side to side to work out the knots that stiffened his neck. He had tried to convince Seth to come with him but, for once, his friend had something important to do—a business meeting that his father had arranged, to discuss a vacant parcel of land owned by the Bowles family.
“Why he could not have had such a meeting at his blasted Estate, I do not know,” Henry muttered, his shirt sticking to him rather unpleasantly, the high collar feeling like a noose. Even before he had set out on this journey, he had not been in the best of moods, and the relentless heat was only making it worse.
Two days had passed since the awful night at Lord Talbot’s. Ever since, he had hemmed and hawed about taking this trip to meet with Arabella. He had almost taken his carriage straight after her, within minutes of her departure, but Seth had held him back.
“I cannot profess to know what that was about, my good man, but I know my sister,” Seth had said. “Give her a day to calm down and it will be as though nothing happened. Unless you have given her true reason to be upset?” He had looked at Henry with suspicious eyes.
Henry had shaken his head. “A poor jest, badly taken, I am afraid.”
“Ah, it happens to the best of us.” Seth had clapped him on the back. “Call upon her in a week and all will be well. Now, where the blazes is this watercress soup? I detest the stuff but I am utterly famished!”
But Henry had not been able to wait that long. As punishment for the visible distress he had caused Arabella, sleep had refused to come to his bedchamber. He had tossed and turned, thinking of what he could have said differently and damning his mistake with the wax seal and the way he had signed the letter. When sleephadteased him, it had brought no respite, repeating the events in the dining room over and over until he had no choice but to awaken.
That morning, he had made the decision to ride to the Bowles Estate and apologize for upsetting Arabella. Or, at least, he was going to try, though apologies had never been his forte.
I will explain myself better, if nothing else.
Up ahead, he saw the gates to the Bowles Estate and rode in on his sleek, black horse—a thoroughbred gelding by the name of Erudite. The horse had been a gift two years prior, given with the thinly veiled proviso that he should use it to fascinate the ladies and garner himself a wife.
Listening to the hooves crunch on the gravel driveway, Henry drew in a deep breath of the fragrant air. He did not know if it was the trimmed line of privet hedges on either side, or the neatly planted cypress trees behind the hedgerows, but the aroma always reminded him of his time on the Continent. The summers there had always smelled like this, which was perhaps the only nice thing he had to say about his period as a soldier.
“Excuse me!” Henry called on his approach to the vast, sandstone manor with its glinting sash windows and porticoed porch.
The gardener, tending to some potted plants out front, turned and lifted a hand to his brow. “Good morning to you, sir.”
