“I am afraid I’m after a bit of solitude, my lord.” Jane wrapped her layers more tightly around her and stepped to the side. There was more than one way out of the maze, but at the particular bend where they stood, only one direction would take her toward the exits. She’d have to go around Lord Devon to get there.
He dropped to a knee. “I’ve not proposed romantically yet. I thought it might help.”
She sighed. “Please, do stand up.”
He remained kneeling and looked up at her with pale blue eyes the color of a winter sky. “Scandal hovers over the both of us. We must wed. Why you fail to see this, I—” He broke off, shaking his head.
“Please, do stand.”
His scruff-shadowed jaw tightened. Stubborn man. “Marry me, Lady Jane.”
“We did nothing to warrant a hasty marriage shaded in guilt.Youdid nothing, at least. I’m the one who hid in your traveling coach. It’s simply bad luck someone saw us and set tongues wagging.”
“And wagging tongues ruined your good name. Someone, someman, must make it right.”
An unfortunate truth. She grabbed his hands and hauled him to his feet. Every inch of his skin smelled of the liquor he imbibed from dawn to dusk.
“That is what this house party is for, is it not? You apologized twice in London, and I refused your kind offer twice. You are exculpated from all responsibility. Why are you here?”
He blinked and scratched his head, trying to discern the answer through the London fog his brain had likely turned into. “If I do not salvage your honor, I ruin my own. My brother is vexed with me for this debacle. I am vexed with myself. I should have marched you right back to London as soon as I discovered you.” His face, ruddy from cold and drink, paled. “I did not. It is as much my failing as it was your own.”
“I try not to look at it as a failing, Lord Devon. I hid in your coach to help my friend. I thought she needed my support. I was running after her. Helping a friend is hardly a failing. It is theton’sissue if they insist it is.”
Lord Devon’s breath clouded the air between them, his pale eyes far away. “You are a stout soul. We would do well together.”
“No, we would not.” She did not care for boys who drowned their sorrows and shocks of life in drink.
He leaned to one side, then the other, as if a wind gusted him about. “How can I make it right if you will not marry me?”
“Let me worry about my matrimonial status. There are three other suitable men inside who are after my dowry. Four if you count Lord Sharpton, and I do not. Ifyouwish to please me, you should avoid spirits, not avoid other much more eligible and prettier women than me, and… take a bath. You reek, Lord Devon. I feel it is kind of me to say, if not proper. You do not wish others to smell you in such a state, I hope.”
He lifted an arm, ducked his head, took in a deep breath, and turned green. He gagged. “Good God. I do reek. No wonder you refused my proposal.” He straightened and took a heavy breath of the fresh winter air.
Jane inched around him in the small space, clinging to the shrubbery. “And do not propose to me again.”
“I cannot promise that,” Lord Devon said. “But I will promise to bathe.”
Jane backed down the walkway. “Excellent. And then go find Lillian. She needs some companionship on this drab day.”
“Miss Clarke?”
“Just so.” Jane turned and quickly retraced the pathways of the maze.
“Wait,” she heard Lord Devon say, “how do I get out of here?”
Getting lost would keep him from coming after her. And the maze was not so big or complicated that he’d be lost long, even in his inebriated state.
Escaping the maze, she turned toward the forest.
Jaunting off on her own was ill-advised. Impetuous. She would likely have to climb the tree to retrieve the mistletoe, and what if she fell? But with four house guests, the entire family home, and Christmas in seven days, the servants were at their busiest. She could not bring herself to disturb them. And she needed space between herself and her suitors. They crowded round like angry spirits, but more jovial, smothering her with their smiles and amiability. And proposals.
She pulled her cloak closer and tugged its hood low over her brow as she passed through the tree line and into the woods. She stopped, closed her eyes, and breathed deep. She liked noise and action, but the quiet of the forest soothed her. A bird tweeted high above, and she opened her eyes with a grin. The forest did not have a true quiet. Perhaps that’s why she liked it so.
She craned her neck and looked toward the canopy above. Where was it? She’d found it the other day. But Simon the footman had been with her then, and he did keep up a steady stream of chatter. She’d not been concentrating, and now the location eluded her.
Hells.
She trudged forward, letting the cold settle into her bones, letting the not-quite-silence of the forest calm her. She’d thought that week the gossip of her elopement had spread like wildfire through thetonhad been bad. There had been no elopement after all, only an abominable bad decision to hie north with the single Lord Devon in order to convince her friend to come back to London. Really, she should have expected the outcome. Ruination.
