“I insisted on following your butler,” Kilgore announced, pushing past Templeton to enter the room. With an apologetic look, the butler departed.
Guinevere felt her jaw fall open at the sight of Kilgore, and her mother gasped, scrambling to sit up and remove the cloth from her eyes. With hair askew, her mother waved a frantic hand at Guinevere. “Rise up. Rise up and conduct yourself like the lady we raised you to be.”
Kilgore, bless him, cut her mother a dark look. “There is no need for Lady Guinevere to rise, Lady Fairfax. I know full well that your daughter is the epitome of a well-raised lady.”
Oh, Kilgore was good! He knew just what to say to please Mama. She beamed at him and patted her hair.
“Kilgore,” her father said, rising to his feet, “to what do we owe the pleasure of this late call?” Her father’s words were polite but his tone was frosty.
Kilgore gave Guinevere a look that could only be described as conspiratorial and set worry in her chest. “Might I have a private word with Guinevere?” he asked, his voice and look insinuating that there was something between them Guinevere knew there was not.
“Oh!” her mother crowed, relief apparent on her face. “Guinevere, you—”
“I am happy to speak with Kilgore privately,” Guinevere rushed out before Mama could say anything that could not be undone, such as gloating that Kilgore was offering for her, which Guinevere knew he did not intend.
Her mother frowned at her. “I hardly think—”
“It inappropriate,” her father cut her mother off smoothly, eying Kilgore threateningly, “since they will be where I can see them. You may have a few moments alone in the small garden.”
Guinevere bit her cheek on hysterical laughter. Did her father think the man would become carried away by passion for her? If Papa only knew that Kilgore’s heart and lust belonged to another…
She didn’t know why Kilgore was here, but she knew for certain neither love nor passion had sent him here to offer marriage today, which they had already discussed. Her life may be in shambles and her hope for love dashed, but she was not going to be a party to destroying another’s chance at happiness.
She had to clench her teeth to force a smile, and she ground said teeth back and forth as she acted pleased to go with Kilgore to the garden directly in front of the parlor. Not long later when Templeton shut the door behind her, she abandoned her pretense of civility, marched down the remaining stone steps to the garden, and turned on Kilgore. “Why are you here?” She did not bother to temper her sharp tone.
He frowned. “You sent for me. I assumed you had changed your mind about wedding that dull wit Carrington.”
“I did not send for you, Kilgore.” She pressed her fingertips to her temples, which throbbed in time with her rapid heartbeat.
“You didn’t?”
The relief in his voice made her not only believe him but laugh. “I did not,” she assured him, “and based on your barely constrained look of relief, I’d say you are lucky indeed that I did not decide to take you up on your earlier offer of marriage.” Even if it had been just for pity’s sake.
“A thousand apologies, Lady Guinevere,” he said, moving closer.
“One apology will do,” she replied. “But if I did not send for you—”
Giggling from above their heads sent Guinevere’s heart into the pit of her stomach. She glanced up to see Frederica and Vivian huddled in the window overlooking the garden.
Oh, dear heavens.
“What have you two done?” she called up. Though, more than likely, it was three of them. Lilias might not be here, but Guinevere had no doubt that her best friend was involved.
“Guinnie!” Vivian said, sounding aghast that Guinevere should ask such a thing in front of Kilgore.
Guinevere waved a dismissive hand at the man in front of her. “Never you mind him,” she bit out. “Kilgore will keep our confidences as I keep his secrets,” she finished, glancing at him meaningfully. In the moonlight and the glow cast across his handsome face by the oil lanterns, he hitched his eyebrows but smiled slowly and nodded.
“Carrington sent Papa a note this morning that he would call later today. He wanted to ensure Papa would be in residence for them to speak about the unfortunate circumstance in which the two of you find yourselves,” Vivian said.
“Did the note use those exact words?Unfortunate circumstance?” she asked, not bothering to delve further into how it was that her sisters had come to read a private message meant for their father or why Papa had not mentioned the note to her.
When her sisters both nodded, Guinevere felt her breath release and her heart shrink to the size of a pea. She detested peas and men named Asher who made her heart ache, but most of all she detested the realization that she had not quite totally given up on him and what she had longed for with him, only him. How dare he call the prospect of wedding her an unfortunate circumstance!
“We convened a secret meeting with Lilias,” Vivian said, bringing Guinevere’s attention back to her sister.
So that’s where her sisters had rushed off to earlier. They’d said they needed ribbon, and Guinevere had been too distraught to give it much thought. Instead, they had gone to Lilias’s home; she had also come to Town after the “unfortunate woods incident,” feigning illness, bless her best friend, to be here if Guinevere should need her.
“It was decided in a unanimous vote by the members of SLAR who could be present that it would do Carrington some good to think he had competition for your hand. So we simply had to intervene.”
