The Caversham Chronicles ~ the Beginning

Chapter Three-2

The duke could never understand her reasons for refusing him, but refuse him she must. They came from different worlds. He would never know her fears. He had never had to worry about his family, or how the butcher’s bill was going to get paid, not one bit. He had servants and likely more than one roof over his head. She was living on the good graces of her self-centered aunt who would use anyone if it gained her what she wanted.

When they were close enough to speak, His Grace stopped to greet her in the carpeted hallway, but Amelia walked past him toward her aunt’s room. She wasn’t speaking to him yet.

“Your aunt is unable to help you avoid your future, Miss Amelia. You are no longer in her employ and she has no say in what you do from now on.”

His voice halted her in her tracks. She spun around and stomped over to him. His tall frame, broad shoulders and regal bearing made her want to cower, but she refused, despite the fact that he was far too imposing for the likes of her. And handsome, too. He was only doing this because he’d been caught kissing her. If she could make him think it meant nothing to her, perhaps she could still return to Surrey with Aunt Katherine.

“You know nothing about me. Why in heaven’s name would you want to marry me?” Nor did she know anything of him, except his tendency toward high-handed behavior. And that his kiss aroused her senses. Still, there was no friendship, no intimacy between them. They’d encountered each other in the maze and in the library. That was all. “I have no desire to leave my aunt’s home. I wish to remain in my situation.”

“Your aunt has given her permission for us to wed.”

“I do not need her permission. She has no say whatsoever in whether I do or do not wed,” Amelia hissed, afraid to waken the other guests. “I am several years into my majority. You could have asked me directly.” She lowered her gaze as her face burned with embarrassment as she remembered the night before and how she’d fantasized about him after she’d gone to bed.

“Since you have not, I do not consider us in any way betrothed. Now, please excuse me.” She turned to walk away but his voice stopped her. She looked back at him.

“Regardless. Lady Rawdon will soon be on her way back to her home. I warned her against spreading gossip as to what happened last night. So your modesty is protected.” The look in his eye softened and the tension around his lips relaxed as well. It made him look less imposing, and more likable. “We shall be leaving for Town as soon as you get packed. There is much to do before our wedding in one month.”

“I cannot marry you, Sir.” Amelia reinforced the title he’d asked her to use. “I will not.”

“After you speak with your aunt, you will find me in Lord Merivale’s study, waiting.”

The man was infuriating. Did no one ever refuse him? Did he ever listen to anyone other than himself? Amelia nodded, bobbed a quick curtsy, and went to her aunt’s rooms.

Aunt Katherine’s maid let her in. Her aunt’s trunks were open and the maid went back to packing. Her aunt was seated at a small table buttering her toast.

“Is it true? Are you leaving?” Her aunt seemed to ignore her as she continued spreading the butter. Frustrated at her aunt’s lack of response, she began to pace the area near the table. Amelia firmed her voice, hoping her fear did not come through with her words. “I am not going anywhere with that man,” she stated. “I do not know him, and I refuse to marry him.”

Her aunt turned tired eyes up to her, and she began to speak. “I have admired and desired Caversham since I met him several years ago.” Her voice sounded hollow, defeated, and sad, and Amelia knew she was truly in pain. “I knew eventually Rawdon would die, drunken pig that he was, and as soon as I was out of mourning I would make myself known to His Grace. All season long, I have watched and waited for the opportunity to have an introduction. I have finagled, bribed, and lied my way into this party. And now you have ruined all my chances with one stupid meeting in a library.”

At one time she might have had some sympathy for her aunt, but her actions since arriving here at Somerhill were so shameless and repugnant that any compassion she had for the woman was long gone.

Amelia straightened her spine. She recognized it as a defensive action as she readied herself for an argument with her kin. She didn’t want to think she had to defend herself against her own aunt. She spoke softly, wanting to explain, but not willing to be cowed into this scheme of theirs. “We actually met while I was out walking the day we arrived. I had no idea who he was. We spoke but a few…”

“Shut up!” Aunt Katherine’s eyes—no, her entire being—radiated hatred. Derision laced her acid voice. “You are so very unprepared for the role you have been offered, you will be a laughingstock.” She lowered her gaze back to her bread and methodically continued spreading butter on a piece that had already had a generous amount on it.

Amelia had never seen her aunt in such a state. Controlled fury simmered behind her outwardly cold mien. Amelia realized right then, she didn’t fear her aunt. She pitied her.

“It is completely outside of my comprehension that someone of his breeding and ton would select someone as pitiable as you to be his bride.”

A strange feeling, disbelief mixed with a numbing fear, coursed through Amelia. Not only was the man she was commanded to marry a complete stranger to her, so was the woman to whom she was related to by blood. “I have told you that I did nothing, absolutely nothing at all, to encourage the man’s attention. In fact, I want none of it. And you treat me as though I stole him from you!”

Aunt Katherine paid no attention to her, or her words. It was as if Amelia had never spoken. And when her aunt turned to look at her, her eyes glittered with an uncanny rage. “If you marry the duke, you will be dead to me. As though you’d never been born. You are my goddaughter. My sister’s only daughter. I took you in when your father’s family wanted nothing to do with you, and this is how you repay me? By playing the little harlot and stealing the man you knew I wanted for myself?” Her aunt’s voice grew louder in volume, until she was nearly screeching at Amelia, but Aunt Katherine caught herself before she drew attention to their argument and staff came running to her defense. Amelia knew the woman didn’t want or need any negative gossip about her floating through society, else how would she catch herself another husband?

“If I remember correctly, you invited me to come stay with you, so do not play the charitable relative. I may have had nothing, but I am quite competent and willing to work. My friend and her mother are two perfectly respectable widows in our village. Together, we would have muddled through.”

“I could not allow you—my sister’s only surviving child—to live on the edge of destitution, Amelia! My good Christian heart would not rest knowing you had nothing.”

“Good Christian heart?” Amelia mumbled. What was wrong with her aunt? Her behavior was startling and becoming more bizarre by the minute.

“I should go speak to the duke. He is waiting for me below.” Amelia noticed her own voice was starting to quiver just a bit. It would only make sense that the circumstances frighten her. They would scare even the most strong-minded of women. It seemed that the only relative she had at the moment—not that she was giving up on her brother’s return—was going mad.

But she also didn’t want to leave with a total stranger. Even if his kiss made her insides turn to marmalade. She didn’t know him. What if he turned out to be a cruel husband? She had friends with husbands who were less than kind. That was something she could learn about him if they could have a proper courtship.

“Perhaps this is just a big misunderstanding. I will speak to him, get him to see reason. Then I can return home. I must be there if Harry….”

Her aunt looked up at her and Amelia could see her think as a slow smile began to spread on her face. Her eyes widened, almost appearing maniacal, the whites showing completely around her brown orbs. “No, Amelia. Do not speak to the duke ever again. Leave now and never darken my doorstep again, you disrespectful wretch of a girl.” Her aunt continued to make plans in her head, and Amelia felt the ground beneath her start to give way.

“I will tell him you were uninterested in his offer and I will console him as best I can,” her aunt continued. “Perhaps I can still salvage a relationship with him after all.”

Amelia stood there, shock registering in her brain as she listened. Aunt Katherine first told Amelia her plan to marry the duke, then she went on to say that Amelia could not be invited to stay with them because she feared Amelia luring the duke to her bed.

Every word from the woman’s mouth was madness. Madness rooted in jealousy, anger and fear. Amelia had done nothing at all to encourage her aunt’s wrath except call her out on her behavior for lying about the invitation to this house party. Before this, their relationship had been tolerable. Not amiable, but not unbearable either. She never suspected these depths.

“Leave here,” her aunt screeched. “Leave now, you wretched and morally corrupt temptress! Never, ever show your face at Greenwood Manor again. Do you hear me?”

She never replied to her aunt. Turning, she stomped out of the room, her own anger and fear at the situation she found herself in forcing a few tears from her eyes. Once in the hallway, she ran for the stairwell and her own rooms where she asked Gertie to please give her some privacy while she collected herself. When the maid left the room, she threw herself on the bed and gave in to the torrent bursting from her soul.

She had no place to go. No home. She couldn’t go back to Greenwood, her aunt didn’t want her there. Her father’s bindery didn’t exist any longer that she could beg for a job from the new owner. If she returned to her friend Carolyn’s home and asked to take shelter there until she found employment, would her mother, Mrs. Goddard, allow her?

And who would employ her? She had no recommendations. None. Not even her father’s family acknowledged her enough to write a recommendation for a position as a maid or companion. She would be truly destitute.

Unless…

Amelia thought about the man waiting below. She didn’t wish to marry because she’d have to leave her county, it wasn’t that she had an opposition to the bonds of matrimony. Over the years, she’d rather grown to cherish her independence, and that would go away. She wasn’t certain what the man’s temperament was. Was he a heavy drinker, as her aunt’s last husband, Lord Rawdon? Or cruel, as Carolyn’s father, Mrs. Goddard’s husband, had been?

The duke showed no partiality for her aunt, so she wasn’t going to upset any affections on that front. And for all intents and purposes her aunt wanted nothing more to do with her, so whomever she married was her own choice. Her own decision.

Amelia turned over, sat up, and called for Gertie. If she was going to meet the duke below and ascertain whether he was serious about the offer, she would need to look her best.