A Kiss to Spark a Scandal - Chapter 8

Her fiancé stood rigid by the ornamental fountain where she had dragged him, arms folded and dark brows so knitted in anger they merged into one. ‘Our parents are about to toast our engagement! That ballroom is full to the rafters!’ He jerked his thumb backwards. ‘And you thought tonight was the best night to engage in a tryst?’

‘I appreciate that you are angry, Peter. You have every right to be.’ Because Dorothea was certain what he had witnessed could not be construed by him in any other way. ‘But before we talk about that—’ she gazed helplessly to the other side of the lawn where both Freddie and Toby glared at her ‘—I need to ask you a question. A question I should have asked you a long time ago. Back when everything between us wasn’t so stilted and awkward.’

His frown deepened at that, his mouth opening as if about to argue, until he huffed in resignation. ‘What do you need to ask?’

‘Is this what you want, Peter?’ She threw up her hands. ‘If, for one moment, we forget that we have been promised to one another since birth, that our parents are over the moon at our union and that there are two hundred people in the ballroom behind us all clasping champagne glasses and waiting eagerly to toast our engagement, am I what you want?’ She took both his hands and stared deep into his eyes. ‘Am I what your heart desires?’

‘I…’ He pulled a hand away and raked it through his hair. ‘I…want you to be.’

‘And what does that mean?’ It wasn’t a heartfelt declaration of love, that was for certain.

‘It means that I am going to try my best to ensure that you are—and that I assumed you were going to do the same.’

‘And is that enough for your heart? Or fair to either of us? Ever since this Season started, we seem to have even stopped being friends when we always used to be, and while we are both clearly trying to make us work…’ She was so sick and tired of trying. ‘I wonder who we are trying for. Is it best for us, or best for our parents? When I think we both realise that you cannot force love if your heart isn’t in it.’

Peter sat heavily on the wall of the fountain and gestured across the lawn with a flick of his head. ‘I take it your heart is engaged elsewhere?’

‘It wasn’t intentional.’ Which was the absolute truth. ‘It just happened. With absolutely no effort on my part at all. In fact, I made a concerted effort not to fall in love with him, but…’

Peter smiled wistfully as he stared intently across the lawn. ‘The heart wants what the heart wants, no matter how hard you try to fight it.’ At first, she assumed it was Freddie he was studying, but as Freddie began to pace, Peter’s eyes remained fixed on his friend.

‘Toby! You and Toby?’ Dorothea was both shocked and then, as the bombshell he’d dropped settled, oddly not—because suddenly their complete lack of frisson all made sense. ‘Oh, Peter… I don’t know what to say.’ Because she didn’t. ‘Beyond that I am sorry.’ He would never have what she had now. His true love was doomed to always be a secret and one that the law dictated he had to hide.

‘And yet I am not sorry. How could I be when Toby is everything that I need. I’ve tried to fight it. Honestly I have. I’ve said my goodbyes and promised myself that what we had had to be in the past because you were my future, but…’

‘The heart wants what the heart wants.’ She took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I wish you had told me all this before we found ourselves here.’

‘It’s not the sort of thing…’ She stayed him with her hand.

‘It is exactly the sort of thing that one lifelong friend confides in another. All I want is for you to be happy, Peter, and if it is Toby who makes you happy and he is who your heart wants, then I think we should both listen to our hearts for a change and not our parents.’

‘Sadly, that is easier for you than it is for me.’ His resignation was tragic when she now had so much. ‘I know I have to marry. One day.’ He pulled a comic face of disgust which made her smile. ‘And I must produce the customary heir the dukedom expects, but it will be easier to do that in a dispassionate and loveless union. One where my future wife wants my title more than she wants me, and one where once the perfunctory chore of procreation is done, we can blissfully go our separate ways as so many do in society. I am long used to living a lie—but it would break my heart to perpetuate that lie with you.’ He wrapped his arm around her in a reassuringly brotherly fashion. ‘I love you, Dorothea. I always have—just not like that.’

‘A feeling that is gloriously mutual, Peter.’ She rested her head on his shoulder in time to hear the first bars of the long-delayed waltz waft from the house, imagining their mothers frantic as they searched for them. ‘Now what do we do?’

Peter and Toby helped sneak Dot out of the garden and across Berkeley Square to where Freddie had parked his phaeton.

‘Are you sure you do not want me with you to deliver the bad news?’ She clutched her former fiancé’s hand, concerned. ‘It doesn’t sit right with me to leave it all to you when I am as much, if not more, to blame for this debacle tonight.’

‘I am happy to shoulder the consequences. After all, I did abandon you to the Season and our meddling mothers as soon as the engagement was announced, so this is the least I can do.’ Peter lifted her into the seat beside Freddie, then reached over to shake his hand. ‘Take care of her—and be warned that if you ever treat her as shoddily as I have, you’ll have me to answer to.’

‘Duly noted.’ He wasn’t entirely sure why Peter was taking this all so well, but knew this was no time to question why either. Dot wasn’t marrying him, so Freddie’s reckless mission here hadn’t been in vain. That was all that mattered now.

‘DOROTHEA!’ Her mother’s shout from the steps of Claremont House was filled with outrage. ‘Come here this instant!’ Behind her, half the ballroom seemed to tumble out to witness the scandal unfold.

‘Go!’ Peter shooed them away as Dot gripped Freddie’s thigh. ‘Fly like the wind!’

So Freddie did, snapping the reins and ushering his pair of horses to a gallop before they had even left Berkeley Square. The rest of Mayfair passed in a blur, and for good measure Freddie took his phaeton well beyond the city’s edge at a lick before he dared slow down.

‘Where to?’ Because he had no clue.

‘What difference does it make when I’m now thoroughly ruined anyway?’ She was smiling as she said this, her lovely eyes sparkling, as if being thoroughly ruined in front of everyone was considerably more preferrable than the alternative. ‘Wherever you take me, I shall still be a scandal.’

‘But at least we shall be a scandal together.’

‘So we have run away, with nowhere to go and no plan when we get there.’ Yet her arm slipped through his, suggesting she was completely content with that state of affairs.

‘When something is right, Dot, it’s right. You are my thunderbolt.’

‘And you aren’t an ill-fitting pair of shoes.’ She snuggled against him and kissed his cheek. ‘This is madness, Freddie! Utter madness!’

‘But love is utter madness, isn’t it? So this feels right.’

‘It does.’ She beamed at him and he beamed back.

‘So what say you we embrace it and do something completely mad and properly scandalous?’

She shrugged, unperturbed, love shining in her gaze. ‘I say in for a penny, in for a pound.’

‘Good.’ He kissed her then. Long and deep and hopelessly perfect before he snapped the reins again. ‘Gretna Green it is, then.’

*