Miss Tavistock's Mistake: Clean and Sweet Regency Romance: Brides of Mayfair, Book One by Linore Rose Burkard

Author:Linore Rose Burkard [Burkard, Linore Rose]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Lilliput Press
Published: 2020-06-07T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Margaret’s heart dropped. He was determined to meet Miss Tavistock in Yorkshire? She wouldn’t be there, and he’d find out everything. Her mind raced for a solution. She must not let him go! But how to keep him from it? She had no claim upon him as Lady X. The captain slapped the reins to reach a smarter pace, and her mind sped to think of what to do. As they manoeuvred through traffic, and then stopped to let a rushing line of carriages hurry past, she wracked her brain for a solution.

The right thing to do, of course, would be to tell him at once that she was Miss Tavistock, that there was no need, no need at all for him to travel to Yorkshire. She’d been increasingly sorry for having misled him. But how to say it? The words would not come.

He turned to her. “I must ask you to stay wide of the earl, Miss Chrissendon,” he said. “Particularly while I am away.” He was busy with traffic or might have seen her stricken face, for she was still in agonies of indecision. It was no more a matter of wishing to keep him in the dark, but how to tell him? How to confess that she’d been deceiving him all this time? In truth, she saw now that she was a stubborn, quick-tempered minx of a woman!

A carriage flew towards them suddenly, and only the captain’s quick handling of the team prevented a head-on collision. As it sailed past, for it hadn’t bothered to so much as slow, a woman waved gaily from inside the equipage. Margaret didn’t recognise her, but the captain said, “That is Lady Hempley. Sir John, her husband, was quite deceived in her, poor man.”

“Deceived?” asked Margaret, wide eyed. “How so?” Her fingers gripped her reticule.

“She claimed to have ten thousand pounds in the funds. He married her for them. She had less than five hundred.”

Margaret swallowed. “Did it not serve him for marrying her only for her dowry?”

“Oh, he loved her,” the captain said, casting a knowing look at her. “Says he would have married her anyway, but he still laments the loss.” He shook his head. “I think ‘tis the knowledge that she fed him a Canterbury tale that really galls him.”

Margaret said not another word; she was too, too lost in gloomy thoughts to speak. As they pulled up to number 29 Berkeley Square, she felt herself a condemned criminal. It was only a matter of time. The captain would know that he too had been lied to. And would it not gall him, as it had done Sir John? What would be her sentence? Besides calling off the nuptials, would he let it out in Town that she was a deceiving shrew? Would the whole world know, as it knew about Lady Hempley, that she was so wicked?

Her face must have betrayed such tumultuous thoughts, for he said suddenly, “My dear Miss Chrissendon, are you unwell?”

She looked at him like one coming out of a dream.

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