“This was three years ago?”
Miss Maltravers gave a grim nod. “We’d just come out of mourning for my father and it was past time Fenny made her debut. She was the most beautiful of all of us. The most beautiful of all the girls in Sussex. My family anticipated she’d make a grand marriage. Indeed, she appeared poised to do so. But she hadn’t been in town above two months before Anthony followed after her.”
Ahmad cast her a frowning glance. “To what end?”
“I’ve asked myself that question countless times. He wanted her, that much is plain. And he refused to give her up to another. But if Anthony marries without his father’s consent, he’s left all but a pauper. And his father will never consent to him marrying my sister.”
“Why not?”
“Because Sir William is terribly high in the instep. The daughter of an untitled country gentleman isn’t good enough for his heir. He’s made that fact plain from the beginning. It’s put Anthony in an impossible situation. He has no money of his own until he turns twenty-six—and only then if he’s refrained from marrying without permission. So you see, he couldn’t have wed Fenny even if he’d wanted to.”
“He could have done,” Ahmad said. “Quite easily.”
She gave him a doubtful look. A breeze through the trees ruffled a curl of her hair. The same vexing auburn lock he’d longed to smooth back earlier. “And how would he have supported her?”
“He might have worked.”
“He’s a gentleman,” she said.
Gentleman.
How Ahmad hated the word. It was imbued with more rank masculine privilege than nearly any other appellation he’d ever encountered.
Any, perhaps, save Englishman.
“And that excuses it?” he asked.
“No,” she admitted, “but it explains it.”
Not to his satisfaction.
He recognized the gentry’s aversion to honest labor, but he didn’t accept it.
There was nothing shameful about doing whatever was necessary to look after one’s family. Those gentlemen who refused to do so—who shrank from work and instead chose to let their estates and their families fall into ruin—deserved his scorn, not his pity. And certainly not his understanding.
Miss Maltravers tightened her shawl around her shoulders. “One day, when I returned from riding, I found my aunt weeping over a letter she’d received from Fenny’s chaperone in London. It said that Fenny had run off with Anthony, to the Continent, she feared. Aunt Nora spent the next several months writing to all of her friends in search of news. She pleaded with Sir William for his assistance.” A frown passed over her face. “He was too angry to oblige her. Angry at Fenny. Angry at Aunt Nora. Even at me. Relations between our two families rapidly broke down.”
“He blamed your family rather than his own son?”
“Oh yes. He claimed that Fenny had cast out lures to Anthony. That she’d beguiled and entrapped him, all with a view to one day becoming Lady Connaught. As if Fenny had the wits to enact such a plan. But Sir William could not be told.”
“Where does Stephen Connaught come into this?”
She exhaled a heavy breath. “He was my riding companion and, I believed, my friend. But he soon came round to his father’s way of thinking. He never spoke to me again.”
“Until today?”
“Until today.” She fell quiet for several seconds before continuing. “It seems that my sister and his brother were never truly lost. Indeed, the Connaughts have heard from Anthony several times these past years, and have sent him money care of various banks on the Continent. All while my own family has been kept in the dark. And now Stephen says that Fenny and Anthony are here in London.”
“Married?”
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t appear so. For if Anthony had wed my sister, Sir William would never have agreed to send money for his support.”
“They might have married in secret,” Ahmad suggested.
“Perhaps.” She didn’t sound as if she had much faith in the possibility. “Stephen intends to find them. To convince his brother to abandon my sister and return home. In doing so, I fear he may remind society of what it has so far forgot.”
“And hurt your prospects in the process.” A surge of bitterness took Ahmad off his guard. “Is it so important to you that you marry a fortune?”
She stopped on the path. “Is that what you think?”
“I’m not judging you. It’s the whole purpose of the season, is it not? For ladies like you.”
Twin spots of color rose in her cheeks as she faced him. “Ladies like me,” she repeated in a voice of perilous calm.
“Gentlewomen,” he said. “Englishwomen.”
“You don’t approve of either, it seems.”
He shrugged. “I told you, I make no judgments.”
“But you do. I can see that you do. You can’t possibly understand—”
“Because I’m not an Englishman.”
“Because you’re a man! You don’t know what it’s like to be a woman. To have all of the burdens of life, but none of the power. My sisters and I depended on Fenny to marry well, so that we could have our chance at happiness and security. Whom do you think my sisters are depending on now?”
Ahmad stared down at her in dawning realization. “You’re doing this for them.”
“Of course I am.” She resumed walking.
He caught up with her. “Making a sacrifice of yourself.”
“That implies I’m selfless. Which I’m not. I have my own interests to look after.”
“Such as?”
“Seeing that I’m clothed and fed. My uncle’s generosity has limits. And my aunt isn’t made of money. At some point, her funds will run out, and we girls will have to shift for ourselves. What shall we do then if we haven’t any husbands?”
“You could seek employment.” He expected her to scoff at the prospect. She was a lady, after all.
Miss Maltravers didn’t bat an eye. “Even if we did—if I did—it wouldn’t be enough. Not for my purposes.”
The overgrown path ahead of them came to an end at the garden gate.
She stopped there, resting her hand on the latch. Seeming to come to a decision, she opened the gate and stepped out. “Come and see for yourself.”
He followed after her to the mews and into the stable where her uncle housed his carriage horses. It was empty at the moment, no grooms or stable boys at hand to witness Ahmad in company with Miss Maltravers. No one about except the horses—and one horse in particular.