“Hush.”
He could not hush. If he was to lose her, he at least deserved his third-act soliloquy. “Come with me to the hay meadow, Hecate. If, when we leave there, you want me to depart from Nunnsuch, I will yield to the press of business or whatever fiction polite society resorts to when making a hasty exit. Johnny does not deserve you, he will betray your trust over and over, and you do not love him.”
Worse yet, Johnny did not love Hecate.
“I used to be fond of him, but now I cannot even esteem him, except as one esteems an enemy’s artillery, but he will turn his guns on my family, on women and children. I am well acquainted with how that feels, Phillip, to be too young and too female to mount an adequate defense against Society’s assaults.”
“So you will bear Johnny’s assault on your freedom instead?”
“It might not come to that. He can’t know the whole extent of my fortune. I am vastly wealthy. I might be able to buy him off and still have enough left to care for my sailors and cousins.”
“It will come to that, and worse. He will insist on consummating the vows, over and over, and you will have no choice but to yield to him. Your family knows this.”
“Don’t say that.”
What could Phillip say, then? What did he know to be true, despite his rural, backward upbringing?
“Hecate, what sort of family demands the sacrifice of your personhood, your means, and your happiness? I know, believe me, I know the pain of familial abandonment. I was deemed unfit for my father’s notice. My mother had to sneak away from Town to see me for a few hours. The betrayal and bewilderment cut to the bone, but people who treat you thus aren’t worthy of the name family.”
Phillip kissed Hecate’s temple and bit back more frustrated lecturing. Johnny dared hatch this scheme only because the Bromptons, led by Isaac himself, would rally to his cause. The very generosity Hecate had shown them justified their resentment of her, and thus she was without allies.
“Marry me,” Phillip said. “Marry me and be done with the lot of them.”
Hecate shook her head. “You came to me because you wanted to acquit yourself well in polite society. If I elope with you, and Johnny goes to the courts, my scandal becomes yours. Tavistock’s fledgling brewery will be bankrupt before he sells the first barrel.”
“He has vineyards in France, a dozen other properties. He would not want to see you yoked to that scoundrel.”
Hecate sat up. “Perhaps true, but your brother married down, Phillip. He fired his solicitor under a cloud of gossip. His father was not well liked. Tavistock will be tarred with the same brush that will end your foray into polite society. The young Misses DeWitt, his sisters-by-marriage, will be hard-pressed to find husbands. You want this to be a simple choice for me between my heart’s desire and my worst nightmare, but the situation is complicated.”
Phillip wanted to say that Hecate was exaggerating, seeing doom where only passing clouds cast shadows, but he recalled DeWitt’s description of scandal’s impact on a “good” family. Financial, social, and emotional ruin.
“If am your heart’s desire, come to the hay meadow with me. You have not capitulated to the scoundrel yet. I’d ask you to hold out at least until the end of the house party.”
“Days.” She swiped at her cheek with her fingers. “Mere days, and then… I must be ruthless, Phillip. Much depends upon my ability to be ruthless.”
Phillip wished she’d for once be selfish. What neither of them had admitted was that buying Johnny off would not serve. He might content himself with a year or two frittering away Hecate’s money, but then he’d be back with the same threats of litigation, the same signed settlements to wave before a judge, until only marriage and complete control of Hecate and her fortune would placate him.
“I was never prepared to be ruthless courting Society’s favor,” Phillip said. “I told myself I’d make a reasonable effort, and if they tolerated me, I’d have done my part for a brother who has done much for me. Perhaps if a situation requires ruthlessness from one who is tenderhearted by nature, then ruthlessness is unlikely to succeed.”
Hecate sighed and rose. “Phillip, I found you dancing alone in the dark. You’ve taken to wearing rings and lace. I’ve caught the scent of some Parisian fragrance wafting from your person when I know you’d rather be singing a haying song, naked from the waist up, making fodder for your cows. In your fashion, you are certainly being very determined if not ruthless. Johnny will destroy what progress you’ve made, and I don’t want that—that, too—on my conscience. We are faced with the simple, frustrating fact that we cannot have everything we want.”
She sounded like the old Hecate, the veteran of London’s ballrooms, the Antidote Heiress, no longer of any interest to the gossips and pleased to find it so.
Phillip stood as well. “Why are you responsible for the whole, conniving clan? Why have they no responsibility to you?”
“They are all the family I have.”
“Then you are sending me away?” Another banishment, another exile, this one permanent.
“I am asking you to consider leaving before Saturday’s ball. Johnny might make some sort of announcement, force my hand, declare that he’s finally come home to finish the courtship he started years ago. I won’t have to agree to a proposal. He’ll start the rumor that I already have. He wants my money badly.”
“Not as badly as I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
Hecate said nothing and dabbed at her cheek with Phillip’s handkerchief.
“You mean well,” he said when it became obvious that silence was her refuge. “You are attempting to manage the whole situation for the benefit of all, but I have been ordering my own affairs for years, and I tell you… I choose you. I will always choose you, and I will await you in the hay meadow until dawn.”
He kissed her cheek and took the steps down to the garden terrace. He’d likely sleep under the stars by himself, an appealing prospect as consolations went because the ache in his heart would fill the whole starry firmament.
He retrieved an old cloak from the summer cottage and made his way over the arched bridge. As he struck out for the field, he realized that Hecate was wrong about one thing.
The rackety Brompton cousins were not all the family she had. She had him, and through him, every connection Tavistock claimed, and she had the Earl of Nunn on her side. So to Nunn, Phillip would go, as shortly after sunrise as was decently possible.
Hecate hadn’t told Phillip the worst of her latest encounter with Johnny.
Johnny had looked her over, inspected her visually, his glance lingering on her mouth, her bosom, her hips, there. His gaze had been confident and covetous, as if she’d been a fancy horse or a rare vase. The object itself mattered little, but absolute dominion over it, in all regards both public and intimate, counted for a great deal.
She’d stopped by the nursery before seeking the silence and solitude of the gallery. The boys had been asleep, and she’d stood for a quarter hour at the foot of their beds, silently lecturing herself about what their lives would be like if she refused to yield to Johnny’s suit.
His pawing and rutting, his frittering away of what money Hecate could not hide from him. He was simply another Brompton, worse than the rest. Canada had changed more than his youthful appearance, and not for the better.