I frowned, taking a seat at the island. “What happened?”
“First, a drink,” he hedged to the clink of ice in crystal.
“If you insist,” I answered with an enigmatic smile to match his behavior.
He handed me my gin, but before we drank, he raised his scotch. “To everything working out.”
My brows quirked. “Hear, hear.”
And we took a sip for luck.
“All right,” I started once my glass was on the island surface, “what in the world is going on?”
Marcus started to take another sip but stopped, setting his drink down instead. “Everyone in my family knows about us, except my mother.”
The sharp trail of gin halted somewhere behind my heart. “Oh no,” I whispered.
“Oh, yes. I was ambushed by my siblings in order to plan an ambush for my mother.”
“And what did you come up with?”
He moved around the island to get closer, looking down at me with his brows knit. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Whatever you’re comfortable with, that’s what we’ll do.”
“God, what is this plan? I don’t have to take a public flogging or something, do I?”
He relaxed a little at the joke, the corners of his lips flickering with a smile. “No, no flogging or whipping—I mean, unless you’re into that sort of thing.”
“Not by your mother, thank you.”
That earned me a single, lovely laugh.
“So tell me the plan,” I urged, pressing down my anxiety.
“Well, we’ve got to tell her, that’s for sure, and I don’t know how much time we’ll have. If I know Laney and Jett, they’re currently talking about all of this, and if they’re within a hundred feet of the house, Mom will hear them. So we discussed it, and we think the best chance of success is if you’re there with me when I tell her.”
The gin finally moved, but it went in the wrong direction. I swallowed hard to force it back down. “Okay. If that’s our best chance, I’m ready.”
“Ready enough to do it today?”
“Today?” I squeaked.
“Now, really.”
I pursed my lips to stop myself from making that noise again.
“We don’t have to,” he assured. “I just thought that since you’re here and it’s so hard to get together right now—”
“I’ll do it.”
He paused, mouth still posed to finish what he’d been about to say.
“I want this to go as smoothly as possible. Whatever I have to do, Marcus. Even a flogging, if it’ll help. Because if she doesn’t approve …”
Marcus slid toward me, framed my face with honest hands. “She’ll approve.”
“You don’t know that. You can’t possibly know that. And if she doesn’t approve, it’ll split your family in two.”
He tilted my chin, so our gazes were level. “She will,” was all he said, but the words held such conviction, I had no choice but to believe right along with him.
When I conceded with a nod, he leaned in, kissing me with tender assurance. And when he let me go and pulled his phone out of his pocket, I drained my drink.
Marcus fired off a text that was followed by a handful of buzzes as responses came back. And for that moment, I took stock of myself—shoes, dress, hair, lipstick—cataloging what I could improve before meeting Marcus’s mother as his girlfriend.
She only knew me as the daughter of the woman currently trying to ruin his family’s lives.
“So what’s the game plan?” I asked, twisting clammy hands in my lap.
“Luke is gathering everyone up, even Dad—”
“Wait, they’re all going to be there?”
“Only if it’s okay,” he soothed, his brows worried and eyes hopeful. “We just figured if we were all there to back you up, it’d serve as insurance.”
“And they’re all good with me?”
He hesitated just long enough to make me extraordinarily nervous. “They are. And they trust me. They know what you’ve done for us. Plus, you’re impossible not to love.” The word hung in the air for the longest heartbeat of my life before he smirked and carried on as if he hadn’t said it, “Once they meet you, they’ll see it for themselves.”
“If you say so,” I answered breathlessly.
“I say so.”
And that was where the conversation ended because we spent the time it took us to get to the front door kissing.
Then we were too nervous to say anything, preoccupied with the imaginings of what we’d say and what she’d do and how we’d all feel in a few crucial minutes.
The second I stepped onto their stoop, I became an intruder. A terrorist and traitor. Walking inside made me feel like a fraud, one who didn’t belong in the grand entry, littered almost artfully with proof of life—shoes and shopping bags and mail. An umbrella propped on the banister, handle out but top closed, a balled-up coat and rolled-up socks, a cacophony of everyday things that whispered stories of family and home.
I heard the Bennets before I saw them, the lilting chatter, the occasional laughter, a playful groan.
My heart was a small, tight, galloping thing, my hands numb, unable to feel the warmth of Marcus’s as he led me toward what I suspected was the kitchen and today, the guillotine.
He stepped through the casing and into the dining room, putting himself in front of me. The room fell silent.
Mrs. Bennet laughed. “Marcus, what are you hiding back there? Please tell me it’s the girl you’ve been seeing.” He must have made a face because she added, “Oh, don’t look so surprised—I’m not as witless as you all think I am, and I know your brothers told you I’m onto you. Nothing happens in this house without my hearing whether I like it or not.”
“But you always like it,” Luke teased.
“And you don’t know about this,” Marcus said gravely before stepping away to reveal me to the room.
I stood in front of six Bennets, vulnerable and on display. The air in the room disappeared. The stillness was absolute—they could have been a painting, a shocked, modern version of the Last Supper. Hands stopped midair. No one blinked. Not a chest rose or fell with a breath, not a mouth formed a word.
Almost in unison, the Bennet family shifted their gaze to the matriarch.
“Margaret Bower,” she muttered. “Is … if this is a prank, I do not find it amusing.”
“It’s not a prank,” Marcus said with firm care.
One by one, his brothers and sister rose, filing forward to flank us as Mrs. Bennet watched on incredulously.
“You all knew?” she asked with watery eyes. “You all knew, and not one of you told me.”
With an apologetic look on his face, Mr. Bennet reached for her hand. “Just hear them out.”
“And you?” she whispered. “Paul Bennet, in all my life, I never—”
“Rosie,” he urged, “listen before you say anything else.”
The heave of her chest marked her breath as she looked into his eyes, and whatever she found there steadied her. “All right.” She faced us. “Go ahead.”