“What have you done?”
“The list is long, little sister. How much time do you have?”
Meg sighed. Rhys scrubbed a hand over his face before meeting her irritated gaze.
“I’m referring to Miss Prescott. She stormed out the front door without a word, and she looked upset.”
Pointlessly Rhys wondered if Bella was more upset with him this morning than she’d been that day at her garden party. He suspected both days were a pinnacle of disappointment.
He’d failed her. Again.
“She asked something of me that I couldn’t give her.”
Meg narrowed her gaze at him. “There was a time you would have done anything for Arabella Prescott.”
“I did do something. Saying no was the best thing I could have done for her.” Rhys pushed his chair back, stood, and started pacing again. He’d had enough sitting still in the last weeks in Essex to last him a bloody lifetime. “Believe me, I wanted to say yes.”
“I don’t understand.” Meg perched her hands on her hips. Never a good sign. It meant he wasn’t going to escape this conversation without answering a dozen questions. “Explain.”
He grabbed the foil from the top of his father’s desk as he made a circuit around the room. He whipped it sharply through the air as he approached the window. “Sometimes the best we can do for someone is to not give them what they want.”
“That would only make sense if she asked for something outrageous.”
“Yes.”
“She’s known as one of the most proper young ladies in the county. I can’t believe she’d ask for anything improper.” Meg’s tone turned dubious and her brows lifted in curiosity. “Did she?”
“She needs a husband.”
He couldn’t resist turning to see his sister’s reaction to that, and he wasn’t disappointed. Meg’s big blue eyes widened at the same moment her mouth dropped open.
“Marriage? She wishes to marry you?”
“No, that would be ludicrous.” He let out a bitter chuckle. “It’s complicated.”
“She’s famous for not wishing to marry anyone. Which seems strange,” Meg said softly.
“She wishes to please Lord and Lady Yardley.”
“But marriage would please them, and the right one might make her happy too.” Meg bit her lip as if she’d given too much away.
He tried not to think about how eager Meg was to marry, how vulnerable she’d be to fortune hunters on the marriage mart. He wished she had even an ounce of Bella’s hesitance about wedlock. It was why he’d been so keen on her advising Meg.
“Someday I’m sure she’ll find a suitor that . . .” He paused, hating the taste of those words on his lips. “Suits her,” he finished.
He tried to imagine the kind of nobleman who could deserve Bella and came up with nothing. She was a uniquely smart, maddeningly stubborn woman and it would take a man of far more intelligence and patience than he could imagine to make her happy.
“I take it she won’t be coming back to visit if you don’t assist her.” Meg’s worried tone spiked his own anxiety.
“I’ll send a note to the Duchess of Tremayne. She’s quite the popular hostess during the Season.”
Meg wrapped a finger around a ribbon fluttering down from a bow at the front of her dress. “She’s never had a Season herself though, has she?”
“No.” Tremayne’s wife was lovely and capable and could manage a household with an efficiency that verged on frightening, but she had been born the daughter of a land steward and never had a formal coming-out.
“Perhaps Miss Prescott, Bella, would still be willing to speak to me.” She cast him a look tinged with accusation. “Unless she’s too angry with you to have anything to do with our family.”
“Her parents will be traveling to the Continent and she will most likely accompany them.”
“When does she depart?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think she’d accept an invitation to luncheon before she leaves?”
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps—”
“No more questions, Meg.” He winced at her shocked expression. He rarely snapped at her. “I promise your Season will be a success. We’ll find you some well-meaning lady who will shepherd you through the entire nonsensical round of balls and visits and parlor games.”
She tsked irritably. “Preferably one who doesn’t refer to it as nonsense.”
“Preferably.” He tried a grin and as always, she gave one in reply. Eventually. “Now go prepare for our visit to the vicarage and I’ll do the same.”
Rather than depart, she stared at him. “Are you certain?”
Rhys tipped his head. “Certain of?”
“Your refusal.” She stepped toward him, hands out as if beseeching him. “She was once your dearest friend and then you parted ways but now you seem to have made amends. Why fall out again?”
Rhys strode to the study door. “Questions are closed for today. Except for whatever the vicar plans to ask. And I’ll let you do the answering.” He opened the door and gestured into the hallway. “Shall we depart?”
“Couldn’t you help her? Whatever it is. She came to you, Rhys, rather than anyone else.”
Without realizing it, he’d gripped the door handle so hard his knuckles began to ache.
Meg was right. Bella had come to him. And he’d failed her. Again.
“When do we meet the vicar?”
Meg’s whole face brightened. “A little less than an hour.”
“I should be back in time.”
“You’re going to help her?”
He still had doubts. He still feared what trouble their connection might cause her. But the impulse to help her was too insistent for him to ignore. Bella needed him and despite all the reasons he should leave her to her own devices, he couldn’t.
“I’m going to do my best.”
Chapter Eleven
Bella stomped so hard through the field grass that her teeth rattled whenever her boot landed on a stony patch. She didn’t care. She was already clenching her teeth and clutching her hands into fists, and the stomping was doing wonders for working out her frustration.
Infuriating man. What had ever possessed her to believe Rhys would help?
She wasn’t asking for much. A few days of pretense. Perhaps a few weeks. Afterward, they could go back to being barely acquainted again. He could return to London and be a ne’er-do-well and she could focus on her book.
She understood his aversion to wedlock, but was he so terrified that he couldn’t even agree to pretense for a few weeks?
“Bella.”
She was so lost in her thoughts, the single shouted word seemed unconnected to her. But then he shouted again, louder, more desperately. And that made her jerk to a stop. Rhys was far enough away that she could ignore him and it would be believable she hadn’t heard him at all.
She started off again, stomping less and picking up her pace. She’d gone to him and pleaded with him. That was enough of the Duke of Claremont for one day.
“Bella, please wait.”