That was the one part that troubled her the most. Hurst was a marquis. He outranked her in Society, and he had a very wide streak of self-importance running through his skinny frame. In addition he was attractive, which made him well liked. But as far as she’d been able to determine he had been absent from London for the past few days, as well. She frowned. Her sons had said they hadn’t hurt him, but she wouldn’t put it past them to have locked him in a cellar somewhere.
“Just be patient for a while longer,” she said aloud, taking her daughter’s arm as they left the bedchamber. “I know there’s nothing worse than being housebound in the middle of the Season. I believe the cause is worth the trouble, however.”
Eloise hugged her arm. “It is, of course. I’m only worried. And since no one told me anything, I’m also going to have a few choice words for them when they return.” She lowered her head. “If they return.”
“Coll and Aden still have English wives to find,” Francesca reminded her. “Nor am I ready to let Niall go when I’ve just gotten him to speak to me without clenching his jaw.”
“I am very glad they’re here,” her daughter responded. “I always imagined the household with a big family.”
“I’m sorry you had to wait so long.”
“I think I appreciate them more now; I didn’t grow up with them pulling on my braids and putting spiders in my bed.”
That seemed a very likely scenario. Francesca smiled. “You know they would do anything for you. You’re a MacTaggert. And now I think you have a better idea of what that means.”
Her daughter nodded. “It makes me more proud, in a way, which I suppose is wrong, but I can’t help it. I do wish they would be more welcoming to Matthew, though. He’s better acquainted with me than they are, after all. I think he’s a little afraid of them.”
“Good.”
“Mama.”
Matthew Harris was set to marry their only sister. The young man should be a little wary. “If anyone throws a punch, then I’ll worry.”
The newspaper lay on the table, set in her usual spot, as they entered the breakfast room. Francesca shut her eyes for just a moment. It was done, then. In the next hour or so she would either find a way for Niall and Amelia-Rose to return to London, or she would sink the combined Oswell and MacTaggert names into mire and scandal.
While Eloise selected a breakfast, Francesca requested tea and then sat. Trying to conceal her deep breath, she opened the paper to the sixth page. Oh, it was magnificent. Even if she did say so herself.
Behind her, Eloise gasped. “Mother!”
Francesca smoothed the paper flatter. “What do you think, my dear?”
A scroll of thistles outlined the entire page, together with an English Tudor rose and the lion rampant of Scotland. Between those, in bold, black letters, the announcement stated that the Earl and Countess of Aldriss were delighted to announce the marriage of their son, Niall Douglas MacTaggert, to Amelia-Rose Hyacinth Baxter, the daughter of Charles and Victoria Baxter. The blessed day was June the twenty-fifth, which happened to be that very day.
Beneath that she’d intentionally chosen a passage from a Robert Burns poem—an English writer would never do.
O my Luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June:
O my Luve’s like the melodie,
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
“Oh, it’s lovely,” Eloise whispered, wiping at her cheeks. She hugged Francesca’s shoulders. “You’re such a romantic.”
“Now we have to pray they actually are marrying today, or we’ll look like utter fools.” She tried to blink away the tears in her own eyes, but that was no use. She’d wanted to be there when they married. She wanted to see their joy and hope and love with her own eyes, to know that however she’d mishandled her own miseries, she hadn’t ruined things for her sons. And now, if everything went well, she would miss the first wedding.
“I think they will,” Eloise stated. “I know they will.”
“We will have visitors at any moment now, I imagine,” Francesca noted, accepting her tea and adding sugar. “When they arrive, please be elsewhere. If there’s to be any embarrassment on either side, I don’t want witnesses to taint the proceedings.”
Her daughter sat beside her. “You’re talking about the Baxters.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Oh. Oh. They’re going to be furious.”
“I imagine so. Make certain Miss Bansil remains upstairs, as well.”
She’d wanted to post the announcement the morning after Niall and Amelia-Rose had fled, to overwhelm the Baxters’ engagement announcement immediately with a far grander marriage one. But she’d waited. This might be an elopement, but it was one that she’d known about, and one that had her unreserved approval and was proceeding on schedule.
A slice of toast with marmalade later, and the knocker on the front door began hammering with an almost unnerving frenzy. “Upstairs with you,” she said to Eloise, who snatched up her plate and bolted. Once her daughter had vanished, she nodded at Smythe. “I will be in the morning room.”
Rising, she passed through the foyer and into the cozy front room, sitting just out of sight of anyone who might have been trying to see through the window. Then she picked up a random book and opened it. She heard the front door open, and then the high-pitched, clenched sound of Victoria Baxter’s voice. Some things remained predictable.
Smythe appeared in the doorway. “My lady, Mr. and Mrs. Baxter insist on speaking with you this morning,” he intoned, loudly enough for her guests to overhear. “Are you receiving visitors?”
She did adore her butler. “Yes, I’m much recovered this morning. Show them in, if you please.”
It struck her that while she enjoyed the theater, she’d never spared much thought for the actors and how fluidly they spun tales that were not their own. She had one of those to tell this morning, and her underlying nerves knew that while she did consider herself formidable, she’d never been fond of, or easy with, lying. This was for her son, though, for the precocious boy he’d been at seven and the admirable, honorable man he’d become at four-and-twenty.
“What is the meaning of this?” Victoria hissed, stalking into the room, the half-crushed page of the London Times in one hand.
Francesca scowled. “Some tea, Victoria?”
“I do not want tea. I want an explanation for this … nonsense! I demand one.”
“My dear,” Francesca returned, keeping her seat, “I’m afraid I’ve been under the weather for the past few days, and I do apologize for not consulting you on the wording, but referring to your daughter’s marriage to my son—the son of Lord Aldriss—as ‘nonsense’ begins to annoy me a little.”
Victoria snapped her mouth shut. “My daughter is engaged to Lord Hurst, as you well know. We announced it days ago.”
“Did you? That’s … peculiar. Are you certain someone wasn’t jesting with you?”
“What? I will not be … bamboozled into disbelieving my own decisions, Lady Aldriss. This is outrageous!”
“But if, as you say, Amelia-Rose is engaged to Lord Hurst, where is she?”
Charles Baxter put a hand on his wife’s arm. “We should sit, darling. There is a foul fog in the air, here.”
“My daughter … is unwell. She is at home, resting,” Victoria stated, but took a seat on the couch opposite Francesca.
“Your daughter,” Francesca returned, setting aside her book, “is in Gretna Green with my son. I asked them to wait for a church wedding, but they are young and impulsive, and couldn’t bear the idea of waiting for a special license or for the banns to be read. They took my coach, accompanied by Niall’s brothers and Jane Bansil. Surely you know this. Whoever is resting in your daughter’s bedchamber is not Amelia-Rose. If you don’t recognize your own child, I wonder if you—”
“No! This is not—I believe nothing you say!”
Stubborn, self-obsessed woman. “Very well,” Francesca said, dropping all pretense of bewilderment. “These are the facts before you. Your daughter has been missing for four days. As far as I know, you’ve told no one, which is fortunate. Amelia-Rose and Niall are in Gretna Green. I expect they will be wed by noon. His brothers are witnesses. Your daughter’s companion is not. She is nowhere near Scotland.”