“I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was so frightened,” she admitted, and Mariah realized that part of her sister’s tears were also cries of relief. “I don’t have any money, barely any clothes…I didn’t have any way to buy a seat on the coach, or even to purchase food.”
Anger burned inside her. If Mariah ever saw Burton Williams again, she’d flay the man alive! Evelyn could have been hurt. Or worse. “I’m here now, so you don’t have to worry about any of that. Everything will be all right.” Perhaps if she said it enough, she’d believe it, too. “It will all be fine.”
“How?” She lifted her head and looked at Mariah through tear-blurred eyes. “I ran off with a man,” she whispered, as if afraid she might be overhead. “I’ll be ruined!”
“No, you won’t. I’ll make certain of it.” Somehow.
Mariah refused—absolutely refused—to let Evie’s life be ruined over a mistake of love. She would find a way to keep her sister’s reputation intact, whatever it took. Williams was an arse, yet she suspected that even he would keep quiet. After all, if he dared to utter a word about this, he’d be forced to marry her anyway, plunging himself into the meager life he was so desperately attempting to avoid. And since she, Mrs. Smith, and Whitby were all here now, anyone who saw them returning to London would assume they were all traveling together and that Evelyn had been accompanied the entire time.
Together, on the ride home, they would come up with some reason for why they’d traveled north in case they ever needed an explanation, then never speak of it again. Mrs. Smith would keep her silence because she loved Evie like a daughter, and Whitby wouldn’t speak a word if Mariah asked him. He might be a bit of a dandy, but he was also loyal to a fault.
Evelyn shook her head, swiping the handkerchief at her eyes. “I’m such a fool!”
“It isn’t your fault,” she countered firmly, not wanting Evie to blame herself. “He’s the blackguard in this, not you.”
“He didn’t force me to go.” Her shoulders sagged, as if those few words thoroughly explained the ruin that her life would now become. “I went willingly.”
Mariah’s face softened as she brushed a stray curl from Evelyn’s cheek. “Because you loved him. There’s no sin in that.”
“Is there sin in being a reckless goose?” Evelyn gave a self-deprecating grimace. “I should have known better. You tried to warn me, but I didn’t listen.”
For once, Mariah took no pride in being right.
“He stopped by the house and surprised me,” she explained, the sobs finally dying away. “He had a ring, said he wanted to talk to Papa to offer marriage…but Papa was out, so of course he couldn’t.”
“Of course.” And highly convenient, since he most likely knew that Henry Winslow would refuse.
“So we sat in the garden, talking and planning about how our life together would be…I was so happy.” But the look on her face now was one of pure misery. “I don’t remember who brought it up first, but we agreed that we hated to wait to be married.”
“So he suggested that you elope instead,” Mariah added gently.
“No,” she whispered, guilty recrimination darkening her face. “I did.”
Anguish tightened her chest. “Oh, Evie.”
“He agreed, and the next thing I knew, I was packing a bag and writing that note to explain where I’d gone so you wouldn’t worry.”
And cleverly sent it to the school instead of to the office so that she and Williams would have time to get a head start before anyone realized they’d run off. But Mariah knew not to bring up that bit of recklessness. Evie already felt humiliated enough.
“I thought he was being romantic, that he loved me too much to wait to make me his wife.” Shamefully shaking her head at her gullibility, Evelyn closed her eyes. “How could I have been such a fool?”
“Because we always want to believe the best of the men we love,” Mariah whispered.
The truth behind her words was brutal. Her eyes blurred, and she inhaled a pain-filled breath to fight back new tears. Evie had been wrong about Burton Williams, but how had Mariah been so blind about Robert? She thought she’d come to know him well during the past several weeks, that those hours spent bare and vulnerable in each other’s arms only confirmed the goodness she saw in him. When in fact he’d only been scheming to make certain that the partnership was his by working to destroy all she held dear.
She’d been so very wrong.
“When the mail coach stopped here yesterday evening, we decided to spend the night,” Evelyn continued, dabbing at her eyes and the last remnants of tears even as her voice grew steadier. “But nothing happened between us, I swear to you. Nothing. I’d never be so foolish as to give myself to a man who hadn’t yet married me.”
Mariah winced. She had been exactly that foolish. And where had it gotten her? More misery than she’d had in her entire life.
Most likely, Robert did care about her, enough to make love to her so tenderly that it had brought tears to her eyes. But in the end, he’d cared about the partnership more. When she’d stood there in the shipping offices and heard him admit to what he’d done, the shock and pain at losing her last connection to her mother at his hands had been unbearable. The sudden grief had been overwhelming, and she’d felt as if she lost her mother all over again.
“We were never alone together,” Evie explained, misunderstanding Mariah’s silence. “I slept in a shared room upstairs, and he slept down here on one of the benches. We never— I promise you!”
“I know,” Mariah reassured her grimly. But she also knew that all her sister’s protests wouldn’t make one whit of difference if anyone in London ever found out that she’d run away with a man. She’d be ostracized from society. Simply riding with him in a mail coach without a chaperone, even surrounded by a half dozen other people, was enough to ruin her. No one would ever believe they’d slept apart or that Evie had remained innocent. Especially not with a scoundrel’s excuse for a rake like Burton Williams.
“I think he changed his mind about marrying me last night during dinner,” Evelyn admitted, her body sagging against the settle, “when I commented that reserving a private dining room was too expensive. He said that I needn’t worry because we’d have plenty of money once we married and received my dowry.” She plucked idly at the lace edging the handkerchief, in her shame not raising her eyes to look at Mariah. “I thought he knew. I thought for certain that he knew…”
That the Winslow daughters had no dowries, that there was no guarantee that the daughters would inherit any part of the business…Williams must have realized the truth then—he would never see a penny of Winslow Shipping money.
A rush of relief cascaded through her that Evie had escaped that horrible man.
“When I woke this morning and went downstairs to join him for breakfast, he wasn’t inside. He was in the yard saddling a horse to ride back to London.” She raised her eyes, and the haunted look on her face took Mariah’s breath away. “He said he’d changed his mind,” she whispered, so softly that it was barely more than a breath on her pale lips, “and he didn’t want to marry me anymore.”
Mariah hugged her tightly, but this time, thankfully, no new tears fell.
“I’m such a fool!” Evelyn choked out against Mariah’s shoulder, “I thought—I thought he loved me.”
Her own voice cracked with emotion as she whispered hoarsely, “Then he’s the bigger fool because he doesn’t.”
A loud commotion went up outside in the innyard, followed by shouts and the noise of running feet and galloping horses. Then came arguing voices raised in anger. A smash of furniture, the splintering of wood and crash of broken bottles—a barmaid screamed.
“What on earth…?” Mariah hurried across the room and opened the door.