Page 11 of When Hearts Are Wylde
Miss Waring,
This charade has been amusing, but your reprieve is at an end. This afternoon, Mr. Baxter will call upon you. He will propose. You are to accept.
Smile. Appear surprised. Say yes.
If you refuse, or attempt to delay, you will learn just how vicious I can be when disappointed.
—The Witness
The words blurred, not from tears but from the rush of blood to her head, the dizzying weight of inevitability crashing through her. She lowered the handkerchief slowly, folding it with mechanical care and placing it back atop the stack as if nothing had happened.
Behind her, she heard her mother’s voice rise again, clearly unimpressed with a new offering. “I saidpalelavender, not mauve. Is there no one left in this city with an eye for color?”
Hermione stepped back from the tray and smoothed her skirts, schooling her face into the same expression she always wore in the company of strangers—pleasant, indifferent, untouchable. But her heart was racing. Her stomach had clenched into a single, cold knot.
Not tonight. Not soon.
This afternoon.
The Witness had waited just long enough for her to grow hopeful. To begin imagining it might be over. And now, in a quiet linen shop on a grey London morning, they had reminded her exactly who held the reins.
She was still smiling faintly when her mother turned to her with a dismissive wave. “We’ll try Hayward’s and Carter instead. These are ghastly.”
Hermione nodded. “Yes. Of course.”
They departed the shop with the same poise they had entered, Elizabeth grumbling about declining standards, her cane tapping sharply along the damp pavement. The grey light was beginning to thin, the mist lifting off the cobbles as they made their way toward the waiting carriage.
Hermione walked beside her mother, her gloved hands clenched around her reticule, the folded note now tucked inside—cool and stiff, the paper almost burning against her palm. She hadn’t read it twice. She hadn’t needed to. Every word was etched into her memory as surely as if it had been carved there.
This afternoon.
Baxter will call.
He will propose.
You are to accept.
The order itself was not what rattled her. She had suspected it would come eventually. The Witness had made no secret of their intent. But what unsettled her—what truly chilled her—was how precisely the moment had been chosen. How neatly ithad been tailored to her movements. A handkerchief left in plain sight, not in some obscure corner but in the precise location Hermione would drift toward in a moment of discomfort. A note delivered not through her household staff or slipped into her correspondence, but placed in the one item she was likely to reach for when she wanted distance from her mother’s scrutiny of proffered wares.
It was not just control. It was familiarity.
The Witness didn’t merely know where she would be.
They knewwhat she would do. They could predict her precise movements.
As the carriage pulled away from the curb and the buildings of Bond Street gave way to the narrower streets that led toward home, Hermione sat back against the squabs, her expression calm, her gloved hands folded neatly in her lap. But inside, she could feel the pressure building—tightening, cold and sharp. The stillness of the last week had never been silence. It had been calculation. Waiting not for the right moment to strike, but the precise moment when her compliance could be assumed.
And they had been right.
That frightened her more than anything.
Chapter Six
Baxter’s proposal came over a teacup.
Quite literally, he set it down on the delicate saucer Hermione had offered him and proceeded, without flourish or poetry, to announce his intentions as though he were declaring the price of sheep at auction. “Miss Waring, I should like to marry you,” he said, tugging at his waistcoat, clearly proud of himself.
Hermione blinked, one hand resting lightly on the edge of the tea tray, the delicate porcelain rattling faintly against its silver frame. She had always imagined that if the moment ever came, she would feel something—perhaps not joy, but at least a stirring of importance. Instead, there was only a quiet, cold detachment, as though the words had been spoken to someone else. He did not kneel. He did not reach for her hand. Instead, he smiled broadly, the smug curve of his mouth suggesting that her answer was already a foregone conclusion.
