“You should have listened to me, Albert,” his father said with notable anger in his voice.
Albert sighed, looking at his father and trying to mask his own frustration.
“About what, Father?” he asked.
The earl scoffed, looking at Albert as though he should know precisely what he meant.
“I told you to just procure a common license, and marry the wallflower,” he said.
Albert shrugged. He figured that his father was simply displeased with the amount of time the courtship was taking, even though Albert had expressly specified a one-month time frame.
“I don’t see anything wrong with it,” he said. “Miss Elwood is a very lovely woman, as it happens. And she seems to be quite enjoying herself. Where’s the harm?”
Beside him, his mother tensed. But Albert wouldn’t be flustered by his father. He continued nibbling on his food, waiting to see what his father said next.
His father said nothing, however. He stared at Albert for a moment longer, as though trying to read him, or perhaps figure out what to say. But after a moment, he reached over beside him, pulling out a paper. He extended it to Albert, who took it questioningly.
He glanced down, realizing it was a page from the morning’s paper. He looked back at his father, who sneered at him, and suddenly, it made perfect sense. Before Albert even unfolded the half-crumpled paper, he understood what it was.
Cursing under his breath, Albert opened the page. He saw the problem right away: both his name and Miss Elwood’s in bold letters, with several paragraphs of speculation written just about them. In fact, their rumors took up nearly half the page, and his stomach twisted into knots. He wanted to stop reading and toss the paper aside. But he couldn’t take his eyes off the awful gossip.
Albert shook his head, looking up at his parents.
“Miss Elwood doesn’t deserve this,” he said. “This is the reason why I didn’t want to take a wife in the first place.”
He spoke the words, not realizing he was going to until he did. He looked up at his father, thinking that, perhaps his point had been made. But the earl continued to glare at him, clicking his tongue at Albert like he was an unruly child.
“This all could have been avoided if you’d married her straightaway,” he said. “You’d be living with her in the countryside right now, and none of this would have happened.”
Albert tightened his jaw, wanting to say something rather cold to his father. It all could have been avoided if his father had butted out of his life, after all. But that hardly mattered. Now, Miss Elwood was the center of much undeserved gossip. And Albert had no idea what would happen now.
Chapter Twenty-one
“Martha, darling, what’s troubling you?” Sarah Elwood asked.
Martha pulled her attention away from the window of the drawing room, near which she had intentionally sat. She realized two things as she gave her mother a tense smile. Firstly, she hadn’t touched her food since she made her plate after joining her parents for tea. And secondly, she had been sitting with them for over half an hour, which made the first realization all the more embarrassing.
She glanced at her father, hoping to be able to change the subject by engaging him in conversation. But he wasn’t even holding the paper any longer. Instead, he was looking at her with the same concern as her mother. She shook her head, intending to deny any troubling thoughts. But she couldn’t help glancing at the discarded paper as she was trying to think of something to say and sighing.
“Apparently, there’s some gossip going round about Lord Billington and me,” she said, feeling resigned.
Her parents exchanged a look that told her that they already knew, just as Lily had. However, unlike Lily, they hadn’t told her what they’d seen. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but it certainly didn’t make her want to talk about it.
“Sweetheart, you must ignore gossip,” her father said. “It’s never done anyone a bit of good in the ton, and it’s usually only created by people who simply have nothing better to do.”
Martha nodded, but she was far from convinced. Besides, her father had never known what it was to be the subject of gossip. Would that change once she married Lord Billington?
Her mother gave her an encouraging nod.
“Your father’s right, darling,” she said. “You can’t pay any attention to what everyone else says. They are speaking only on what they see. They can’t possibly know anything personally themselves, can they?”
Martha shrugged, but she was thinking about the things Lily had told her about the viscount. She didn’t know if she quite believed them. But she also knew that it didn’t matter what she believed, once the ton took to spreading more rumors. And she also knew that it wouldn’t be just herself that was affected if the scandal sheets kept on as they were.
The ton never just judged those involved directly in whatever scandal, real or invented, that was printed in the paper. They also judged the families of those involved. She cringed at the idea of her parents and Lord Billington’s family suffering because of a bunch of rumors.
And what of the viscount himself? What if he saw those rumors being spread? She knew how aloof he could be. What if him reading the things being said about the two of them made him even more so? What if all the progress she was sure they had made was suddenly undone, all because London’s wealthy and noble couldn’t mind their own business?
“Oh, dear,” she murmured, covering her face with her hands. She couldn’t voice her concerns to her parents. She didn’t want to upset them, but she also didn’t want to discuss her thoughts. It wouldn’t do any good, and it certainly wouldn’t make her feel any better.
