Page 17 of A Lady Igniting Wicked Passions
Hyde Park bustled around them, filled with ladies and gentlemen enjoying the early June sunshine. It was a beautiful setting, rich in verdure, and restful on the eye in contrast to the chaos of the city around it. She had found the noise and smells of London to be quite overpowering and several times during their trip wished herself back in Eversden. But wishing did not make a thing happen.
Her mother and father had decided that it would be best to let the London ton see its newest married couples to be. Helena and the Duke of Ashenwood were the jewels in that crown. Arabella and the Marquess of Edgeworth were very much an afterthought.
But her father was brimming with pride that both of his daughters were entering respectable marriages that would bring his name a great deal more prestige.
“Should I offer you my arm? I mean, would you like that?” Edgeworth said, falteringly.
He was looking ahead, following Arabella’s gaze. She looked at him. Concern was writ large across his handsome but boyish face.
“I suppose we should,” Arabella said, forcing a smile.
“Only if you want to. I’m afraid I have never courted a lady before. I am unfamiliar with the…language of love, as it were,” Edgeworth said.
Arabella took his hesitantly offered arm and gave him a reassuring smile.
“Neither am I. This will please my parents, I think,” she said.
Edgeworth cast a quick glance over his shoulder. Behind them, a respectable distance away but close enough to observe their offspring, were the Earl of Eversden, Lord Marcus Harrington, and his wife. Eversden lifted a jovial hand as one of his future sons-in-law looked back at him. Edgeworth waved back and then turned away.
“You have not seemed at ease all morning, if I may say,” he said. “Are you still angry at my performance at the ball, last week?”
The question took Arabella by surprise and she shook her head, vehemently. “Not at all. Do not think that. If I am out of sorts, it is because…because…”
She could not tell the truth, that she would rather be anywhere than watching her sister dangling on the arm of the man she had begun to dream about in the most scandalous fashion. But she did not want to hurt this man’s feelings. She knew his inner heart but could not voice that knowledge.
Not unless he chose to share it with her. But she could see what he was doing and why he was doing it. She cursed the narrow-minded world in which she and Edgeworth found themselves, where one could not simply speak the contents of one’s heart and be proud of it.
“I am keen to do whatever I must. To work as hard as I can, to make you happy as my wife. I…I must make it work, do you see?” Edgeworth said.
Arabella thought that he sounded as though he were trying to convince himself. He sounded as though he were in torment, and she hated her father in that moment for forcing this upon them both.
“Why did you agree to my father’s suggestion that we marry?” She asked.
“My father, the Duke of Chester. He is…most desirous of seeing me married. I have been somewhat wild in my youth. I believe he wishes to see me settled,” Edgeworth replied.
“It is just that…I do not necessarily see us as a good match,” Arabella said, in as friendly a manner as she could muster. “I cannot say this in front of my father, because as an unmarried daughter I am living on their charity, as it were. It is uncomfortable to defy them and rely on them at the same time.”
“I do see. It is rather more serious for me,” Edgeworth said. “My title and lands come as a gift of Chester. If my father so chooses, he can strip me of them, leave me with nothing.”
Arabella gaped. “He would not!”
“I’m afraid he would. If I do not distance myself from friends he deems… Undesirable. And find a wife.”
He shook his head and Arabella could see the anguish on his face. She patted his arm. “I do not think I can be the one to call this off,” she said gently.
Edgeworth nodded wretchedly. “I do not believe I have that freedom either.”
“Then we must think of another solution. I will not consign myself, nor you, to a life of misery,” Arabella said with determination.
They had been walking along the north bank of the Serpentine and had reached the Keeper’s Lodge, also known as the Cake House. A number of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen were seated at wrought iron tables and chairs, eating cheesecakes or syllabubs purchased inside the quaint, timber-framed cottage.
Arabella was distracted by the sight of a small boy, barefoot and filthy, crouching in the shadows of a hedgerow and watching the diners with large, hungry eyes. He was ignored, even when he occasionally scrambled forward, racing the pigeons for scraps discarded by the diners. It made her heart ache to see.
The boy had not seen Helena and the duke approaching and strayed too close to her skirts. She made a disgusted sound and clutched them to herself, proclaiming loudly as though assaulted. A man in the uniform of the park rangers, who had been leaning against a wall, smoking a pipe, came bustling over.
“I’ve told you before! Scram! Stop bothering the gentlefolk, you little ruffian!”
He hefted a stout cudgel as he advanced, and the boy vanished into the trees behind the Keeper’s Lodge. Edgeworth stared straight through the exchange, lost in his own misery. Arabella watched the hungry boy’s flight, teeth gritted and glared at the brutish ranger. She was not the only one. The duke also glared, and his ire was registered by the ranger.
