Honor's Players - By Holly Newman Page 0,20
you’ve no notion of going through with this marriage and think it a play to embarrass your family, you’ve overextended yourself,” he declared flatly. “I’ll see you married or I’ll swear I never had an elder daughter named Elizabeth and throw you out on the street!”
Elizabeth gaped at the injustice. Fearful he was serious, her sense of aloneness and being unloved grew in proportion. Bile rose, burning her throat. She swallowed convulsively.
“Married or not, I would not stay a day longer in this house with a sanctimonious old woman, an empty-headed young one, and a man so enamored with appearances and conventions!” Her voice dropped to a harsh whisper while she held her head high and angrily held back tears. “But I will see this farce of a wedding through, if only to maintain my place in society so I may be a constant reminder to you, a constant thorn in your side with the knowledge of your failure as a father.” She crossed the room to the dressing table, staring down at its surface.
“Hold your tongue!” Lord Monweith roared. Beads of perspiration gathered on his brow.
“Why?” Elizabeth choked out, whirling around to glare at him. “You have already sold me; the wedding remains a mere formality. Since Mama died I have been like a dead thing to you. You are merely getting around to burying the rotted corpse.”
Appalled at her words, Elizabeth twirled away from her father to stare sightlessly out the window. Never had she come so close to revealing herself, and never in fourteen years had she even dared mention her mother to her father. An awful silence filled the room. The maid, her back to the combatants, busied herself with straightening brushes and bottles while her sharp ears listened carefully so she could repeat word for word everything that was said to her peers below stairs.
The Earl mopped his brow, the earlier fogginess being replaced with a searing pain in his head. Carefully, he ignored what Elizabeth said save her statement that she would go through with the wedding.
“If you’re going to go through with the wedding, we’d best be off before the guests think we are not coming and rise to leave.”
Elizabeth nodded curtly. She picked up a handkerchief from the dressing table and under cover of her veil, dabbed at the corner of her eyes before turning to her father. He was holding the door to her room open. With her head high, she swept through it and on down the stairs ahead of him. At the foot of the stairs Jovis waited with her bouquet. Regally she took it from him and disdained the warmth of a proffered cloak. Lord Monweithe scowled, saying nothing, a wordless truce having sprung up between them. He took her arm to lead her to the waiting carriage. Elizabeth murmured a polite “thank you” as he handed her into the vehicle but otherwise remained silent as they traversed the few short blocks between their home and St. George’s in Hanover Square.
In that time, she sadly convinced herself the marriage was for the best. It was unfair to her family to bear with her any longer. She was a blight on their lives. Just because she could not have love and happiness, what right did she have to deny that to others? She sighed audibly, drawing her father’s curious eyes upon her but she did not notice. At the church, she mutely allowed herself to be handed down and led up the wide church steps. She paused at the great doors, steeling herself for the walk up the aisle and the end of her life as she knew it to be. Suddenly she was aware of a flurry among the people gathered at the altar and Freddy Shiperton came hurrying back to them, agitated and stuttering his request to stay where they were.
“Stay? But we’re late as it is. We must get on with this.” The Earl looked around. “Where is St. Ryne?”
Freddy looked pained and wrung his hands. “That’s just it, sir. We don’t know. He ain’t here yet.”
Elizabeth’s world spun around for a moment at the bald pronouncement and she would have fallen had not a hand come out to steady her. Mistily she found herself looking up at Sir James Branstoke. He smiled at her and murmured softly; so softly she was afraid she did not hear him correctly when he said:
“Patience, good Katharine, and Baptista too. Upon my life, Petruchio means but well ...”
Elizabeth looked