Everything came down to that; every doubt, every fear, every risk she’d taken since she’d stepped inside his carriage. She’d fallen in love with a handsome man who hadn’t rejected her for who she was. Did she dare assume the same was true for Dashiell? Or were her feelings the stronger of the two? He could have any woman. She worried he’d had her in the worst sort of way, the way a confidence man has his mark.
Hot tears threatened. Was there an inkling of truth to her father’s tirade; that Dashiell Steen was an opportunist who saw a way to solidify an advantageous marriage for himself?
Her father was relentless. ‘Do you think he’ll marry you if I withdraw your dowry?’
Doubt swamped her, fueled in no small part by her father’s rhetoric and the realities she’d lived with for far too long.
No gentleman wanted an astronomer for a wife.
She was too odd to love.
Men only wanted her dowry.
She wasn’t cut out for the real world.
Had her parents been right all along?
‘Shall I put him to the test, Elisabeth? Shall I show you the man he is?’
Elisabeth slowly shook her head, knowing it meant capitulation. She would not cross this line. She told herself it didn’t mean she was a coward. It meant she was smart. She did not want to know the answer to her father’s test. She would not humiliate herself or Dashiell.
Nor would she force Dashiell to make a noble stand for the sake of appearances.
Her father snorted in satisfaction, sensing her defeat. ‘You two, help my daughter to my carriage. I’ll be along shortly. The rest of you, stay with me.’ Elisabeth knew this tone well.
Her father was done hearing explanations. Two men advanced on her and it took a moment to realize they meant to take her away even it meant slinging her over a shoulder.
Dashiell was hot and bristling beside her, that ‘noble last stand’ she’d feared coming to the fore. ‘You don’t have to go with them, Elisabeth.’ He would fight for her. The thought warmed her but it was a futile gesture. He could not win, not one tired man who’d been up all night studying stars against six of her father’s strapping outriders.
‘Yes, I do.’ To save him, she thought, and to save herself. There were indeed things left best unknown. She could not protect her heart, it was already breaking. But she could protect her memories. Elisabeth took one last look at Dashiell Steen. The fantasy was over.
No affair had ever ended quite so badly for him as this one. Dashiell groaned and lay back again on the rope bed. It even hurt to think. Graybourne’s men had been instructed to leave his face alone. Still, a drubbing was a drubbing and Graybourne’s men had been adept at their art. His ribs hurt but weren’t broken. His back was bruised but for all the pain, there’d been no serious injury he could cry foul about, or his uncle for that matter.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t mad or that he hadn’t fought back. By no means had he stood there and allowed that beating to happen. But he had been outnumbered and overpowered. His one thought the whole time had been for Elisabeth. If he could somehow get to her, keep her from leaving. She’d left to save him, thinking her acquiescence would prevent this. But it hadn’t. Her father had made his position on Dashiell’s behaviour very plain. Heathridge’s heir was no longer an acceptable claimant for his daughter’s hand.
The denouncement didn’t stop the wanting. Dashiell almost wished it did. Everything would be much simpler if he could chalk Elisabeth up as another affaire and walk away. But if anything was becoming clearer as he lay there, it was that his feelings for Elisabeth were unlikely to go away. Love, once found, was tenacious. Even this rough room, so below what Graybourne’s daughter deserved, held the memory of her; the lavender smell of her on the pillow. He could recall the sight of her at the table with her precious telescope.
At the thought of the telescope, Dashiell sat up, forgetting his injuries. He groaned at the poignant reminders shooting through his body in protest of the sudden motion. Her telescope was still in the carriage. He smiled against his pain. Elisabeth would want the telescope back and he knew just how to get it to her. It wouldn’t be the grandest of gestures.
He was in no shape to climb through bedroom windows and surprise her in bed. But that was fine with him. For what he had in mind, doors would work better.
He loved Elisabeth Becket and he would not hide it. He was going after her, front door and all. The viscount might think twice about beating a man up in his drawing room.
Chapter Twelve
December 23 1835
Elisabeth sat demurely with her mother receiving guests at their Wednesday at-home. The drawing room was festively decorated with winter greens at the Grecian marble mantle and her mother had served a special blend of tea for the holiday. It was the day before Christmas Eve and the ladies were in high form, full of gossip about who was in town for the holidays and who was at which house party.