The Dowager Duchess announced my fake engagement to her son — and he had no idea.
Part 2
The room erupted into an incomprehensible cacophony of voices.
Women surged forward with congratulations and questions that blurred into a chaotic hum.
I felt myself being pulled into embraces by people I barely knew.
Murmuring responses that I couldn’t quite process became my only defense mechanism.
Catching glimpses of faces ranging from delighted to devastatingly envious made my head spin.
Through it all, Brenda remained steadily at my side.
A small smile of triumph played about her lips as she watched the chaos she had orchestrated.
“Your grace,” I hissed under my breath during a brief lull in the onslaught.
Telling her this was madness felt like a severe understatement.
“When your son discovers what you’ve done…”
She agreed cheerfully that Tyler would be absolutely apoplectic.
“It will be magnificent,” she added without a hint of remorse.
Apparently, he had been far too complacent lately, and she firmly believed this would do him good.
Doing him good meant announcing our engagement to all of London society.
“Indeed, I have,” she confirmed with a steely quality entering her voice.
She laid out my choices with chilling clarity.
Publicly humiliating both of us by denying it in front of all these witnesses would ensure neither of our reputations ever recovered.
Or, I could play along for the remainder of the afternoon.
“Tomorrow morning you and I will have a proper discussion about compensating you for your trouble,” she promised.
My mind raced at the mention of compensation.
She was prepared to be exceedingly generous to the woman who helped solve her problem.
My family’s financial difficulties could become a thing of the past.
All I needed to do was pretend to be in love with a man I had never met for one afternoon.
Looking at the faces surrounding me, I saw women who had known me for years but never particularly noticed my existence.
They were looking at me now with intense interest and envy.
This was the kind of attention that came from being associated with one of the most eligible men in England.
Thoughts of my father’s tired eyes and my mother’s brave smile filled my mind.
My younger brother’s education hung in the balance because we couldn’t afford the fees.
“What do I need to know about him?”
I heard myself ask.
Her smile widened as she began listing his impressive qualities.
He was brilliant, managed their estates with impressive competence, and took his duties seriously.
He had a sardonic sense of humor, read voraciously, and took his privacy seriously.
Most terrifyingly, she mentioned he had very little patience for dishonesty or manipulation.
“Then he’s going to absolutely despise this,” I stated flatly.
She agreed, but noted that by the time he discovered the ruse, breaking the engagement would be far more trouble than maintaining the fiction.
“Three months should suffice,” she decided casually.
After that, we could arrange a quiet dissolution of the engagement with no scandal.
She promised a settlement more than adequate to pay off my father’s debts.
That kind of money would change everything for my family.
I agreed to the terms, pending a proper discussion the following morning.
Lady Heather Cromwell approached us, her expression hovering between congratulation and calculation.
She demanded to know where I had met the Duke of Silverly.
My mind went completely blank.
“At the British Museum,” Brenda supplied smoothly before I could ruin everything.
She claimed we both had a passion for ancient Greek philosophy.
Seizing on the lie gratefully, I babbled something about examining the same collection of manuscripts.
The afternoon continued in much the same vein, forcing me to repeat variations of the museum story.
My face ached from forced smiling by the time the meeting concluded.
Brenda patted my hand, assuring me her carriage would collect me the next morning at ten.
She swept away, leaving me standing in the emptying drawing room wondering what on earth I had just agreed to.
Was this going to save my family, or destroy us completely?
