Page 4 of The Duke’s Hidden Runaway Bride

By his second evening at Plas Eira, Adrian had reached two conclusions, and the second troubled him considerably more than the first.

The first was that he was, against every expectation, happy. He had woken late beneath a mountain of blankets to a world made entirely of snow, with no letters from his mother and no matchmaking mama within forty frozen miles. He spent the morning letting Bronwen teach him to plait rush-lights and the afternoon in the library with a novel so bad it was a positive pleasure. The familiar grey weight had not once settled on his chest, not since the pass had closed behind him. He had fled London expecting only to escape something. He had not expected to find contentment in rustication.

The second was that Miss Jones was not at all what she was pretending to be.

He had met shy women before. The genuinely shy retreated from attention and seemed grateful when it passed them by. Miss Jones was not retreating. Miss Jones was managing him.

Every dull, downcast answer was placed as carefully as a chess piece. Whenever he turned the talk towards her, she turned it gently aside and left him talking about himself instead. She had a genius for absence: she quit a room within moments of his entering it, or, when she could not leave, found the chair at the table’s far end and busied her hands with some necessary task.

The more thoroughly she effaced herself, the more certain he became that she was working very hard at hiding something.

Yet the household turned quietly towards her. His aunt presided and Mrs. Probert the housekeeper bustled, but Miss Jones knew how long the salt beef would last and which of the snowed-in tenants would want for candles. When some crisis arose over the wassail, she went below and returned smelling of cinnamon and cloves. The crisis did not return with her.

A goddaughter dependent on charity did not run a house with such quiet authority. She did it as though she had done so all her life, yet Mrs. Probert said Miss Jones had been at Plas Eira only three weeks.

On the second evening at dinner, Adrian’s curiosity betrayed him.

It was a small party: himself, his aunt, Miss Jones, and Miss Pettibone, his aunt’s long-time companion, a soft, round, deaf old creature who adored him unconditionally and kept up a happy commentary that wandered, invariably, from whatever topic everyone else was talking about. Wax candles guttered in the draughts, and beyond the windows the snow went on falling, blue in the last light. The house was trying to thaw and not managing it despite Miss Pettibone’s best efforts. His aunt had been stiff with him since his arrival, and Miss Jones was a study in downcast silence.

Adrian could no more abide a cold table than a cold room.

He set himself to warm it the only way he knew, which was to be amusing.

He told them about London: the absurdities of the autumn Season, the matrons and their daughters, the small wars fought with calling cards and increasingly elaborate entertainments. Then, reaching for the choicest tale of the year, the one that had set every tongue wagging, he told them about Markham.

“You will not have heard it, buried out here,” he said, leaning back and warming to his tale, “but it is the best scandal of the age. You recall Markham? No, perhaps not. He was at Oxford with me — I have known him since we were boys. A viscount, charming enough when he chooses, pockets to let, the usual story. So, of course, he does the usual thing and contracts to marry a fortune. Miss James, an East India nabob’s daughter, rich as Croesus, the settlements all signed and sealed. Half of London at the church. And the bride…”

He spread his hands, delighting in it.

“Does not come. Does not come, mark you. Sends no word, offers no excuse. Vanishes from her father’s house on the very morning, gone like smoke, and has not been seen since. Poor Markham left standing at the altar before the whole Ton, with the ring going cold in his glove…”

The spoon fell from Miss Jones’ hand and clattered to the floorboards.

It was a small sound, but it cut his sentence off clean. He looked across the table.

Miss Jones’ warm brown skin had gone a sickly shade of grey. For an instant her composure vanished, and beneath it he saw naked terror, the look of a creature hearing the hounds give tongue.

Then she said, in a voice he barely heard, “Forgive me. My spoon,” and bent out of sight beneath the table to retrieve it.

“Adrian.” His aunt set her wineglass down, her knuckles pale on the stem, and he turned to look at her, surprised to see fury in her expression. “You will not bring such disgraceful gossip to my table. I will not have a young woman’s suffering made into a comedy for dinner. I am ashamed of you.”

He blinked at her. “Aunt, it is only the on-dit of the season. Every soul in town has…”

He stopped.

Every soul in town had laughed, and until this moment it had not occurred to him that the runaway might have had reasons. In his mind, and in every drawing room in London, she had been simply the punchline. The bride who did not come.

His aunt was looking at him as though she had never seen him clearly before and did not care for what she saw.

Miss Jones came up from beneath the table.

She set the spoon beside her plate, her hand not quite steady. Her face was once more dull and contained, but the terror had not entirely disappeared. She looked at neither him nor his aunt.

“It is a sad story, I think,” she said very low, addressing her plate. “Whatever they say of her in London. To be so frightened of a marriage that one would rather be ruined than wed. I do not think I could laugh at it.”

Then, before anyone could answer, she said, “Lady Elise, if you will excuse me. I find I have the headache. I will say goodnight.”

She rose and curtseyed, a small, flawless movement, easy and sure in a way that did not belong to the awkward Miss Jones she had shown him until now. Then she went out, and the door shut behind her, soft and final.