Chapter Eighteen
“Priscilla Seton, come down here this minute! Something has happened!”
Her mother’s voice echoed around the house, and Priscilla turned to look at her bedchamber door. She finished checking her reflection in the looking glass and would have usually made those last-minute changes one makes before descending for breakfast – but her mother’s voice was…
Well. In any other situation, she would have called it anxious. Something had happened?
“Priscilla!”
Dropping her second earbob onto the floor, Priscilla rose. The last time she had heard her mother speak like that was when Mary had her accident. Her blood grew cold as she darted down the corridor, shod only in her stockings, and hurtled down the stairs.
If something had happened to Charles…
Mrs. Seton was standing in the hallway, a newspaper in her hands.
“Is it Charles?” Priscilla panted as she stopped short before her mother. “Is he quite well?”
“No,” said her mother, gravely. “Not at all.”
Priscilla’s heart contracted painfully. He was hurt; something had happened. Why had he not taken greater care, why had he risked himself for what must have been nothing?
“What is it?” She could barely speak the words; the potential answer was so awful. “Tell me, Mother, I cannot bear the suspense. Is he…is he dead?”
Mrs. Seton looked up from the paper in surprise and gave a short laugh. “Dead? My word, nothing so dramatic, Priscilla. You always had a tendency to assume the worst.”
Priscilla attempted to calm her breathing as she glared. “You said something terrible had happened!”
“And so it has, but there are far more terrible things than mere death,” Mrs. Seton said calmly. “Come, let us –”
Priscilla, hardly a patient woman at the best of times, grabbed the newspaper in her mother’s hands, desperately flicking through the pages to find the news which had called her down so quickly.
“Priscilla, are you only wearing one earbob?”
“Mother!” Priscilla said sharply, looking up from the newspaper. “Tell me at once. What is the news about Charles, and why did it warrant such a dramatic entrance?”
Mrs. Seton smiled. “Charles was engaged to a Miss Lloyd, was he not?”
Priscilla could barely breathe. “Was engaged?”
Her mother nodded. “I told you something has happened, although where you have got this ‘terrible’ idea, I know not. No, all there is can be found on page fourteen – a small paragraph, to be sure, but I suppose neither Miss Lloyd nor her family wished for more prominence. There, at the top.”
Priscilla’s fingers were shaking, and she struggled to part the pages of the newspaper. Charles, no longer engaged? It could not be true. She knew better than anyone, just what he was willing to give up to continue his engagement with Miss Lloyd.
If he could give up true love, marriage with the one he truly cared for, what on earth could have broken the engagement?
“I am not surprised, I assure you,” her mother was saying airily, as though she had been party to the news for days rather than a few minutes. “And just two days before the wedding, ’tis truly scandalous! You know, I have not thought young Charles happy of late. I knew it was his engagement, but…”
She continued as Priscilla tried desperately to find page fourteen, but the more she struggled to find the page, the more they seemed to stick together.
It could not be true. However much she had wished for it, her mother must have misunderstood. It was only – what three days, four, since he had told her that despite desperately wishing he could, he would not break off his engagement even for the love he felt for her.
Her heart grew cold. Surely there could not be another lady in his affections? She had never considered that there could be a third.
“ – and I think, really, they would have been most unhappy,” her mother was saying thoughtfully. “I do not know Miss Lloyd well, naturally, but I know her mother. I cannot help but think she and young Charles have such different temperaments, it could never have been a happy marriage. In some ways, this could be seen as a blessing for Miss Lloyd, for I heard…”
The tittle-tattle of town did not interest Priscilla. She had finally managed to force her fingers to find page fourteen, and now her eyes scanned the page, attempting to spot any mention of Charles or Miss Lloyd.
“Top left-hand corner,” said her mother helpfully.
“Thank you,” Priscilla murmured, and she folded back the newspaper.
It comes as a great disappointment to this editor that the news must be shared of a broken engagement – and from the highest nobility in the land. It has been announced that Charles Audley, Duke of Orrinshire, and the Right Honorable Miss Frances Lloyd, so lately engaged and with their nuptials prepared at St. Martins’s for this very Thursday, have decided to part ways. No fault is laid at either door, and no restitution will be required from their party. It is this editor’s hope, however, that a reconciliation can be made between the happy lovers.
Her darting eyes flickered across the short paragraph again. No details, no details! She wanted to know far more than the newspaper could tell her, but they knew as little as she.
…have decided to part ways.
What did that mean? The engagement was broken, to be sure, but it was not clear which of them had decided to end the arrangement.
No fault is laid at either door…
Priscilla swallowed. What on earth had Charles done? Could he have been foolish enough to confess his love for another to Miss Lloyd?
“I don’t know, all these broken engagements, it was simply not done in my day,” her mother said airily. “I cannot think of two engagements in my own time as a debutante that did not continue, and one of them was quite scandalous. The gentleman, if I remember correctly, had believed the young lady…”
Perhaps it had been Frances – Miss
