"You shouldn't have done that," Nora said, her teeth chattering. She looked back toward the folly. 30 pairs of eyes were burning holes through the rain, staring directly at them. Lady Edith looked as though she were about to have an aneurysm.
"Done what?" Nathaniel asked, swiping the wet hair out of his eyes. He stood in his soaked linen shirt, completely indifferent to the cold.
"You bypassed Rosalind. You chose to pull me out of the mud." Nora looked up at him, panic rising into her throat. "Do you realize what you've just done? You've humiliated her. You've humiliated my mother. I will pay for this when we return to the house."
"I am not marrying your sister, Nora."
The words cut through the sound of the rain like a gunshot. Nora froze. "You don't know that."
"I know it," Nathaniel said, taking a step closer. The air between them felt suddenly electric, heavy with something far more dangerous than the storm. "She is beautiful and she is desperate and she would make a perfectly acceptable duchess. But she would bore me to death within a month and I would make her miserable."
"Then choose someone else," Nora whispered, her voice cracking. "Choose Lady Shelby. Choose the viscount's daughter. Do not choose me."
"Why?"
"Because I told you I am the ballast. If you pull me up, my family drowns." Tears of pure hot frustration mixed with the rain on her cheeks. "If you do not choose Rosalind, Lord Croft takes the house. We will have nothing."
Nathaniel reached out. He didn't care about the mud. He gently caught her face in his large, warm hands, his thumbs brushing over her cold cheekbones. "I told you in the library," he said, his voice dropping to a low, fierce murmur. "I am drowning too. I need someone to bail the water."
He stepped into her space, his chest brushing against the heavy wool of the coat she wore. "Let me worry about Lord Croft. Let me worry about your mother's debts. You just have to tell me one thing."
Nora couldn't breathe. The corset was tight, but it was his proximity that was suffocating her now. "What?"
"If I ask you to stay behind the curtain with me," Nathaniel said, his dark eyes locked onto hers, burning with a quiet, desperate intensity, "will you stay?"
The silence in the guest bedchamber was thick enough to choke on. It was a cold, brittle silence, the kind that follows a violent carriage crash before the screaming begins.
Nora stood in the center of the faded Persian rug, shivering violently. The rain had soaked through her muslin gown, plastering it to her calves, turning the hem into a heavy, mud-caked weight. She was still wearing Nathaniel's coat. It draped over her small frame like a heavily tailored tent smelling fiercely of wet wool, cedar, and him.
Lady Edith stood by the window, her back rigid. She had dismissed Celia to the adjoining dressing room. Rosalind sat on the edge of the bed, perfectly composed, though her peach gown was ruined with water spots.
"Take it off," Edith said. Her voice was flat, devoid of its usual frantic energy.
Nora gripped the lapels of the coat. Her fingers were numb, stiff from the freezing rain, but she pulled the heavy wool tighter around her neck. "I am cold, mother."
Edith turned. The look in her eyes was not anger. It was terror. It was the look of a woman who had just watched her last lifeboat catch fire and sink. "Take the Duke's coat off, Nora. Now."
Nora slowly uncurled her fingers. She let the heavy garment slide from her shoulders. It hit the floorboards with a wet, heavy thud. Without it, the chill of the drafty room slammed into her, raising gooseflesh across her arms.
Edith walked forward. She didn't raise her hand. She didn't strike. She simply looked at Nora with absolute hollow devastation. "Do you know what you have done?" Edith whispered.
"I fell," Nora said, her voice shaking. "I slipped on a stone. He helped me up."
"He carried you into the trees! He left Rosalind standing in the rain while he stripped off his own coat to cover you. 30 of the worst gossips in England watched him do it." Edith rubbed her temples, her breathing growing shallow and erratic. "Lady Shelby was laughing. I heard her. She was laughing at us. The Montgomerys parading their eldest daughter while the Duke runs off with the clumsy, unremarkable spare."
The word stung precise and sharp. Spare.
Nora looked at Rosalind, expecting anger. She expected her sister to join the firing squad. Instead, Rosalind was looking at the ruined hem of her dress. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap.
"It is over," Rosalind said quietly.
"It is not over." Edith snapped, wheeling on her eldest. "We will say Nora was taken ill. A dizzy spell. The Duke was merely acting as a gentleman. You will wear the crimson silk tonight at the ball. You will ask him for the first dance. We can fix this."
"Mother," Rosalind raised her head. Her beautiful face was completely drained of color, making the artificial pink on her cheeks look clownish. "He looked at her when he picked her up from the mud. He did not look at me once today. Not really. He looked at her the way a starving man looks at bread." Rosalind swallowed hard, her composure finally cracking at the edges. "I cannot compete with that. I do not know how."