Cassie’s jaw hardened with purpo
se. “Then I daresay you don’t care he’s dying.”
“I . . . I didn’t say that.” Dizzy, she grabbed Cassie’s hands and squeezed them. She was sinking in horrible sucking quicksand. None of this felt real. Ranelaw couldn’t die. She wouldn’t let him.
Blindly she released Cassie and whirled toward the waiting carriage. Henry rushed after her. Through her anguish, she heard his angry bewilderment. “What’s this about, Antonia? You told me you’ve spent the last years as Cassie’s chaperone. Yet it seems you’re on terms of intimacy with a libertine whose reputation is so foul, gossip’s reached Northumberland. I knew the marquess at Oxford. He was as wild as a jungle tiger even as a youth.”
“Antonia, explain yourself,” Demarest insisted from beside Henry.
If she’d been less distraught, the weight of masculine disapproval might have daunted her. As it was, she barely noticed. All that mattered were those grim words, like to die.
“I must go to him,” she said under her breath, speaking to herself as much as to anyone else. She placed one trembling hand on the coach’s door frame.
“Don’t be insane, woman,” Demarest spluttered behind her. “You can’t call on a single man in his home. Particularly a single man of Ranelaw’s depraved habits. The fellow’s a loose fish.”
Antonia turned to respond but fell silent when Cassie glared at her father. Fleetingly the girl looked much older than her eighteen years. Older, wiser, and adamantly unforgiving.
“Don’t be a hypocrite, Papa,” she said sharply.
“Cassandra Mary Demarest!” he began.
“I know about Eloise Challoner.” Antonia had never before heard Cassie use that frigid tone.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Demarest blustered. But a flush mottled his face and he stepped back as though disowning his role in that old tragedy. If she’d ever doubted that her cousin had ruined Eloise, she doubted no longer.
“Don’t lie,” Cassie said still in that cutting tone. When she turned to Antonia, her voice softened. “Toni, you must hurry.”
Every rule of society, of common sense, insisted Antonia depart London with Henry and never spare Ranelaw another thought. She owed Ranelaw precisely nothing. Over the last two days, she’d almost convinced herself she loathed him.
Of course she didn’t.
The truth was as inarguable as the sky above her or the hard pavement beneath her feet. It had been part of her so long, she’d hardly noticed.
She noticed now.
She loved the Marquess of Ranelaw. It didn’t matter what sins he’d committed. Nothing changed what she felt.
She hadn’t given herself to Nicholas because after ten years of chastity, she suddenly had an itch to scratch. She’d given herself to Nicholas because she loved him more than she’d ever loved anyone.
She couldn’t let him die. Nothing—reputation, duty, fear—would stop her seeing him.
“Henry, I’m sorry,” she said quickly, her heart thundering with panic. “We must delay our travel. Or you can go without me.”
“I don’t want to go without you.” Her brother looked troubled.
If Nicholas was as close to death as Cassie said, Antonia had no time to make him understand. As though he’d ever understand why his ruined sister, finally on the verge of rehabilitation, was set on ruining herself again. This time for good.
“I’ll send a note when I know the situation.” Or slink back grieving. She didn’t say the words aloud. She refused to countenance the possibility that the man she loved might die. If Nicholas could lure her into his bed, he could do anything. Including survive this ridiculous duel he fought over her. She wasn’t green enough to imagine that the identities of the adversaries could be accidental.
Nicholas was a fool. But he was her fool. She’d be damned before she relinquished him to the grave.
Demarest scowled and she suddenly wondered if their marriage would have been the arrangement of equals she blithely imagined. Although she could never marry him now, however advantageous the match. She couldn’t marry another man when every beat of her heart echoed Ranelaw’s name.
“Antonia, be sensible,” he said urgently. “Even if the villain survives, he’ll only tumble you, then discard you for another bit of muslin.”
“I don’t care,” she said stubbornly.
“You of all women must realize—”