The Duke I'm Going to Marry(54)

She turned to her parents, expecting to find them as angry and indignant as she was. “It must have been Lady Withnall who started the disgusting rumor. I’ll speak to her and...”

Her mother had tears in her eyes. “It won’t do any good, Dillie. The damage has been done.”

“No,” she said, emitting a mirthless laugh. “It’s all been a terrible mistake. I can fix this.” She waited for her family to agree. Her sisters and their husbands were standing right behind her. Thank goodness. She could rely on her sisters for support. But a glance in their direction revealed that this time, they wouldn’t come to her rescue.

“I can fix this,” she insisted, and she would as soon as she stopped shaking. Anger. Fear. Dread. Defiance. All these sensations clashed within her body. She felt helpless and utterly out of control.

She’d also felt helpless and out of control whenever Ian kissed her, but it wasn’t at all the same thing. Ian’s kisses made her feel good. Right now, she felt nauseated. Her head began to spin.

Her father was looking at her as though she had just died. So was Uncle George.

Her brothers-in-law exchanged glances with each other.

“Oh, no. No, no, no! I know that stupid ‘we protect our women’ look!” Dillie’s entire body was now shaking and her heart was slamming against her chest. “Don’t you dare lay a hand on him! He didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong. You all know what really happened.”

Graelem folded his arms across his chest. She turned frantically to Laurel. “Knock sense into your stubborn husband. This gossip will pass. You know I never... that he never...” She closed her eyes and groaned. “Not you, too. Laurel, don’t look at me that way. Farthingales marry for love. I will not marry a man who doesn’t love me.”

“But Dillie, this is really bad. This isn’t about you and just any man. This is about you and the notoriously wicked Duke of Edgeware.”

“He isn’t wicked. He’s...” She was going to say that he was kind and decent, but he really wasn’t that way with everyone. Many people were afraid of him, perhaps with good reason. Yet, Gabriel and Graelem liked and respected him. Well, perhaps not at this moment.

Julia stepped forward, took her hand and gently patted it. “You could do a lot worse. He is a duke, after all.”

“But he doesn’t love me.” She swallowed hard. Her hands were trembling and her legs felt as though they were about to buckle. She glowered at all of them. “If you confront him, then everyone will believe the rumor is true and I’ll certainly be ruined. But if you go on about your business as you always have, if you accept him and continue to treat him as the friend he’s always been to us, this will pass. People will follow your guidance. See? Easily solved. This problem will go away in time.”

“No, it won’t.” Her father sighed. “Let’s go home.”

George nodded, signaling his agreement.

A horrid sensation swept over Dillie, that same, curdling discomfort she got whenever she ate sardines. Her tongue began to swell and her throat grew tight. “You can’t do this to me. If we run, everyone will believe the worst of me.”

She wanted to stomp her foot, rant and rage, behave like a petulant child. Her heart and happiness were at stake. Why couldn’t anyone understand that? She tried to control herself. She spoke with calm and dignity, perhaps a touch of indignation. Perhaps more than a touch. “I will not go home. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Just when she thought the situation couldn’t get worse, Ian made the mistake of walking in. Graelem and Julian grabbed him.

“Don’t hurt him!” Dillie cried out, and then let out a shriek when George and Gabriel grabbed her. They crisscrossed their arms and scooped her into the makeshift chair. “Stop! Put me down!” Though she struggled, they effortlessly carried her back to the family carriage.

The entire Farthingale clan followed after them. So did Lord and Lady Cummerfield. So did most of their guests, though the Cummerfields and their guests made it only as far as the street corner before more Farthingales cut them off. She heard mutters of “family business” and “give us privacy,” as though she and Ian had been caught doing something horrible and they were all now mourning her fate.

The outrage hadn’t been nearly this awful when Charles Ealing and Mary Abbott were caught naked at the Wakeford ball. Naked. Ian hadn’t even seen her without her clothes, yet everyone was treating him as though he had. So unfair!

She craned her neck to search for him amid the wall of Farthingale busybodies. “Where’s Ian? What have you done with him?”