Page 13 of His Unwanted Duchess

Mary drew in a breath, glancing around nervously. “I was a housemaid at the Hampton countryseat, in Devon. It was a good enough job. The Marquess here came about four years ago. He flirted with me, Your Grace. Made a dead set at me, he did. I’mnot generally a foolish girl, but I did think that he truly liked me. He talked of marriage, and even gave me a ring—a ring with the Hampton crest on it. I still have the ring.”

She fished in her apron pocket, withdrawing the ring in question. There was a ripple of gasps at this.

Stephen quietly congratulated himself on his good luck. Mary was a natural storyteller. It helped, of course, that it washerstory she was telling, but she could just as easily have turned out to be a cow-eyed, doleful sort of girl who wouldn’t raise her eyes from the floor and certainly wouldn’t string more than three words together.

“When I found out I was with child,” Mary continued, her voice wobbling. “I told him at once, foolishly thinking that we would be wed. He told me right away that he would never marry me, had never intended to marry me, and that I had been so… so free with my favors that the child was probably not even his!”

More gasps and whispers at this. Some ladies were fanning themselves fervently, torn between shock and a sort of salacious delight at the drama.

“We can all see, ladies and gentlemen, that the child bears a distinct resemblance to the man in question,” Stephen said, injecting just the right note of regret in his voice. “And how does he treat his child and the woman he wronged? Tell us, Mary.”

Mary swallowed hard, steeling herself. “He said that I was trying tocatchhim, that I was a lying little… Well, never mind what hecalled me. He said he wouldn’t give me a penny, and if I wanted an end to my troubles, I ought to find a pond to drown myself in.”

The gasps were more angry and less shocked now. Ladies and gentlemen in the audience with daughters grown up or growing up began to look at the Marquess with hard expressions, no doubt imagining their own precious children in Mary’s place.

Glancing around, Mary pressed on. “As you can all see, I didn’t drown myself. I love my boy—Jamie, his name is—and I’m lucky enough to have parents who love me, too, and take care of me. But lots of women aren’t as lucky as me.Heis a vile scoundrel, though, and I don’t care who hears it.”

The final sentence was punctuated with an accusatory finger, pointed straight at the Marquess. It was, frankly, damning.

Stephen glanced over at the Marquess again. The color had drained entirely from the man’s face by now, replaced by an ashy paleness.

Good.He deserves it.

“She’s a liar,” the Marquess gasped and swung around to look at Lord and Lady Stanley. Not, Stephen noticed, at his bride-to-be. “This isn’t true. You can’t believe this nonsense.”

“I am not a liar! You are!” Mary shouted.

The Marquess’s temper, already horrifyingly short, frayed further. With a strangled yelp, he turned again and marched down the aisle towards Mary, his fist clenched.

To her credit, the woman did not turn around and flee. She pushed her son into the crowd, away from danger—a detail which would likely be remarked upon in several gossip columns, no doubt—and braced herself.

There was, of course, no need.

Stephen stepped neatly between them and casually drove his fist into the Marquess’s face.

There were a few screams from the crowd, and somebody may have swooned. The Marquess skidded across the stone floor, and Stephen was on him in a moment. Hoisting him up by the collar, he glanced over his shoulder at the vicar.

“I think the authorities should be summoned,” he suggested. “Since this man is becoming rather violent.”

And then he marched himself and the Marquess out of the church without a backward glance, ignoring the chaos behind him.

“Here you are, Mary. As we agreed.”

Stephen handed over a heavy purse of coins. Mary Greenfield took it, albeit reluctantly.

She was pale and shaking. Her little boy clutched at her skirts, visibly terrified.

“I shouldn’t have brought Jamie,” she murmured. “It scared him.”

“Perhaps so, but Jamie’s resemblance to his father turned the tide in our favor,” Stephen pointed out.

The congregation was now filing out of the church, talking loudly. The disbelief would be powerful, and every gossip column in London would report on this event.

The Marquess was gone, and Stephen didn’t much care where he’d gone to. Mary was leaving London directly and had already received several offers of help and employment from sympathetic members of the congregation.

“I didn’t do it for this, you know,” Mary remarked, lifting the pouch of coins. “I did it because I want him to be exposed for what he did.”

“I know, Mary. Sincerity cannot be faked, and that was why your testimony went down so well. Thank you for helping me in this matter.”

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