Fleur looked up with a puzzled expression.
“Richard, too,” Iris said, praying that she was right to speak for him in this. “There will be a scandal, and there will be some who will no longer acknowledge you, but Richard and I will stand by you. You and Mr. Burnham will always be welcome in our home, and when we entertain, you will be our most honored guests.”
Fleur smiled at her gratefully. “That is very sweet of you,” she said, but the look on her face was gently condescending.
“You are my sister,” Iris said plainly.
Fleur’s eyes grew bright, and she gave a little nod, the sort one made when one didn’t trust one’s voice. Finally, just when Iris was wondering if their conversation had come to a close, Fleur looked up with renewed clarity, and said, “I’ve never been to London.”
Iris blinked, confused by the sudden change of subject. “I beg your pardon?”
“I’ve never been to London,” Fleur repeated. “Did you know that?”
Iris shook her head. London was so crowded, so full of humanity. It seemed impossible that someone might never have stepped foot in its boundaries.
“I never really wanted to.” Fleur shrugged, looking over at Iris with a knowing expression. “I know you think I’m a thoughtless, frivolous girl, but I don’t need silks and satins and invitations to the best sorts of parties. All I want is a warm home, and good food, and a husband who can provide all that. But Marie-Claire—”
“Can go to London!” Iris blurted, her head snapping up. “Good heavens, why didn’t I think of it before?”
Fleur stared at her. “I don’t understand.”
“We’ll send Marie-Claire to my mother,” Iris said excitedly. “She can give her a season.”
“She would do that?”
Iris waved this away as the ridiculous question it was. By the time Marie-Claire was of a proper age, Daisy would be married and out of the house. Iris’s mother would be bored beyond tears without a daughter to shepherd through the marriage mart.
Yes, Marie-Claire would do nicely.
“I would have to go down with her for part of the season,” Iris said, “but that’s hardly a difficulty.”
“But surely people would gossip . . . Even in London . . . if I actually married John . . .” Fleur did not seem able to complete a sentence, but for the first time since Iris had met her, there was hope in her eyes.
“They’ll know what we tell them,” Iris said firmly. “By the time my mother is done, your Mr. Burnham will be lauded as a minor but respectable landowner, just the sort of sober and serious young man a girl like you should marry.”
And maybe he would be a landowner by then. Iris rather thought that Mill Farm would make an excellent dowry. John Burnham would go from being a tenant farmer to a yeoman, and with the former Fleur Kenworthy as his bride, he would be well on his way to the status of gentleman.
There would be a scandal, there was no getting around that. But nothing so permanent as Fleur’s giving birth to a bastard, and nothing that Marie-Claire could not weather two hundred miles away in London, with the full weight of Iris’s family behind her.
“Go tell him,” Iris urged.
“Now?”
Iris almost laughed with happiness. “Is there any reason to wait?”
“Well, no, but—” Fleur looked at her with an almost desperate expression. “Are you sure?”
Iris reached out and squeezed her hands. “Go find him. Go tell him he is to be a father.”
“He will be angry,” Fleur whispered. “That I didn’t tell him. He will be furious.”
“He has every right to be. But if he loves you, he will understand.”
“Yes,” Fleur said, sounding as if she were trying to convince herself. “Yes. Yes, I think he will.”
“Go,” Iris said, taking Fleur by the shoulders and pointing her toward the opening in the rose bower. “Go.”
Fleur started to leave, then turned around suddenly and threw her arms around Iris. Iris tried to return the embrace, but before she could so much as move, Fleur was racing away, skirts hitched and hair streaming, ready to embark upon her new life.
Chapter Twenty-five
THERE WAS A certain irony at play, Richard thought. Here he was, ready to declare himself, to transform his life, to throw himself at the mercy of his wife, and he couldn’t bloody find her.
“Iris!” he bellowed. He’d skidded down across the western fields after one of the grooms had said he’d seen her heading in that direction, but the only sign of her was a half-eaten scone near the hedgerow, currently under vicious attack by a small murder of crows.
More irritated than discouraged, he tramped back up the hill to the house, which he tore through in record time, crashing through doors and scaring the dickens out of no fewer than three housemaids. Finally, he came across Marie-Claire, who was sulking in the main hall. He took one look at her pose—arms crossed tight, toe tapping with angry irritation—and he decided he wanted no knowledge of whatever had brought her to that point.
He did, however, need her assistance. “Where is my wife?” he demanded.
“I don’t know.”
He let out a noise. It might have been a growl.
“I don’t!” Marie-Claire protested. “I was with her earlier, but she ran away.”
Richard felt his heart contract. “She ran away?”
“She tripped me,” Marie-Claire said. With considerable affront.
Wait . . . what? Richard tried to make sense of this. “She tripped you?”