“You cannot leave him out of this,” Honoria insisted. “He is as deeply involved as—”

“Fine,” Sarah said, just to cut her off. “Get Daniel. I don’t care.”

But she did care. And the moment Honoria dashed off to fetch the two gentlemen, Sarah yanked on her coat and raced to the stables. She could ride to the village faster than any carriage could be driven, even in—no, especially in this rain.

Daniel, Marcus, and Honoria would follow her to the White Hart; Sarah knew that they would. But if she got there far enough ahead of them, she could— Well, to be quite honest, she wasn’t sure what she could do, just that she could do something. She would find a way to placate Lord Ramsgate before Daniel showed up, irate and itching for a fight.

She might not be able to engineer a happy ending for all; in fact, she was fairly certain she could not do so. More than three years of hatred and bitterness could not be swept away in a single day. But if Sarah could somehow keep tempers from rising, and fists from flying, and—good heavens—anyone from getting killed . . .

It might not be a happy ending, but by God, it would have to be happy enough.

Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

An hour prior

Whipple Hill

A different room

If Hugh eventually did become the Marquess of Ramsgate, the first thing he was going to do was change the family motto. He could do that, couldn’t he? Because With Pride Comes Valor made no sense in the context of the current generations of Prentice men. No, if Hugh had any say in the matter, he was changing the whole bloody thing to Things Can Always Get Worse.

Case in point: the short missive that had been delivered to his room at Whipple Hill while he was off in the little drawing room, breaking Sarah’s heart, making her cry, and apparently being a terrible person.

The card was from his father.

His father.

It had been bad enough to have to look upon his familiar sharp handwriting. Then he read the words and realized that Lord Ramsgate was here. In Berkshire, practically down the road from Whipple Hill at the White Hart, the most fashionable of the local inns.

How the marquess had got a room when all of the inns were full of wedding guests, Hugh could not imagine. But his father had always had a way of bludgeoning through life. If he wanted a room, he’d get one, and Hugh could only pity the cascade of guests who would be moved to the next-nicest room until some poor bloke found himself out in the barn.