“As I recall, I mentioned that I fell in love with you the moment I saw your face at the window. I was tempted to try to secure you then and there but assumed you would be horrified if I made an offer within an hour of meeting you. I therefore did my best to prevent you from disappearing on the morrow by offering to find your family situations in Geneva. You accepted. After that, I did, a little later, voice my sentiments, but you brushed me off, at which point I resolved to keep my own counsel and try to convince you of my earnestness through action alone.
“I wish you would look at me,” he went on a little peevishly. “I am aware that the view of the lake is infinitely more beautiful and fascinating than my face, but I am making a declaration and really would appreciate your attention for a few minutes.”
She turned obediently but her expression was not encouraging.
“For God’s sake!” he exclaimed, suddenly losing control of his sangfroid. “I’m trying to ask you to marry me!”
“If that is what you want to do,” she said, still in a glacial tone, “I wish you would get on with it!”
For a moment they stared at each other, she standing by the window, he halfway across the room. Then he swallowed, seemed to prepare himself for a dash into a barrage of gunfire, and strode across the room to cast himself on one knee before her.
“Will you, dearest Miss Moate, do me the honour of becoming my wife?” he asked, taking her hand.
“Are you asking me now because I have been revealed as Miss Moate?” she asked in a thin voice.
“What?”
“We have been here for weeks and, while you have always treated me with respect and – and liking – you have given no indication of anything warmer until you discovered that I am not so low-born as you had thought – that I am indeed, in spite of the shameful behaviour of my father, the sister of a Viscount.”
“Good God!” he exclaimed. “Is that what has upset you?”
She nodded, unable to speak on account of the lump in her throat.
“I am sorry! I had thought my feelings so obvious and indeed have been at such pains to hide them until I felt a suitable moment to express them had arrived, that I seem to have concealed them entirely! You cannot doubt them, surely?”
“No, I don’t think I do,” she admitted, finding her voice at last, although it seemed very small. “It is only that I suspect you were concealing them, very likely trying to drive them out, when you thought me of low rank.”
“I see.” He stood up but did not let go of her hand, using it instead to lead her to a sofa where he drew her down beside him. “I seem to have behaved like a clodhopping idiot and should perhaps give up pretending to be a diplomat. I thought you knew how I felt.”
“I did not – or at least I was not certain.”
“If I had thought your rank too low to make you my wife, would I not have tried to make you my mistress if, as you acknowledge, I had conceived a strong attachment to you?”
“I was surprised you did not and thought that perhaps you did not find me sufficiently to your taste,” she murmured but her voice had softened.
“So you were hurt that I did not make an approach?”
“A little.”
“Do you not think that I might have refrained from doing so because I respected you too much and because my intentions were so much more serious?”
“Sometimes I allowed myself to hope that was the reason.”
“Do you believe it now?”
She looked up at him; it was difficult to meet his eyes with that degree of aplomb which she felt was necessary when he was sitting so very close and when his lips had begun to twitch into a smile and his eyes to shine with what she could only assume was renewed hope.
“It was a clumsy approach,” he admitted when she nodded. “The trouble was that I had launched into one of my ‘see how clever I am’ explanations and somehow my feelings emerged at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Will you forgive me?”
She nodded again and fell into his arms.
It was several minutes later that he repeated his question.
“Will you marry me, dearest Miss Moate?”
She laughed unsteadily. “Moate is one of the few names beginning with M-O by which I have never been addressed.”
“Miss Moss. Pray answer the question.”
“Yes.”
Cecilia Or Flight From A Shadow Page 33