by Mary Balogh
“Very risky,” he said. “The world will always despise me, Maggie—and you too if you marry me.”
She smiled at him.
“You have been desperate to persuade me to marry you,” she said. “Are you now trying to persuade me not to?”
He set his head back against the tree and closed his eyes.
“Reality creeps up on one, does it not?” he said. “For a few days—is it two or three or more? I have lost count already. For a few days, anyway, I have been desperate to do whatever I must do to prevent the loss of Woodbine. And yet now, when it seems that what I want is within my grasp, the reality comes home to me that I can do it only at the expense of the happiness of another innocent.”
“You believe,” she said, “that I will be unhappy as your wife, then?”
“How can you not be?” he said without opening his eyes. “We have known each other for two or three or four days—which is it? For a very brief time, anyway. I have only mercenary reasons for wishing to marry you. I believe I like you, though it is only this evening that I have come to that opinion. I do not love you. How could I? I do not know you and I have become an incurable cynic where romantic love is concerned. And you do not know me. You have lived an ordered, decorous life with a close, affectionate family. You have always been very well respected. It is possible that you still love a man who has angered you. You would be stepping into a yawning unknown with a social pariah if you married me.”
He was right about everything—except Crispin. So very right. She did not know quite why retaining possession of Woodbine Park now was so important to him since it would be his eventually anyway, along with a great deal more, and in the meanwhile he was young and fit and surely capable of earning a perfectly decent living. But however it was—perhaps it was just his reaction to a long exile, now over—Woodbine was important. Yet she sensed that if she said no now, he would walk away from it. If he could not bring himself in all conscience to marry her purely for his own convenience, then he would not be able to do it with anyone else.
It was a pleasant surprise to discover that he was after all a man of tender conscience. Perhaps more than usually so. He had pitted his conscience against the whole of his world five years ago.
“I will marry you if you still wish to marry,” she said. “But only if. You must not now feel that you are obliged to wed me only because you made me an offer which I have accepted. If you wish to marry, then I will marry you. I will take a chance on the future.”
He had opened his eyes though he had not moved his head. He was looking steadily back into her own eyes. His looked very black. His face looked very severe and angular in the darkness. A few days ago she might have been frightened.
“I wish to marry you,” he said.
“I would ask only one thing,” she said, “and this I beg of you as a great favor. Allow me to tell my family what you have told me tonight—Stephen, Vanessa and Elliott, Katherine and Jasper. I would stake my life on their honor and discretion, on the fact that not one of them will say a word to anyone else without your express permission. But I really cannot bear to have them believe that I am marrying an unconscionable villain. I cannot bear their puzzlement and pity. And I cannot bear that they will dislike and despise and avoid you for the rest of our lives.”
He sighed.
“They will think just as badly of me, Maggie,” he said. “Moreland will, at least. And Merton. Probably your sisters too.”
“No, they will not,” she said. “No, they will not.”
He lifted one hand and set his knuckles lightly against one of her cheeks.
“It must be wonderful,” he said, “to be so innocent, still to have such faith in the world.”
She leaned her cheek into his hand.
“If I were to lose faith in my own family,” she said, “I might as well be dead.”
He dipped his head toward hers and kissed her. His lips were warm, soft, moist, and moved over her own, parting and deepening the pressure as one arm came about her shoulders and the other tightened about her waist.
Oh, she liked kisses without ferocity, she thought—just as he raised his head.
“You wish to marry me, then, Maggie?” he asked. “And by the same token bed with me nightly?”
He was, she realized, waiting for an answer. It was a good thing he could not see the color of her cheeks.
“Yes,” she said. And an aching weakness between her thighs assured her that she was not lying. Yes, she wanted to bed with him. Nightly. She did not love him any more than he loved her, but … Oh, but she wanted to be married to him. She found him strangely attractive. She wanted to go to bed with him.
She verbalized the admission in her mind and felt breathlessly wicked. But it was not wicked. She was going to be his wife.
“Kiss me, then,” he said.
“I just was kissing you,” she protested.
“No, you were not,” he said. “You were holding your mouth relaxed for my pleasure, just as you did yesterday afternoon in the park. I do not want a passive, submissive woman. There are too many of those in the world, forced to it by the demands of their menfolk. My wife will not be one of them. If you wish to marry me, if you wish to bed with me on our wedding night and every night thereafter when we are both in the mood for sex, then kiss me now as if you mean it.”
And the thing was that he was neither joking nor teasing. His face and his voice both attested to that fact.
Just as he had not been joking or teasing at the Tindell ball when he had offered her marriage within a minute or two of colliding with her.
He was not someone, then, who took kisses as if it were his right to do so.
“Kiss me,” he said softly.
“We are on the street,” she reminded him.
“And everyone in the neighborhood is either asleep or still out carousing,” he said. “There is not a single light in a single window. And if there is a Peeping Tom behind one of the darkened ones, he is having lean pickings tonight. We must be almost totally invisible beneath this tree. Maggie, you are either a coward or you do not wish to kiss me. And if it is the latter, then you do not wish to bed with me either and therefore do not wish to marry me.”
She laughed.
“Which is it?” he asked.
She gripped his upper arms, leaned forward, and set her lips firmly to his. She was instantly more fully aware of the hardness of his thighs against her own, of his broad chest pressed to her bosom, of the wine flavor of his mouth and the warmth of his breath.
His lips remained still and passive against hers, and after a few moments she was at a loss. She drew back her head.
“Oh, dear,” she said, “I suppose you are demonstrating the way I was kissing you. I am so sorry. It is just, you see—”
His mouth covered hers again, and she leaned deliberately into him and burrowed the fingers of one hand into the back of his hair beneath his tall silk hat, angling her head slightly as she did so and parting her lips, moving them over his, touching his lips with her tongue and then venturing within them until his arms tightened about her and he sucked her tongue into his mouth while his hands slid downward to spread over her buttocks and half lift her against him.
He was ready for her. Oh, dear God, he was …
She drew firmly away from him.
“Frightened?” he murmured.
“Yes,” she said. “And also aware that we are on the street even if we are invisible to Peeping Toms.”
“The voice of reason,” he said, brushing his hands over his clothes and stepping away from the tree trunk. “But you need not be afraid, Maggie. We may be marrying for all the wrong reasons—though I am no longer sure what right reasons there can be for matrimony—but we can still expect pleasure from our union. It is obvious that pleasure is within our grasp.”
“Yes,” she said, and she saw the flash of his teeth in the darkness. “Are we going to remain here forever? Soon we will be sending down roots to join the trees.”
He
offered his arm, and they resumed their walk home to Berkeley Square.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “I shall take you to meet my grandfather, if I may. It may be rather like ushering Daniel into the lions’ den, I am afraid, though he will have no reason to turn his wrath upon you. The day after I will have an announcement of our betrothal appear in the morning papers.”
It was all very real indeed now.
“Yes,” she said. “That will be satisfactory.”
“And then,” he said as they came to a stop outside the doors of Merton House, “I shall purchase a special license and we will decide upon a suitable day for the nuptials. I believe there will be ten or so among which to choose.”
“Yes,” she said. “I am not sure you answered my question. May I tell my family what you told me tonight?”
He hesitated.
“Yes,” he said, and leaned forward to kiss her briefly on the lips before raising the door knocker and allowing it to fall back against the brass plate. “At least after the announcement is made you will be able to thumb your nose at the likes of Dew and Allingham.”
“A marvelously mature thing to do,” she said.
“And marvelously satisfying too,” he said. “If, that is, you wish to do so. Be very sure.”
“I am,” she said. “I did love him, you know, and there is still pain where he once occupied my heart. But the pain is caused by the realization that he was never the man I thought him to be and that he has not grown into the man with whom I could be happy spending the rest of my life.”
“But I am?” he said softly.
“With you I have no illusions,” she said. “You will not allow me to have any. You do not pretend to be what you are not, and you do not pretend to tender feelings you do not feel. On that foundation we can build a friendship, even an affection. That is my hope, anyway. It is what I will attempt to make of our marriage.”
The door opened before he could reply, and under the eagle gaze of Stephen’s butler he raised her hand to his lips and bade her a good night.
And so she was betrothed, Margaret thought as she stepped inside the house and made her way toward the staircase with a firm stride quite at variance with her feelings. To a man for whom conscience and personal honor meant more than reputation or law or church or peace of mind.
She could love such a man.
Certainly she admired him—perhaps more than she had admired anyone else in her life.
Was that why she had made the abrupt decision to marry him when she had promised herself to take all the time she was allowed?
Or was it as she had said to him outside a couple of minutes ago? Was it that with no promises, no illusions, no veil of romance, she could dream of an honest relationship that could be shaped into something meaningful and satisfying?
She felt rather like weeping by the time she reached her room. She dismissed her maid and threw herself across her bed fully clothed and did just that.
For no reason that she could fathom.
14
“DO you suppose, Smith,” Duncan asked while his valet was helping him into his coat the following morning and ensuring that his shirt and waistcoat beneath it did not suffer so much as one crease as a consequence, “that when one has lived a lie for a number of years one is incapable of telling the truth ever again?”
Smith, not satisfied with his handiwork, hauled the coat higher on the right shoulder and stood back to take a critical look.
“When one has lived the truth most of one’s life,” he said, brushing the coat vigorously to remove the last stubborn spot of lint, “one is still capable of telling lies. I suppose the matter works both ways, m’lord.”
“Hmm,” Duncan said. “Reassuring. You have finished with me?”
“I have,” Smith said. “She will take one look at you and swoon with delight.”
“Really?” Duncan said. “That would be a miracle. She has already informed me that I am neither handsome nor particularly good-looking.”
Smith looked at him sidelong as he put away the clothes Duncan had recently discarded.
“It is no wonder you are worried about telling lies, then, m’lord,” he said, “if you have found such an honest woman.”
Duncan was still chuckling as he closed the dressing room door behind him and made his way downstairs.
He was going to take Miss Huxtable to call upon his grandfather this afternoon. He had gone to bed with the intention of spending an hour at Jackson’s Boxing Salon again this morning and another hour or two at White’s. But sleep had refused to come to him all night until he had made a certain decision at dawn.
He had lain on his back staring at the canopy over his bed when he was not curled up on his left side, his forehead almost touching his knees, or on his right side, one arm burrowed beneath his pillow, or when he was not flat on his stomach trying to find a way to position his head that would allow him to breathe. It was no good. There was no such thing as a comfortable position.
It was a ghastly fate, he had thought eventually, on his back again, his fingers laced behind his head, his eyes on the rosebud at the center of the canopy, to have been born with a conscience. It played havoc with a man’s chances of living comfortably in the real world and of enjoying a good night’s sleep.
And here he was this morning, all dressed up as if he were on his way to make another marriage offer—which, in a sense he was. To the same lady and in the same place. He was on his way to Merton House to speak with Miss Huxtable. He hoped fervently that she was not at home. Did not ladies use their mornings for shopping and visiting and exchanging their books at the library and walking in the park and …
She was at home.
Merton’s butler did not even make any pretense of going to see if she was. Instead, he took Duncan’s hat and gloves, preceded him up to the drawing room, which was empty, and told him that he would inform Miss Huxtable of his arrival.
Too late Duncan realized that the butler must have assumed this was a planned visit. A good butler ought not to make such an assumption.
There had been another letter from Mrs. Harris this morning, reminding Lord Sheringford that the rent was going to be due again soon.
As if he needed reminding.
She had enclosed a picture that Toby had made for him. They were all in it, spread across the bottom of the paper—Toby with a mop of curly hair and the Harrises, all modestly small, himself a great hulking giant filling the right half of the page, a round sun with beaming rays above his head.
The protector.
The one who filled a child’s world and brought him the sun.
Duncan could almost see Toby drawing the picture, his little body hunched over the paper, the charcoal clutched in his left hand despite all Mrs. Harris’s efforts to make him use the right, a frown of concentration on his brow, the tip of his tongue protruding from the right side of his mouth.
He could almost smell the baby smell of the child.
He felt such a swell of yearning that for a moment he closed his eyes and reminded himself of what he was about to do. The right thing?
How could one know what was right and what was wrong?
There was conscience—and then there was a child.
Miss Huxtable was obviously neither going out nor expecting visitors. She came to the drawing room a mere two minutes after he arrived there, dressed in an off-white cotton morning dress that looked as if it must be an old favorite, her hair styled in a simple knot at her neck. It must not have occurred to her that she might have kept him waiting while she changed and did something with her hair.
Strangely, she looked even more lovely than usual.
She also looked flushed and bright-eyed. Like a young innocent who had been kissed the night before and had rather enjoyed the experience.
“Lord Sheringford?” She came well into the room before stopping a few feet from him. She was smiling. “This is a pleasant surprise.”
She offered him her hand, which he took in his
and squeezed. Belatedly, he realized that she had probably expected him to raise it to his lips. He released it.
“Perhaps not so pleasant,” he said. “I have come to give you the chance to rescind your acceptance of my marriage offer before our betrothal has been made public.”
The color deepened in her cheeks. Her smile remained, but it became more guarded.
“Mr. Turner has challenged you to a duel,” she said.
“No.”
“If it is what was written in the morning papers,” she said, “you must not concern yourself. I have grown quite accustomed to such silliness being written about me—and about you. And Stephen was much affected by what I told him at breakfast. He was hoping to meet you at White’s this morning and make his peace with you. I am sure my sisters and brothers-in-law will feel the same way. I have sent letters to them. I would have gone in person, but I feared that I would be exhausted by the time I returned home and not quite up to facing the Marquess of Claverbrook.”
“Miss Huxtable,” he said, “I have not been quite frank with you. There is something I have not told you that will almost certainly cause you to reconsider your decision to marry me.”
Not that he could be perfectly frank even now. Certain details were not his to divulge.
Her smile had faded entirely, and she looked away from him.
“We had better sit down,” she said, and she took a chair beside the fireplace.
He sat on a love seat adjacent to it.
“I would not be attempting to contract such a hasty marriage,” he said, “just for the sake of retaining Woodbine Park, much as I love it. It will, in the normal course of things, be mine eventually anyway. Neither would the simple prospect of losing all my funds propel me into marriage with a virtual stranger. I will be wealthy enough eventually, I daresay, and in the meanwhile I am perfectly capable of earning enough money to keep body and soul together, unaccustomed though I am to earning my living. To be honest, I would not even be thinking of marriage yet—or perhaps ever.”
He paused long enough for her to speak.
“You have realized since last evening,” she said, “that you really do not wish to marry me or anyone else, Lord Sheringford, that you would prefer to take employment until such time as you inherit from the Marquess of Claverbrook. I can understand why the reality of being betrothed has awoken you to what you really want to do with your life until then. I can even respect you for it—and for coming here this morning to be honest with me before any announcement has been made. Better that than be abandoned at the altar.” She smiled fleetingly. “You must not feel badly. I am not in love with you, and I do not need to marry. After a few days I do not doubt I will realize that I have had a fortunate escape. It is not comfortable to be notorious.”