She’d been wanted before. She’d been worshipped before.
And now she wanted to be loved. And to love in return.
She looked back at this undeniably beautiful man and found it difficult to associate that soft word—love—with him.
Desire, certainly.
There might be vulnerability in him, there might be feeling, rather than simply pride and want. But she sensed it was something she’d be forever reaching for in this unyielding man.
Difficult and set in his ways, indeed!
He was still talking.
“…and here we are, unmarried and of marriageable age and familiar to each other—”
“Familiar to each other?”
He was looking again at the tea. He had noticed she’d remembered how he took his.
“—and as I said, I shall need to marry eventually, and I might as well do it now rather than later. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t marry again. I can protect you from…” He lifted the letters and their implied threats. “…and from yourself. And I’ve a reasonable fortune of my own.”
And here is where his recitation ended. His case, as he saw it, seemed to have been made.
And once again he assumed an attitude of waiting.
She was dumbstruck.
She flailed in silence for words. Haltingly, they emerged.
“As…deeply flattering and romantic as that sentiment is, Chase, and despite what…well, what happened earlier this evening, which we cannot allow to happen again…and as appealing as the case you have made for your…character…it isn’t reason enough for us to marry.”
A pause.
“Isn’t it?”
His voice was odd. She couldn’t tell whether he was amused. Or relieved. Or simply curious about what she had to say next.
His eyes had a peculiar glint.
She disliked being unable to read him, and once again it felt as though he had the upper hand, which seemed grossly unfair given that she had just rejected him.
It occurred to her that he expected an answer to what she’d taken as a rhetorical question.
“No. It isn’t.”
He said nothing. He briefly transferred his gaze to his knees, seemed to find them fascinating for a second or so. Then he returned them to her face, with an attitude of waiting. He seemed to be holding himself very still, unnaturally so. There was something stoic about his posture.
Oh, God. She would rather die than hurt his feelings—did he have feelings?—or his formidable pride. She tightened her hands around the teacup. Her knuckles were white.
And as it so happened, his continued silence forced more uncomfortable truths from her.
“And as moving as your…proposal?…is, I’m not certain I want to marry anyone. It’s the truth, I swear to you. I’ve forgotten how to be coy. I haven’t the talent for dramatics, like Lady d’Aligny or…the girl in Sussex rumored to have once threatened to cast herself into a well over an argument with a suitor—”
“Violet Redmond,” he supplied, surprisingly gently. Everyone had heard that particular story about Violet Redmond.
“Violet Redmond. And I’m not old, I know. I’m not precisely on the shelf. I do know I should feel free to marry again. You needn’t tell me any of those things, for I’m a grown woman, and a widow. I’m not interested in falling on my sword or martyring myself or anything quite so dramatic and foolish. If I wished to marry you, I would do it.”
She was quite finished.
She sat back, clutching her teacup. Very little tea floated in there now among a few stray leaves. If she’d known how to read them, would she have been warned of a marriage proposal and thus not spluttered tea everywhere?
He waited. As if he was very certain she intended to say more.
She waited, because she was certain she’d said all she wanted to say.
As it turned out, he was right.
His silence drew it right out of her. She’d seen him do this to subalterns. He’d always known when there was more to a story. There really was no defense against Captain Eversea when he was deciding to be patient. His patience, in its rarity, was in some ways more potent than his impatience.
“It’s just…I have never been allowed to decide what I want. I’ve only ever done what I’ve needed to do to ensure my sisters and I are cared for—food and shelter and whatnot. I’ve only responded to needs of the moment without a thought beyond that. And though I know I am not unlike other women in this regard, I might very well be unlike other women of your acquaintance. And now…now I’ve an income from my late husband, modest though it may be. I come and go as I please. I was grateful to Mathew and I loved him for the kind person he was, for his strength of character. I find I am in a position now to determine what I want. And I don’t know what or who that might be.”
The confession left her feeling awkward and exposed.
Not because she was ashamed of it, but because it was the first time she’d ever said anything of the sort aloud. It was like trying a new language, worrying about pronouncing the words correctly. She half resented him for forcing her to make it.
Odd what the man could accomplish by simply being silent.
“So I must decline your proposal. Though I thank you for your…gallantry?…in issuing it.”
“You’re welcome,” he said immediately. The reflexive manners of the Everseas.
His eyes were fixed on her face, but his thoughts were somewhere else altogether. On her, but not on this moment. His face was abstracted. He didn’t look crushed, in truth. He didn’t appear to even be listening to her.
She began to feel a bit irritated. “You needn’t look so relieved.”
“Do I look relieved?” He sounded surprised.
“A little.”
But relieved wasn’t the proper way to describe how he looked. It was rather a mix of things, and she couldn’t have deciphered one from the other. Undaunted was definitely one of them. Surprised might have been another one.
And not precisely crushed was another of them.
She wondered fleetingly if he’d surprised himself. But he wasn’t a rash man or a reckless man. He wasn’t his brother, serenading countesses or plummeting from trellises or whatever the broadsheets said he had done. She’d known Chase to more than once make decisions, difficult ones, brave ones, right ones, in a dangerous heartbeat. Which made this all the more puzzling.
She returned his steady gaze.
Like sunlight bouncing off a quiet lake: such an unfair blue, those eyes. Her heart squeezed with the pleasure, the struggle, of simply looking into them.
“I’m off to India in two weeks,” he said conversationally.
She gave a start.
“To serve there as an officer with East India Company. It’s what I do best, I suppose—serving my country. It’s what I was made for. I sail on The Courage.”
He’d be gone again. As quickly as he’d returned to her life. She knew a swooping moment of regret.
Followed by an acceptance that bordered on profound relief.
“Well,” she said gently, “I don’t want to go to India.”
He nodded curtly. “I suppose that settles it.”
As if everything she’d just said hadn’t settled it.
He glanced down at the tea, frowning a little, as if deciding whether he wanted any. He didn’t reach for it.
Speaking of settling, a choking silence settled like dust. When it became well nigh unendurable, she gave a short laugh to disturb it. It was meant to sound casual and balm over the hideous awkwardness, but it did the opposite.
She’d underestimated him, however. Despite the awkwardness, when he spoke next, his voice was natural. And naturally he issued a command.
“I cannot allow you to run about with a pistol strapped to your thigh.”
She almost bristled at the “allow.”
But she reminded herself that it was how he spoke, and how he felt things: he was all duty and commands and protection and right and wrong
. Whether it had to do with how he felt about her or with his sense of responsibility mattered little at the moment.
All that mattered was Lucy.
“I am not so foolish as to decline an offer of assistance or protection, Chase, should you choose to extend one. I do value my life. If someone wishes me harm, I should feel safer with you keeping a watch. I should be grateful for your help. I should like to see my nephew grow up. I should like to see Lucy again. I couldn’t bear it if I couldn’t see Lucy again.”
He was quiet. What was going on in that mind? Ought she to ask? She suspected she didn’t really want to know.
“Your nephew is nearly a year old now?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, startled.
“He has a tooth?”
He’d remembered.
His eyes crinkled a little at her surprise. Not quite a smile, but close. Just when she’d thought he hadn’t listened to her at all. All of these little surprises were wreaking havoc with her already precarious equilibrium.
“Will you speak to Kinkade for me?”
Chase sighed. “He’s a busy man, Rosalind, and he’s hiding naught from you. He answered you as best he knows. Imagine your question, your inquiry about your sister, multiplied by a thousand, and you’ll know what he sees every day. One heartfelt petition begins to look like another. Hundreds if not thousands of crimes large and small are committed in London every month.”
“But not by my sister.” She said this with quiet defiance. “Whether or not she did could very well be beside the point.”
They both knew this.
The entire government was fueled by the connections between people. People lived and died, prospered or declined, rose or fell, all based on the webbings of relationships between them. She’d been the wife of a respected colonel, but he was dead now, and she had only a modest income and no family connections of her own.
She fully intended to use the only real one she had: Chase.
“And frankly, Chase…I don’t know whether this scandalizes you or not…I don’t care whether she did steal it. I will deal with Lucy when I find her.”
He was thinking. Tapping one hand rhythmically against the arm of his chair.
“He’ll do it for you, Chase. He’ll exert more effort to find her. For you, if not for me.”
“Tell me, Rosalind,” he said suddenly. “Who arrested her?”
“A Charley in Covent Garden. The shop where Lucy…tried the bracelet is in Covent Garden. I believe she was there to meet friends to go to the theater, but I don’t know why she was alone. She should not have been.”
The unspoken words were: and I should have been with her.
“She’s a grown woman, Rosalind. As much as we want to protect our siblings, they will do things that get them thrown in Newgate.”
Dry humor from the man whose brother had been rather a national sensation as a result of what he’d allegedly done. Chase knew firsthand what the inside of the prison looked like.
“And the Charley turned Lucy over to the magistrate?” he asked.
“And then apparently she went from there to prison, because that’s where I next saw her.”
Tap…tap…tap went his hand. Like a metronome for the torrent of his thoughts.
And finally he breathed in, then exhaled at length, and nodded.
“Very well. I’ll call on Kinkade about Lucy tomorrow. But you cannot come with me. I’d like to obtain unvarnished truth, and he’ll only give that to me, not to you. I will call on you the moment I know anything at all. And you may count on me for protection and assistance—as you call it—until I depart for India.”
His way of issuing commands generally inspired her to rebel.
“Thank you,” she said instead, all quiet dignity. “You have my deepest gratitude.”
And my shredded garters.
There they were, limply surrendered, in his fist. She glanced at them.
He followed the direction of her glance. And instead of returning them to her, he quite deliberately put them in his pocket. Like a trophy, she thought.
“You may learn things about your sister you don’t wish to know.”
“I am usually difficult to surprise. I shall rely upon your inimitable discretion and powers of interrogation.”
“Wise of you,” he confirmed.
He stood suddenly, launching himself to his feet with a press of his hand on the shining gold stallion head atop his walking stick.
She stood, too, smoothing down the skirts of her dress, surreptitiously studying them for any signs of spluttered tea. She brushed a few hairs away from her cheek, where they clung, glued by tea splashes. She wondered if she had any tea in her eyelashes.
“Difficult to surprise,” indeed. It was a lie, given how thoroughly he’d just surprised her. She’d reached for words in that moment, any words, like a shipwreck survivor scrambled for flotsam.
Desiring someone—and oh how she found she desired this particular someone—and surrendering the rest of her life to someone were two entirely different things.
She was afraid to do either of those things, truthfully. It was so much easier to do neither of them.
She was glad that he would be leaving for India.
He placed his hat upon his head and turned again. Eyes unreadable above the snowy fluff of his cravat. Mouth an even line. Demeanor more peaceful than she would have preferred given that she’d declined his proposal of marriage. Skin shining from his ruthlessly fresh shave. Entirely self-possessed and trustworthy and solid. He looked down at her for a moment, thoughtfully, and she thought he might say something about his rejection, and prayed that he wouldn’t, because the awkwardness was so newly papered over with conversation.
But he surprised her again: he delicately looped a finger through a strand of her hair clinging to her lips from the spluttered tea, a hair that she’d missed, clearly.
She stared up at him, then was held fast by that blue field of his eyes as he drew the hair gently, slowly, across and away from her lips.
And somehow this was enough to light, one by one, very rapidly, every cell in her body until she felt as softly, brilliantly ablaze as that chandelier in the Callender’s ballroom. He drew the hair through his thumb and forefinger, the whole length of it, and carefully, reverently, placed it back where it belonged with the others framing her face.
Looked at it a moment, as if to ensure it stayed where it belonged.
Smiled with just one corner of his mouth.
He’d only touched her hair.
And suddenly she couldn’t breathe for wanting him.
“I shall endeavor to endure my disappointment, Rosalind,” he said softly.
She wished she knew whether the amused irony in his voice was for her or for himself.
And with a bow, he was gone.
Chapter 10
Chase slept very badly. Pain lightninged through his leg at intervals all night, and thoughts and plans paraded endlessly through his head like soldiers heading into battle.
He woke feeling as though he’d survived a debauch but without the pleasant memories to go with it.
A moment passed before his memory ran in parallel with consciousness. And when it did, he lay heavily, feeling freshly killed. Eerily very much the same as he had so many years ago after he’d kissed Rosalind March.
Rosalind March had been born, he decided with grim humor, for the express purpose of humbling him.
Then again, every time he’d felt freshly killed, he managed somehow to get back on the battlefield.
He was inclined to blame Colin again. When his brother had urged, You ought to marry, Chase! somehow he had never considered the possibility that he’d be soundly rejected once he decided that, yes indeed, he ought to. Colin made it sound as though it was something anyone could do: “You ought to go to Brighton!” That sort of thing.
Why in God’s name had he proposed last night? He would never ascribe it to impulse: impulsive was the last thing he was; all of his d
ecisions were reasoned. But then again, his reasoning was always swift and informed by instinct, and he was invariably right…and invariably obeyed.
Which was why he was quite surprised when he’d been rejected.
Last night’s proposal could only have been his way of responding to instinct, but he didn’t know what this particular instinct was in service of. Solving the problem of saving Rosalind from herself? Resolving guilt surrounding an indiscretion that had haunted him for years? Or ensuring that she would be in his bed forever?
None of those things alone seemed quite right.
He sighed. She wanted to determine what she wanted.
It seemed a thoroughly reasonable thing to want.
Since in that moment he’d only, in truth, considered what he wanted. And why shouldn’t she want it, too? Again: he was generally so right.
And then listening to her, perversely, he wanted desperately for her to have whatever she wanted.
Which might not, of course, be him.
Which was not at all what he wanted.
Though her body seemed fairly certain it wanted him. And this could very well be the key to convincing her that he was what she wanted after all.
His body was quite, quite certain it wanted her. More than it wanted its next breath.
Above all he wanted her to be safe and happy forever.
Which struck him as an extraordinarily selfless thing to want, and quite surprising, since it might very well mean he wouldn’t get what he wanted, and he generally did get what he wanted, because he made certain of it.
And thus he awakened with a hangover comprised of frustrated logic, thwarted lust, and a lingering disbelief that he’d issued a marriage proposal, for God’s sake.
But as promised, he’d sent word to Kinkade late last night asking if he might call upon him in the morning, because this was apparently what she truly wanted from him.
Kinkade had sent word back to him promptly—Kinkade always kept absurd hours—directing him to a pub on the outskirts of Covent Garden. Doubtless Kinkade intended to spend a day with an actress lodged above it, which would mean that all he had to do was tumble downstairs for a bit.
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