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She looked at him with eyes that judged him with condemnation.
His lips twisted in a half-smile, probably in a mocking expression—he’d always been thick skinned—he’d never really been touched by others’ ill-opinion. He came from a large family and had attended a boys boarding school, such things made a person less vulnerable. “I think we need to continue our earlier conversation and I would rather not do so in here.”
“Oh, very well.” Her answer was impatient but forbearing. “Lead on.”
He’d always known Alethea had a rigid strength of character, it would be a valuable quality for a countess. In London life, there was a need to be stalwart and to cling to one’s morals. Although where people set their bar on morals varied, and he knew his bar was far beneath Alethea’s—but that too was a positive. He preferred it that way about.
He lifted a hand, encouraging her to walk before him, towards the French doors which led out on to the terrace. If they stood within sight of the windows there would be no issue with propriety.
A footman opened the door for them to pass through.
Alethea crossed the stone paving, the china cup wobbling on the saucer she held. When she reached the balustrade she set the saucer and cup down on the stone top and looked out over the formal gardens which were etched in bright moonlight. All this would be his one day, and therefore hers too, between them they would care for it and cherish it as his parents did now.
“Sulking does not become you…” he said quietly.
She turned and glared at him. “I am not sulking. I am angry.”
“Why?”
“Because I cannot keep waiting! My life revolves about your whims, whether or not you care to come home, and then when you do come I am left to hover waiting to see if you will ask… It is like this is a game to you!”
Self-centered! The accusation shouted in his head in Susan’s tone. “I do not treat you as part of a game. This is about my feelings that is all.” But damn it, he wanted to know what hers were. “What do you feel for me? Am I breaking your heart by asking you to wait, then?”
She glared at him, her emotion striking him through her eyes. “Is that what you wish for, for me to be here pining for you while you lead a jolly life in town? Susan constantly complains that I see too much good in you. I always thought you better. You are proving her right!”
Susan… He should tell her to mind her own business. “Susan has always had very little tolerance for me; we both know it. Do not let her opinion sway yours. What if all I ask is for another year?” Of freedom, to live life as a bachelor and get the recklessness out of his blood. “At the end of that year then I will propose and we will settle here.”
“I am three and twenty next month and in a year I shall be four and twenty, perhaps I do not wish to wait a year…”
He breathed in. The net was closing in on him. He could not run from it forever, he’d always known that, and yet he did not feel ready to settle, he felt a trap closing about him. But what she said was true, three and twenty was late for a woman to marry. He sighed out. “Why not come to town then this summer and spend time with me there? I still wish to wait a year, but then we may become better acquainted and you shall not feel so excluded.” There, he was not entirely selfish or irresponsible, he could think of her happiness too.
She stared at him, with her lips slightly parted. Her eyes caught the moonlight and shone silver. He had an urge to lean and kiss her but it was hardly in the manner of the moment and he would guess they were being watched.
“Very well,” she answered. Her lips pursed for a moment before she then added, “When should I come?”
“I intend to stay here as long as the assembly and then return to town. You may come anytime you wish. I shall write to you when I am there, and you may let me know when it is convenient for you to come in the company of your father and mother.”
“I should not have asked you that, should I? You do not own London. Of course I may go there whenever I wish, and when I am there I may dance with whomever I wish. I might allow any man who desires it to court me. You may wait a year, Henry. But I may decide not to.” She turned away leaving her cup of tea on the balustrade undrunk, and went back inside.
He smiled. Then laughed.
She had not answered his question, but he did not think her heart involved. He thought her feelings the same as his. There was attraction between them; but the rest was only common-sense; they suited one another and it was what their parents hoped for.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_314fb613-f39d-514a-b504-e202198c2a13)
“What did Henry speak to you about outside?” their father asked Alethea as soon as the carriage door closed.
A tension had lingered throughout the evening because they had all assumed that Henry had intended to propose before tonight, and he had not.
Susan’s father had grumbled about, that boy, during their journey here, and now it seemed that he would continue the same theme of conversation on the way home.
“He asked me to wait a year, and then he said he will propose.”
“Indeed.” Their father grunted.
“It is the most direct he has been, is it not?” Susan tried to encourage a sense of hope.
“It is, and we agreed I might go to town for the season. He suggested it. May we go, Papa?”
Their father nodded. “Well that is at least something.” His hand lifted and his fingers twisted the end of his curled moustache, as his fingers always did when he was mulling over some thought.
“The season is only weeks away,” Susan’s mother responded. “We will need to prepare. We shall have to open up the town house, and have a ball. You must have a presentation there to gather introductions.”
Neither Alethea nor Susan had been brought out into London society; it had seemed unnecessary because Alethea had an agreement with Henry, and Susan had never requested to go and hunt for a husband. But if her family were to go to London then she supposed she must go, and therefore also face introductions.
When Susan and Alethea were alone later, lying in bed beside one another, whispering through the darkness, Alethea told Susan more of the conversation she’d shared with Henry. “You were right, though, it is the most direct he has been with me, and yet I feel as though he is manipulating me, I told him I would not play his game anymore. He said it is all to do with his feelings.”
“I have always said he is selfish.”
“I know, and I told him you have now convinced me of it.”
“What did he say?”
“That you have always had very little tolerance for him and I should not allow your opinion to sway mine. But it is not your opinion that is changing mine, it is him.”
Henry must lose his charm in the moments when he said no.
“I have told him that I will go to town, but if another man courts me I will let him. I have not promised to wait a year.”
Susan smiled into the darkness. “Was he suitably sent into a terror at the thought of losing you?”
“I am not sure he even cares. He asked me if I loved him, but he did not say he loved me.”
“What is the level of Alethea’s attachment to me?” He had asked Susan that too. “Did you say you loved him?”
“No. That would have been utter folly when he is dangling me like this.”
“Do you love him?”
“I do not know. I admire him greatly, he is very handsome, and I like his manner but I am not sure how deep being in love feels… I am not sure if I would even know. How do people know?”
Susan had no answer.
~
Once the library door had closed, Henry’s father asked, “What did you say to Alethea outside?”
When the girls and his mother had retired, his father had asked Henry to sit with him in the library. Henry had known immediately what would come next—a berating.
He was too old for this. “Is it any of your business, Papa?”
“I am hoping that it might be. Would you like a glass of brandy?”
“Yes.” If he must endure this.
His father turned to pour it. Henry leant back against a leather chair, gripping its top with his good hand, beside his hip.
“So what did you say? When is this proposal coming? It was clear to me tonight that Casper had expected it too.” His father turned holding two full glasses. “I think he is becoming as impatient with you as I am. Is Alethea?”
He walked over to where Henry leant on the chair and held out a glass.
“Thank you.”
“Well?” His father looked him in the eyes, and his eyebrows lifted, in the way he had of challenging while smiling. His father was so hard to read at times.
His eyebrows remained lifted, waiting for Henry to speak.
Henry was not inclined to, yet his father kept waiting. Henry had borne numerous interviews such as this over his years both at Eton, and then Oxford. He had regularly been in trouble as a boy, and then as a young man. His father’s way had never been to shout but merely to unnerve Henry, to make him feel guilty and accept the responsibility for his actions—it usually worked well enough. Until he had returned to Eton or Oxford and then the interview and the guilt had slipped from Henry’s mind.
Self-centered.
He refused to feel guilty now. “Alethea is ready to marry. I am not. I have asked her to wait another year. She told me she may or may not wait. But she is to come to town for the season where she will consider my request and other men.”
His father laughed, then smiled and shook his head. “She is a good woman for you, Henry. It is not that we wish to force you, it is just that she is—”
“Eminently suitable and conveniently close. I know. And charming, and sweet, and pretty—”
“And that was not what I was saying.”
Henry sipped his brandy.
“If she is not your choice, Henry, she is not. It is only—”
“That it would be such a perfect union, to join our families, when Uncle Casper has no son. I know.”
His father smiled again. “As you say, for all those reasons, and yet I do not wish either of you unhappy.” His father drank some of his brandy.
“We shall suit. We do. It is merely that I do not wish to marry anyone yet. You did not marry Mama until you were much older, you cannot expect me to hurry into the shackles.”
“You should not think of marriage as shackles if you wish to marry. I was desperate for your mother to marry me when I was younger than you. It did not happen and then I was even more desperate for her to accept me when I met her again.” His father sipped his brandy, then gave Henry another direct, enquiring look, which could be either anger or humour. “What do you feel for Alethea?”
Bloody hell. “That is the question I asked of her outside, what does she feel for me?”
“What did she say?”
“She did not answer.”
“As you have not answered me.”
“I will answer you. I care for Alethea. I am attracted to her. I am not sure if that is what you would define as love.”
His father sighed. “If it was love you would know.” He looked down at his glass and then sipped more of the brandy.
Henry drank the rest of his, then set his empty glass aside, on a table. “I do not believe it is love. But we ramble along well together, you know we do, and I think she feels as much for me as I feel for her. Perhaps while she is in town it will become love. You should not give up on your dream yet, but it shall not be fulfilled this year.”
His father drank the last of his brandy. Then picked up Henry’s empty glass. “Would you like another, and a game of backgammon, as I am unlikely to have your company for much longer?”
“Yes, thank you.” Henry turned and went over to the table to set up the game.
“It has been nice to have you home, and a novelty to have you at home and not to be angered by you on a daily basis.” His father was speaking as he poured the brandy. “When do you take off the sling? When will you leave?”
He told his father what he had told Susan.
“And then…”
“I shall accompany you, Mama and Sarah to the assembly in York. I know that will please Sarah. Then I shall return to town.”
“To sow more oats in furrows I disapprove of.”
“You may hardly talk I am constantly told about your former reputation, even though I would rather not know it.”
“I did not entertain myself in brothels and consort with whores.”
“No, you entertained yourself in ballrooms and bedchambers, and consorted with adulteresses and cuckolded a couple of hundred men in society, I think that worse.” Henry placed the counters on the board with his good hand. Then looked at his father.
His father’s eyebrows lifted again.
Henry laughed. “They are not facts I wish to know about my father, but in town they are facts that everyone wishes to tell me.”
His father set their refreshed glasses down on the table beside the board. “You know if Alethea discovered how you live… or even if Casper, or God forbid Julie—”
“Papa, I live as all young men live before they are wed. You cannot expect better of me than you did of yourself.”
His father huffed out a breath as he sat. “Except that I regret that I lived that way. It brought me no happiness, as your mother will tell you. Given a chance to turn back time she and I would have married when we were young and I would have accepted the responsibility of supporting my father. I shall always consider my wild years, years that I lost or threw away.”
“Well I am in my wild years, and I consider them precious. I am not you, and I am not throwing them away.”
Chapter Eight (#ulink_e6b2577c-2bf0-5cca-9548-130445fb97e6)
The carriage drew to a halt before the Palladian frontage of the assembly rooms in Blake Street. A footman opened the carriage door. Henry climbed out first, and stood beneath the giant portico, then offered his hand to Sarah to help her descend. It felt very freeing to have his right arm back, and yet the muscle had wasted a little, and his shoulder was still stiff and sore.
“Nervous?” he whispered when her foot touched the pavement.
“Excited,” she answered, with a broad smile.
He smiled too. He’d not imagined that accompanying Sarah to her first dance would move him at all, but he had been moved. He was proud of his oldest sister.
She had walked downstairs into the hall with the brightest smile, looking full grown, and beautiful. She had their mother’s unusual emerald green eyes and dark brown hair, and with it styled in such a grown up manner… She had become a woman, and somehow he had missed it until this evening.
