"Yes?" Alan almost groaned at that qualifying "but."
In sympathy for his cause, perhaps, or to calm his fears, she laid a cool hand on his wrist and let it linger. "You must know that her parents are just as interested in a suitor who brings profitable connections. Plantations, new opportunities for trade. Money to put into ships and cargoes, or places to raise new capital. Tis a curse of our Society that even now, after years of seeing the wretched results of marriage formed on pecuniary interests instead of worry about a young woman's eventual happiness, parents still follow their own desires. They may say they are looking out for Lucy's happiness and security, and certainly I am sure they shall, when the time comes, but you must know the Beaumans," she pressed, a slight sadness coming to her voice and her huge dark eyes. "It is just as easy to find contentment and a good life with a man more endowed with the means to security. To them, that may mean someone of their own station, even someone older and more settled in his affairs, as you should well know."
"I see." Alan nodded. Betty Hillwood had not put him in the most jovial mood he had ever experienced, and he wasn't exactly cherry-merry at this new information, either. "It's changing back in England, you know. As long as the suitor has stability, they seem to let the daughters have more free will."
"Would that was always so!" Anne exclaimed, sharp enough to make the nodding Frog proprietor glance up briefly, and she took hold of his wrist instead of merely resting her hand on it. "Wedding for love, all other things being equal, surely causes no more distress than marriages without it, and gives more reasons for sweet contentment later."
She seemed to speak from painful personal experience, but Alan was cautious enough to keep his rebellious trap shut.
"And finally," she said, seeming to wilt back into her chair and removing her hand to toy with the stem of her wine-glass, "there is your age, and Lucy's. They believe neither of you is old enough to know your own minds yet."
"Bloody hell!" Alan spat softly, too crestfallen to guard his choice of words. Was he truly wasting his time courting Lucy, and would be denied the joy of her company forever? Potential wealth be damned, he suddenly felt the need of someone sweet and young and unspoiled, someone even naive and in love with the world, instead of trulls like Betty Hillwood and their weary cynicism.
"And when, pray, do they think we should be old enough to know our own minds?" Alan asked sourly. "And please them into the bargain?"
"It's a rare girl who weds before her mid-twenties, even here," Anne told him gently. "With enough wealth, that may not answer, but I'd think even the most ardent swain from the best family'd have to content himself with a wait of at least three more years, till Lucy's twenty-one."
"Whew."
"And father Beauman has been talking of retirement lately," Anne went on. "Of going back to England and leaving the family business to Hugh, with Floss' husband to help him. They're thinking that Lucy and Ledyard would benefit from a couple of years in London society to put some ton on their manners, and give them a better future."
"Oh bloody-" Alan sighed.
"Could you wait that long, Alan?"
"I'd hoped not to," he growled. "I mean, God knows what could happen in the meantime, half a world away, even if the war ends and I pay off at home."
"You might meet someone more pleasing to your nature in that time, Alan," Anne said. "Lucy could meet someone else, and I know how much the thought of that causes you pain. But, perhaps it is not meant to be. No matter how fond we desire something or someone, there is always a just reason that we do not attain our wishes. We must trust that things may turn out for the best, though the pangs of our heart blind us to admitting the truth of it."
"You know, Anne," Alan scoffed, "every time I've ever heard that line of reasoning, it's been from someone who already had what they wanted. Like telling the poor that eating regular's a bother, when you get right down to it."
He was surprised that Anne chuckled with amusement at his statement, and after a moment, he had to smile in spite of his feelings of doom and gloom.
"It was presumptuous of me to preach at you, I'll own," Anne said with a smile. "It was the way you said it that tickled me. You must know I meant no cruelty at your disappointment."
"Oh, I know," he said, patting the back of her hand without thinking, and was surprised for a second time when she did not draw back from his touch. "At least I can still laugh. I think. I'm sure we've both heard what other people think's best for us. Off in some future we'll find something or someone better than what we wish now. But Lord, it's a wrench! T'will make a better man of ya, me lad!"
She laughed once more at the pompous tone, which he had meant to mock his father's pronouncements.
"You sound like my own father," Anne confessed, still not trying to disengage his touch. "You not so much younger than I, and I can assure you it wasn't so long ago I suffered these self-same pangs, in the name of love, and heard the same platitudes."
"That is comfort, coming from you, anyway, Anne."
"Though I must admit that what I yearned for, and what I have now, are close to the same sort of pleasurable contentment," she finally said, and slowly drew her hand back to her lap.
"It's just that I don't believe I've ever been in love like this before, Anne," Alan went on, fiddling with his own glass and topping up their drinks from the sweaty pitcher of wine. "Come to think on it, I'm not sure I've ever been in love at all."
"So jaded, so young." She shook her head in mock sadness.
"I ran with a rather woolly crowd back in London. Love was just a game one played to learn how to do it at parties. We were more interested in the baser aspects, and if we fell in love, then it happened two or three times a week. And then, the Navy's terribly down on it."
"Dear me, perhaps I should warn the family after all. I wish it was women who could treat love so casually and prosper."
"I've become a much more responsible person since joining the Navy, mind," Alan pointed out, with a grin.
"Oh, sailors always do turn saintly, do they not. Then tell me, pray, if you are so reformed, why would you associate with Betty Hillwood?"
"Ah. Eh?"
"Those were her lodgings I saw you leaving. Or do you know another party in that building?" Anne asked, not quite sternly, but not exactly amused, either. "That would not endear you to the Beaumans, should they learn of it. Not from me, Alan, surely. But perhaps you should consider reform, if you wish Lucy's hand."
Good Christ, she's got me by the short and curlies! he thought wildly. Had she led him on with all the hand-holding, to see if he was going to rise to her bait? Had the Beaumans put her on him to smoke him out, and had he blown the gaff to the bloody horizon?
When in doubt, lie like blazes, he decided.
"I made her acquaintance a year ago," Alan replied, trying to toss it off lightly. "And she was at your father-in-law's party. She invited me to tea, with the hint that some shore lodgings could be obtained cheaply between voyages. But she really is the most vindictive person I ever did see. And damme, but I was the only guest at what I thought was to be a tea. Frankly, she more than hinted at some fondness she said she'd developed for me. Not my sort, really. I heard more scandal in half an hour than I'd heard in London in a month."
"It sounds innocent enough," Anne commented with a skeptical cast to her features.
"I have already admitted to you that I'm no calf's-head in relations with the ladies, but I doubt a bosun's mate'd be that desperate," he told her with what he hoped was a disarming grin of rough honesty. "If I would have consort to answer brute nature, I'd do better than Mrs. Hillwood, surely. Excuse me if I distress you with my choice of words, Anne, but I'd like you to understand me plain."