“Why do you have to pretend, Edward?” his mother asked in response to what he had just said. “I am not sure I have ever known a more loving man. You have a way of always putting the needs of others before your own. You are allowed to reach for some happiness of your own too, you know. You are allowed to love in a way that will engage all your emotions. Your whole being, in fact. You do not owe us all so much that there is nothing left for yourself.”
He looked at her, his cup suspended halfway to his mouth. He had never heard her talk this way before. And her voice was shaking. I am not sure I have ever known a more loving man. Yet she had adored his father, who had treated her with careless affection. And she had adored Maurice.
You are allowed to reach for some happiness of your own too …
He was happy. Well, he would be once he was back at Wimsbury Abbey for the summer. And once this business of choosing a wife and setting up his nursery was over with and he could settle into the life of a married man and father.
He would be happy if that wife was Eunice.
Perhaps now was the time to mention her. The time to make a stand, to reach for his own happiness.
But just three days ago, she had refused him—quite firmly and irrevocably. She had told him not to ask her again.
Two proposals and two refusals in three days. He had told an untruth to Lady Angeline. His proposal to her had not been his first, just the first formal one.
He was not a virgin. He had had a few women, though he had never kept a mistress. He had enjoyed all of them. He found sex exhilarating and satisfying—and necessary, though he had not had a woman since Maurice’s death.
He had never wanted any of them as he had wanted Lady Angeline Dudley last night. Why had he wanted her? Pure lust did not explain it entirely. He had met many beautiful women in his time. He had met some of them this year. A few of them were exquisitely lovely. He could look at them with great appreciation, but he did not feel any overpowering urge to bed any of them.
Only Lady Angeline Dudley.
Whom he did not even like.
Though that was not strictly true. He liked her humor. He liked the way she did not laugh at others but only at herself. He liked her bright sparkle, her unabashed enjoyment of life. And he did suspect that there was more to her than met the eye. A few times he had had a fleeting glimpse at a certain insecurity in her. It puzzled him. Why should she of all people feel vulnerable? She was beautiful, and she surely had everything any young lady could want as she made her debut in society. She had already had a few marriage proposals if Tresham was to be believed. And why would he lie?
He had never wanted to bed Eunice. He had wanted to marry her—at some future date. He still did. She would suit him perfectly, and the urge was strong at this very moment to rush back out of the house and over to Lady Sanford’s to beg her—on his knees in earnest this time—to put him out of his misery and betroth herself to him.
Which was not very flattering to her, was it?
He could not really imagine being in bed with Eunice. It was somehow an embarrassing thought.
Whereas with Lady Angeline Dudley …
She had said no. They had both said no. There was no more to be said.
“I am happy, Mama,” he said with a little laugh that sounded false even to his own ears. “We will not make a tragedy out of this. If I remember correctly, you had other names on your list than just Lady Angeline Dudley’s. And I am not entirely helpless on my own account. I am quite capable of looking about me for my own bride. Lady Hicks’s ball is this evening, is it not?”
The very last thing he felt like doing this evening was attending a ball and actually dancing. But duty was already reasserting itself, and there was no point in curling up under his bedcovers, his eyes tightly closed, willing the world to go away, as he might have done when he was five years old.
“It is indeed,” his mother said with a sigh. “Oh, Edward, I so want you to be happy.”
He set down his cup, which was still almost full, he noticed, and got to his feet.
“Grandmama,” he said, “are you ready to go home? I’ll have the carriage brought around and take you there if you wish. You too, Juliana.”
“That would be good of you, Edward,” his grandmother said. “Your grandpapa is supposed to come this way from his club to take us home, but he is probably deep in conversation setting the world to rights and forgetting all about clocks and the passing of time and Juliana and me sitting here listening for carriage wheels.”
Edward strode from the room, glad of something to do.
Lady Angeline, will you do me the great honor of marrying me?
Good Lord, talk about platitudes! And on one knee, no less. He winced. He had been a walking—or kneeling—clichй.
Lord Heyward, is this because you kissed me last night?
I compromised you. I have come to make amends.
Deuce take it, had he really said that? Could he not have denied it, told her that last night’s kiss was only the thing that had convinced him he did not want to wait any longer before asking her to marry him? Surely a little lie could be excused in such circumstances. She had needed reassuring, for God’s sake.
You do not love me?
And the question had been whispered and phrased in the negative. Dash it, but there had been definite vulnerability there. He really ought to have lied. After all, he had fully intended to treat her for the rest of her life as though he loved her. Indeed, he would have loved her, in his own way. How could he not love his own wife, after all?
Instead he had spoken the most heartlessly asinine words that had ever passed his lips. He had spoken the strict truth and made it sound as dry as dust. Drier.
I am fond of you, and I do not doubt affection will deepen between us as time goes on. And then, far too inadequate, and far, far too late—I hope I did not give the impression I have come here today only because I kissed you last evening.
He had gone to offer her marriage because he had compromised her—even if no one knew it except the two of them—and he had ended up insulting her quite horribly. Perhaps even hurting her.
He was a horrible man. His mother must be quite wrong about him.
Had he hurt her?
Could he possibly make amends?
But no, he could not. She had said no, and he must respect her decision.
Except that …
Oh, good Lord, she had looked hurt.
Despite all the prattling on she had done about getting experience at kissing, with the implication that kissing him had meant nothing else but that to her—well, despite it all he had the strong suspicion that he had hurt her.
She prattled to cover her insecurities.
Now there was a disturbing revelation, if it was true.
Lady Angeline Dudley prattled all the time.
Dash it all.
He strode off to order his carriage brought around only to come face-to-face with his grandfather in the hall.
“Ah, my boy,” he said, clapping Edward on the shoulder with one large hand, “you are still here, then. I feared you might be taking your grandmother home by now, and I would never have heard the end of it. Women, my boy. There is no living with them, and no living without them.”