Mary Balogh - The Proposal

“Carte blanche,” he said again, holding her gaze.

She smiled back at him. Oh, this Season already felt very different from all the ones that had preceded it. For the first time in many years in town, she felt alive, full of optimism and hope. But hope for what? She did not know, and she did not particularly care at this moment. She liked Constance Emes. At least, she thought she would like her when she knew her a little better.

Lord Trentham got to his feet to take his leave as soon as he had drunk his tea, and his sister jumped up too. He surprised Gwen then, before he left the room. He turned at the door and spoke to her, making no attempt to lower his voice.

“It is a sunny day, ma’am,” he said, “without any discernible wind. Would you care to come driving in the park with me later?”

Oh. Gwen was very aware of her mother and Lily and Lauren behind her in the room. Miss Emes looked up at her with bright eyes.

“Thank you, Lord Trentham,” Gwen said. “That would be pleasant.”

And they were gone. The door closed behind them.

“Gwen,” her mother said after a short pause, “that was surely unnecessary. You are showing extraordinary kindness to the sister, but must you be seen to grant favors to the brother? You refused his marriage offer just a few weeks ago.”

“He really is rather gorgeous in his own particular way, though, Mother,” Lily said, laughing. “Would you not agree, Lauren?”

“He is … distinguished,” Lauren said. “And clearly he has not been deterred by Gwen’s rejection of his offer. That makes him either foolishly obstinate or persistently ardent. Time will tell which it is.” And she laughed too.

“Mama,” Gwen said, “I invited Lord Trentham to call this afternoon with Miss Emes. I offered to sponsor her at a few ton events. I offered to help clothe her suitably and fashionably. If Lord Trentham then invited me to drive in the park with him, is it so surprising that I would accept?”

Her mother gazed at her, frowning and shaking her head slightly.

Lily and Lauren were busy exchanging significant looks.

Apart from a plain, no-frills traveling carriage, which usually stood in the carriage house at Crosslands for weeks at a time without being brought out for an airing, and a wagon, which was necessary for the farm business, Hugo had never owned a vehicle. A horse had always served most of his needs when the distance he wished to travel was a little too far for his feet to convey him.

But during the past week he had purchased a curricle—a sporting one, no less, with a high, well-sprung seat and yellow painted wheels. He had bought a matched pair of chestnuts to pull it and felt like a dashed dandy. Soon he would be mincing along the pavements of London, using a cane as a prop, inhaling snuff delicately off the back of one kid-gloved hand, and ogling the ladies through a jeweled quizzing glass.

But Flavian, who was in town for a few weeks, had insisted that the yellow-wheeled curricle was vastly superior to the more sensible one Hugo had his eye upon, and that the chestnuts must take precedence over all the other horseflesh Hugo might have preferred. They were matched, while no other two were.

“If you must cut a d-dash, Hugo,” he had said while they stood together in the yard at Tattersall’s, “and why would you be in town looking for a wife if you do not intend to cut one, then you must cut it with a flair. You will attract ten prospective brides the first time you tool down the street behind these beauties.”

“And then I stop, explain to them that I am titled and rich, and ask if they would care to marry me?” Hugo said, wondering what his father would think of the purchase of two horses that were twice as expensive as any others simply because they were matched.

“My dear chap.” Flavian shuddered theatrically. “One must hold oneself more dear. It is up to the ladies to discover those facts for themselves once their interest is aroused. And discover them they will, never fear. Ladies are brilliant at such maneuvers.”

“I drive down the street, then,” Hugo said, “and wait for the ladies to attack me.”

“They will doubtless do it with more finesse than your words suggest,” Flavian said. “But, yes, Hugo. We will make a fine gentleman of you yet. Are you going to purchase the chestnuts before someone else snaps them up?”

Hugo bought them.

And so he had been able to offer to drive Lady Muir in the park rather than ask her merely to walk there with him.

He still felt like a prize idiot, perched up above the road for all the world to see. And the world was indeed looking, he discovered with some dismay. Although he passed any number of other smart vehicles on the way to Grosvenor Square only a little more than two hours after he had left there with Constance in the plain traveling carriage, his own drew more than its share of admiring glances and even one whistle of appreciation. At least the horses were manageable despite the fact that Flavian had described them rather alarmingly as prime goers.

Lady Muir was ready. Indeed, he did not even have to rattle the door knocker. As he was jumping down to the pavement, the door opened and she stepped outside. Her claim to Constance that she had nothing to wear was clearly a barefaced lie. She was looking very dazzling indeed in a pale green dress and matching pelisse and straw bonnet. The latter was trimmed with primroses and greenery, artificial, he assumed.

She came down the house steps unassisted and approached him across the pavement while he held out a hand to help her up to the high seat. He noticed her limp again. He could hardly not notice it, in fact. It was not a slight limp.

“Thank you.” She smiled at him as she set her gloved hand in his and mounted to her seat without any inelegant scrambling.

He followed her up and gathered the ribbons in his hands again.

He did not know why the devil he was doing this. She was not actually his favorite person in the world. She had refused his marriage offer, which of course she had had a perfect right to do, and which he was not surprised she had done when he had thought back later to remember exactly with what verbal brilliance he had proposed. But she had not been content with a refusal. She had offered to help Constance anyway, and then she had invited him to court her—with no guarantee that she would look more favorably upon any proposal he cared to make at the end of the Season.

Like a handful of dry seeds tossed to a bird. Like a dry bone cast to a dog.

But here he was anyway even though it was quite unnecessary. She and her cousin, Lady Ravensberg, had already made tidy arrangements for Constance to make some sort of debut into tonnish society, and Connie was beyond excited. He had not needed to extend this invitation, then. Neither had he needed to purchase this extravagant and garish toy that he was driving. Had he bought it with her in mind? It was a question whose answer he did not wish to contemplate.

In the meanwhile, he was becoming uncomfortably aware that the seat of a curricle was narrow and really designed to accommodate just one person, especially when that person was large. She was all warm, soft femininity—as, of course, he had discovered on a certain beach in Cornwall. And she was wearing that expensive perfume.

“This is a very smart curricle, Lord Trentham,” she said. “Is it new?”

“It is,” he said, guiding his horses past a large wagon piled with vegetables, mostly cabbages that looked none too fresh.

A short while later he turned into the park. He must join the fashionable promenade, he supposed, though he had never in his life done so before. It was where the ton came in the late afternoons to show off their expensive finery to one another and to exchange gossip and sometimes perhaps even some snippet of real news.

“Lord Trentham,” she said, “since leaving Grosvenor Square you have spoken two words. And those were wrung out of you by a question that demanded an affirmative or negative answer. And you are scowling.”

“Perhaps,” he said, looking straight ahead, “you would prefer to be taken home rather than to continue.”

He wished he had not invited her. It had been an impulsive thing—even though he had bought the curricle for just such an occasion. Good Lord, he was a mess. He felt far out of his depth and in imminent danger of drowning.

Her head was turned toward him. She was studying him closely, he could tell without turning his head to look.

“I would not prefer it,” she said quietly. “Your sister is happy, Lord Trentham?”

“Ecstatic,” he said. “But I am not convinced I am doing the right thing by her. She does not know what is facing her. She thinks she does, but she does not. She will never be one of them—one of you.”

“If that is so,” she said, “and she realizes it early, then no harm will have been done. She will move on with her life and find happiness in a world with which she is more familiar. But you may be wrong. We are a different class, but we are the same species.”

“Sometimes,” he said, “I have my doubts about that.”

“And yet,” she said, “some of your closest friends in the world are of my class. And you are one of their closest friends.”

“That is different,” he said.

But there was no time for further conversation. They were upon the masses and must perforce join the promenade of slowmoving vehicles parading about a large empty oval. Most of the vehicles were open so that the occupants could greet acquaintances and converse with ease. Horses moved in and out between them and also stopped frequently for their riders to exchange social niceties. Pedestrians strolled nearby, far enough away not to be trampled but near enough to see and be seen, to hail and be hailed.