Mary Balogh - The Proposal

They were surrounded suddenly by a little pool of silence—a pool that included a number of listening guests.

She had paled, Hugo saw.

“Thank you, Jason,” she said, her voice steady but slightly breathless, “but I choose my own companions.”

“Not when you are a member of my family,” he said, “even if only by marriage. I have the honor of my late cousin, your husband, to uphold, as well as the name of Grayson, which you still bear. This fellow is a coward and a fraud in addition to being riffraff. He is a disgrace to the British military.”

Hugo released her arm and clasped his hands behind him. He set his feet apart and held himself erect and silent as he gazed directly at his adversary, very aware that the pool of silence surrounding them had become more the size of a lake.

“Oh, I say,” someone said and was immediately shushed.

“What nonsense you speak,” Lady Muir said. “How dare you, Jason? How dare you?”

“Ask him how he survived the Forlorn Hope without a scratch,” Grayson said, “when almost three hundred men died and the few who did not were grievously wounded. Ask him. Not that he would answer truthfully. This is the truth. Captain Emes led from behind, well behind. He sent his men on the way to their deaths and followed only after they had made the breach that allowed the rest of the forces through. And then he ran up and claimed the victory. There were not many men left to contradict him.”

There were gasps to break the silence.

“Shame!” someone said before being shushed. But it was not clear whether he addressed Grayson or Hugo.

Hugo could feel all eyes upon him even though he looked nowhere but back at Grayson.

“It is your word against mine, Grayson,” he said. “I do not intend to brawl with you.”

From the corner of his eye he could see Constance. Damn it all, she was back from the river already and had moved into the circle of listeners.

He turned to Lady Muir and inclined his head stiffly.

“I will take my leave, ma’am,” he said, “and take my sister home.”

And then a weak, rather reedy, but perfectly audible voice spoke up from behind him.

“There is one survivor right here to contradict you, Muir,” Frank Carstairs said. “I have no reason to love Emes. He took the command that ought to have been mine on that day. And then his bravery showed up my cowardice and has preyed upon my conscience every moment of every day since. I wanted to abort the charge when the men started to die in droves, but he forced us onward. At least, he charged onward himself and did not look back to see if we followed. And he was right. We were a Forlorn Hope, dash it all. We volunteered for death. We were the cannon fodder that would allow the real attack to break through behind us. Captain Emes led from the front, and he earned all the accolades he has received since.”

Hugo did not turn. Nor did he move. He felt stranded in the midst of surely the worst moment of his life, worse even than the day he had gone out of his head. Though no, perhaps not worse than that. Nothing could ever be worse than that.

“Dear me,” a languid voice said, “I am for my tea. Lady Muir, Trentham, do join Christine and me at our table. It has the advantage of being in the shade.”

It was a man he had just met, Hugo saw when he looked away from Grayson at last—the one with the autocratic air and the silver eyes and the jeweled quizzing glass, which was currently trained upon the suddenly retreating figure of Grayson. The Duke of Bewcastle.

“Thank you.” Lady Muir took Hugo’s arm. “We will be delighted, Your Grace. And the shade will indeed be welcome. The sun becomes uncomfortably warm when one has been out in it for a while, does it not?”

And suddenly everyone was moving again and talking and laughing again, and the party had resumed as if nothing untoward had happened. Carstairs was not looking his way, Hugo saw when he looked directly at him, but was talking quite pointedly to his wife. It was the ton’s way, Hugo realized.

But doubtless polite drawing rooms and club rooms throughout London would buzz with the interchange for days to come.

I have decided,” Lord Trentham said. “I am not going to court you.”

Gwen picked up her embroidery without really realizing she was doing so, and began to stitch. She had been about to say, Is it for certain this time? But there was nothing in his face that suggested he might be inviting some verbal sparring from her.

He had arrived at the house just as she was about to leave with Lily and her mother. They were going to make a round of afternoon calls with Lauren. Neville was at the House of Lords.

“Very well,” she said.

He was standing in the middle of the drawing room, in his usual military stance, though she had invited him to be seated. He was glowering. She knew he was. She did not have to lift her head to confirm the fact.

“If you would be so good as to escort Constance to the remaining entertainments she has agreed to attend,” he said, “I would be grateful to you. But it does not matter if you feel you cannot do it. She has begun to understand that the world of the ton is not necessarily the promised land.”

“I will certainly do that,” she said. “And she may accept more invitations too if she wishes. I will be happy to continue to sponsor her. There is no such place as the promised land, but it would be foolish to reject even an unpromised land as worthless without first inspecting it thoroughly. She has taken well with the ton and can expect to make a perfectly respectable match with a gentleman of her choosing if she should so desire.”

He stood there looking down at her, and she wished she had not picked up her embroidery. She had to concentrate hard to keep her hand steady. And her green silk thread, she noticed, was filling in the broad petal of a rose instead of the leaf on its stem. The other petals were a deep rose pink.

She decided she would not be the one to break the silence.

“I daresay,” he said, “your family had a thing or two to say about your allowing yourself to be caught up in that unseemly scene yesterday.”

“Let me see.” She held the thread above her work for a moment. “My brother was in favor of slapping a glove across Jason’s face and calling him out for the insult he so publicly dealt me—and himself. But Lily persuaded him that it would be a far worse punishment for a man like Jason to be soundly ignored. My cousin Joseph also wanted to call him out, but Neville told him that he must stand in line. Lily suggested that we add Mrs. Carstairs to our list of ladies to be called upon this afternoon, since her husband did something extraordinary yesterday and the lady always looks so desperately lonely anyway. Mama said that she had never been more proud of me than when I told Jason that I chose my own companions—and when I took your arm after the Duke of Bewcastle invited us to join him and the duchess for tea. She added that as far as she could see, I chose my companions both wisely and well. Lauren told me that after watching you take that verbal assault with such stoic dignity, she suspected every unmarried lady within hearing range and a few married ones too fell head over ears in love with you. Elizabeth, my aunt, thought it must have been very painful for me to watch Viscount Muir, the man who succeeded to my husband’s title, behave so badly in public. At the same time she thought I must be proud of how my chosen companion conducted himself with such dignity and restraint. She considers you a true British hero. The duke her husband believes that rather than tarnishing your fame, Jason’s vicious lies and their exposure by Mr. Carstairs have actually enhanced it. Shall I continue?”

She attacked her embroidery with renewed vigor.

“Your name will be on lips all across London today,” he said. “It will be coupled with mine. I am sorry about it. But it will not happen again. I shall stay in town awhile longer for Constance’s sake, but I will remain in my own proper milieu and among my own people. Society gossip, I have heard, soon dies down when there is nothing new to feed it.”

“Yes,” she said, “you are quite right about that.”

“Your mother will be relieved,” he said, “despite what she said to you yesterday. So will the rest of your family.”

She had finished embroidering the green rose petal. She did not finish it off. It would be easier to unpick later if she did not. She threaded her needle through the linen cloth and set it aside.

“I suppose that somewhere in the world,” she said, “there is someone else with as great a sense of inferiority as you possess, Lord Trentham, though it must surely be impossible that there is anyone with a greater sense.”

“I do not feel inferior,” he said. “Only different and realistic about it.”

“Poppycock,” she said inelegantly.

She glared up at him. He scowled back.

“If you really wanted me, Hugo,” she said, “if you really loved me, you would fight for me even if I were the queen of England.”

He stared back at her. His jaw line was granite again, his lips a hard, thin line, his eyes dark and fierce. She wondered for a moment how she could possibly love him.

“That would be daft,” he said.

Daft. One of his favorite words.

“Yes,” she said. “It is daft to believe that you could possibly want me. It is daft to imagine that you could ever love me.”

He resembled nothing more than a marble statue.

“Go away, Hugo,” she said. “Go, and never come back. I never want to see you again. Go.”

He went—as far as the door. He stood with his hand on the knob, his back to her.