Mary Balogh - The Secret Mistress

But there was nothing. She had asked him right out if he loved her, and he had answered—I am fond of you, and I do not doubt affection will deepen between us as time goes on.

She would have been far more cheered if he had said a definite no, he did not love her at all, in fact he hated her.

There was passion in hatred.

There was none whatsoever in I am fond of you, and … affection will deepen between us.

Angeline slid her hand out from between his and looked down at it, forlorn and cold and on its own again.

“I do thank you for your flattering offer, Lord Heyward,” she said, “and for your concern to make all right after last evening. But there was no need to be concerned, you see. No one knew and no one will ever know. Not unless you tell. I let you kiss me, and I kissed you back because I wanted to, because I had never been kissed before and I am nineteen years old and it is a little ridiculous and pathetic never to have been kissed. Now I have been, and I thank you for the experience. It was really very pleasant, and next time I will know far better what to expect and how to behave. And I will not expect everyone whom I will allow to kiss me to rush here the next day to offer me the respectability of marriage. Not that I will allow everyone, or even many men, to kiss me. I’ll probably allow very few, in fact. Of course, you are a gentleman, which not many men are despite what their birth and upbringing may lead them to call themselves. I am sure you do not make a habit of slinking off into the bushes with every girl who has never been kissed just so that you can show them how it is done. That would not be at all honorable, and you are always unfailingly honorable. Besides, you would be forever dashing off to propose marriage the day after, and one of them might say yes and you would be miserable forever after. Unless you loved that particular one, of course, except that—”

I am babbling.

She stopped doing it and turned her hand over so that she could examine her palm with as much attention as she had been giving the back of her hand.

There was a short silence.

“I am sorry,” he said then.

His voice was quiet, flat.

And that was all. There was another silence, a rather lengthy one this time, and then she was aware of him bowing rather abruptly to her. He left without another word. She heard the door open quietly and then close just as quietly. There was no passion even in his exit.

The long line that curved around her palm from just below her forefinger and disappeared into the folds of her wrist was her lifeline, was it not? It looked as if she was going to live at least a hundred years. That meant she still had eighty-one left.

Eighty-one years of heartbreak. Would it fade by about the seventieth of those years? The seventy-fifth?

The door opened again, much more forcefully.

“Well?” Tresham asked.

“Oh.” She looked up. “I said no and sent him on his way.”

“Good girl,” he said briskly. “Am I supposed to escort you to the Hicks ball tonight, or is Rosalie coming by here?”

You, she was going to say. But she was not sure she could get even the one more word past her lips without its wobbling all out of control and making her feel like a prize idiot.

She yanked the door open and fled out into the hall and up the stairs, leaving someone else to close the door behind her.

The Duke of Tresham stared after her, his brows almost meeting above his nose.

“What the devil?” he asked of the empty room. “All I asked was whether I am to escort her to this infernal ball tonight.”

And then he scratched his chin and looked thoughtful.

EDWARD CONSIDERED PASSING the drawing room doors and going straight up to his room. It would have been easy to do—the doors were closed. But he knew they were in there, all of them. He had asked the butler. His grandmother was late going home today—of all days. Juliana too.

He stopped outside the room, sighed, and went in. There was no real point in postponing the inevitable, was there?

“Edward.” His mother smiled at him.

“I’ll pour you a cup of tea,” his sister-in-law said. “Though it may be only lukewarm by now. I shall ring for another pot.”

“Don’t bother,” he said. “I am not thirsty.”

He was actually, but not for tea.

“It is no bother,” she assured him.

“Well?” His grandmother raised her lorgnette, but not all the way to her eye. She very rarely looked through it, having been blessed with exceptionally good eyesight for an elderly lady. “Was it a marriage proposal you were making, Edward? What did she say?”

“It was,” he said. “And the answer was no. And so that is that for the time being.”

“Lady Angeline Dudley?” his mother said, both looking and sounding shocked. “You offered her marriage, Edward, and she said no?”

“Oh, but, Edward,” Lorraine said as she pulled on the bell rope, “from the way she was looking at you last evening, I thought she was quite taken with you.”

“I am convinced of it,” Juliana said. “And Christopher agreed with me.”

“Apparently she was not,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back and forcing a smile.

“The girl is playing hard to get,” his grandmother said, pointing the lorgnette in the direction of his heart. “She cannot do better than you and she knows it and fully intends to have you, Edward, mark my words. She wants to be wooed. Girls do, you know, especially the most marriageable ones. They do not want to feel that they are nothing but commodities, and who can blame them? Every girl wants to be wooed. I did, and I was. Oh, your grandfather was a one, my boy. I could tell you tales to make your hair stand on end.”

“Edward,” Juliana asked after a short pause while the fresh tray of tea was carried in, “did you tell her you loved her?”

Dash it all, no, he had not. He supposed he ought to have. It was clearly what she had wanted to hear. She had asked him if he loved her, in fact, and even then he had missed his cue. He had attempted honesty instead.

“What does that mean?” he asked, taking a seat since obviously he was about to be plied with tea whether he wanted it or not. “I fully intend to cherish any lady I marry, to cultivate a friendship with her, to grow fond of her, to protect and defend her, to give her my time and attention whenever I am able, to remain faithful to the vows I make to her. Is that not what love is?”

“Oh, Edward,” his mother said, “you will make the best of husbands.”

“But every lady likes to be told that she is loved when a man asks her to marry him,” Lorraine said as she handed him a cup of hot tea. “She needs to be made to feel that she is special, that she is the one. The only one.”

Did Maurice make you feel that way?

But fortunately he stopped himself just in time from asking the question aloud. He was in no doubt that Maurice did. He would have. That was the kind of person he had been. He had certainly known what women wanted and expected. Perhaps there was something in the old adage, though, that actions spoke louder than words.

Except that words seemed to be important to a woman being proposed to.

“We are expected to mouth a great many platitudes and hypocrisies and out-and-out lies,” he grumbled. “It is how society seems to function. Sometimes, I believe, people ought to be told the truth, especially about the important things in life. Why should I pretend to feel this romantic thing called love when I do not? Is it kind to the lady concerned to pretend?”

She had been about to say yes, he thought. Her eyes had been shining, her lips had been parted, she had leaned slightly toward him as he kneeled on one knee before her—feeling like a prize idiot. She had looked as she had looked last evening just before he kissed her and just after, when she had told him it was the loveliest evening of her life.

Good Lord, she had behaved as if she was in love with him. How could anyone love him? In the romantic sense, that was. He could almost hear Maurice snickering with incredulity.

She could not possibly entertain romantic feelings for him. It must be just that she was eager to marry someone eligible. And as she herself had pointed out, he was one of the most eligible bachelors in town this year. And because she had fixed her choice on him, she had to convince herself that she also loved him. It seemed so typical of women. They thought with their emotions, or their imagined emotions. If she had agreed to marry him, she would have discovered soon enough that she was marrying nothing but a dull and very ordinary man.

“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.