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.
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
