The Secret Mistress

possibly wish to marry me.”

“I would lie to my own mother?” He raised his eyebrows. “What a dastardly thing to suggest. On her birthday too. But let me see. Why would I wish to marry you? Perhaps it is your looks, which utterly charm me. Or your wit, which seduces me. Or your mind, for which I feel a powerful, unbridled lust. Or perhaps it is the simple fact that I like you, that I enjoy talking with you and being with you, that I enjoy kissing you and would love nothing better than to do a great deal more than kiss you. Or perhaps it is that I have a hankering to see what you will look like and to know what you will be like at the age of thirty and forty and fifty and on upward until death do us part. Or perhaps I am curious to discover what sort of babies we may create together. Or perhaps it is that I have never, ever entertained these thoughts before in connection with any woman or even not in connection with any specific woman. I believe I must be in love with you, Eunice. Head over ears. Is that the correct expression? Windrow in love. I am the one who should be feeling all the embarrassment, not you.”

She was staring fixedly at him.

“But your mother must be so upset,” she said. “You are her only son, Lord Windrow, her only child. She must expect so much more of you.”

“She was merely being polite, then,” he asked, “when she hugged you and kissed you just now? And when she sat beside you on the love seat in the drawing room all last evening, taking the place I had coveted, her arm drawn through yours? My mother was the enormously wealthy only daughter of an enormously wealthy merchant when she married my father. She married him for love, and he married her for the same reason, even though his own finances were rather strained at the time of their marriage. He died four years ago after thirty-five years of marriage, leaving her brokenhearted, though she told me just last night after you had gone to bed that she would not trade those thirty-five years and her heartbreak now for a lifetime with any other man. For some time she has been hoping I will marry. She wants a daughter-in-law and she wants grandchildren. But most of all she wants to see me happy. She wants me to find the sort of love she and my father had. She fell in love with you on sight. You were very different, she said, from the sort of woman she feared I might choose—and that was not an insult. It was the highest praise. The only fear my mother has this morning is that perhaps you will say no. She knows I have not always lived the most exemplary of existences during the years since I left home to go to university.”

Her eyes were still steady on his. He took off his tall hat and tossed it onto the seat opposite.

“Will you say no?” he asked.

He saw her swallow.

“Are you asking?” she said.

He looked around at the interior of his carriage and through the window to the hedgerow rushing past and the fields just visible beyond. The Peacock was only a mile or two distant.

“I suppose,” he said, “there is no such thing as a perfectly romantic setting, is there? Or just the perfect time. Only the time and setting that are right and inevitable. Yes, I am asking, my love.”

He reached out both hands and took both of hers. Then, because he was not satisfied, he peeled off her gloves, tossed them, inside out, on top of his hat, and held her hands again.

“Eunice Goddard,” he said, all pretense of sleepiness gone from his eyes, “will you marry me? I have no flowery speech prepared and would feel remarkably idiotic delivering it even if I had. Will you just simply marry me, my love? Because I love you? Will you take the risk? I am fully aware that there is a risk. I can only urge you to take a chance on me while I promise to do my very best to love and cherish you for the rest of my days and even perhaps beyond them. Who knows? It might be fun playing a harp through all eternity if you were there beside me strumming on one too. Does one strum on a harp?”

He grinned at her.

“I would rather swing on clouds,” she said, “and jump from one to another. There would be all the thrill with none of the danger, for we could not fall to our deaths, could we? We would already be immortal. I will marry you, Lord Windrow. I think—I know—I would like it of all things.”

She bit her upper lip, and tears sprang to her eyes.

He raised her hands one at a time to his lips, his eyes never leaving hers.

“Make that Charles,” he said. “ ‘I will marry you, Charles.’ ”

“I will marry you, Charles,” she said softly.

“I suppose,” he said, “I am going to have to make a journey to Cambridge, am I, to apply to the formidable don for permission to marry his daughter?”

“You are,” she said. “He will probably look mildly surprised to discover that I can possibly be old enough to consider marriage yet, and then mildly gratified to discover that someone wishes to marry me without his having to exert himself in any way to find me a husband.”

“Admirable,” he said. “And will he approve of me?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Vague as he can be, he loves me too, you see.”

He kissed the back of her right hand again and looked past her shoulder.

“Ah,” he said, “the infamous Peacock, scene of sin and passion—or so it is to be hoped. Heyward may be a dullard in many ways, but I was vastly impressed by the way he got into the private parlor yesterday afternoon without either opening or closing the door. At least, I did not see it open or close, did you? Though there was a great deal of banging and slamming for a moment. He veritably pulsated with passion. So did his fist. And so did his person after we left, I would happily wager. And Lady Angeline Dudley likes him, so he cannot be all dullard. I am really rather fond of her.”

“I love them both,” Eunice said. “Very dearly. And I still think it was very, very wrong of us to leave them here yesterday.”

He leaned forward and kissed her briefly on the lips as the carriage made the turn into the small inn yard.

Chapter 22

IT SEEMED LIKE a strange marvel to Angeline to discover when they arrived back at Hallings that the world really had not changed—only her world had. The house party was proceeding just as if nothing earth-shattering had happened. Indeed, Cousin Rosalie’s guests were setting up for a cricket match when they arrived sometime after noon, and they were hailed eagerly by team captains and team members alike to come and swell the numbers.

All the gentlemen were playing except the marquess and Viscount Overmyer, who had awoken in the morning with a tight chest that had eased after his wife had applied a poultice and after he had breakfasted in his room but nevertheless must not be exposed to the vigors of cricket. The viscountess, however, was playing, as was Mrs. Lynd, her sister, and the Countess of Heyward and Miss Marianne Briden. All the nonplayers were gathered about to watch.

And instead of floating on pink clouds for the rest of the afternoon, as she had imagined doing, basking in all the glory of the Great Secret she was harboring, Angeline recaptured the childhood she had lost after her brothers left home and threw her heart and every stitch of her energy into a game of cricket. She was on the opposing team to Edward and cheered wildly for her team when he hit a long shot that would have resulted in several runs if Ferdinand had not picked it out of the air at full stretch. And she refrained from sticking her tongue out at him when he cheered as she lunged sideways to catch a ball hit by the Reverend Martin, made a spectacular catch, began to celebrate a moment too soon, and … dropped it.

Mrs. Lynd was formidably good as both a batter and a fielder. So were Tresham and Sir Webster. And the Reverend Martin had, he admitted later, been a bowler on the first eleven both at Eton