Simply Unforgettable

“Of course,” she said.

His heart had no farther to sink. It attempted the impossible anyway.

“Why?” he asked her.

“Why?” It was her turn to raise her eyebrows. She rested the hand holding the needle on top of her work and seemed to forget it for the moment. “I have to marry someone, Lucius, and you are my most eligible choice. You have to marry someone, and I am your most eligible choice.”

“Is it a good enough reason?” He frowned at her.

“Lucius,” she said, “it is the only reason.”

“Do you love me?” he asked her.

She looked almost shocked.

“What a foolish question,” she said. “People like you and me do not marry for such a vulgar reason as love, Lucius. We marry for position and fortune and superior bloodlines.”

“It all sounds horribly unromantic,” he said.

“You are the last person I would expect to speak of romance,” she said.

“Why?” he asked again.

“Forgive me,” she said, “but your reputation is not entirely unknown to me, sheltered though I have always been from vulgarity. You will no doubt wish to continue that life, which I very much doubt you would call romantic. And therefore you will not expect or even wish for romance with your wife. You need not worry. I neither expect nor wish for it either.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because romance is very foolish,” she said. “Because it is ungenteel. Because it is entirely imaginary. Because it is wishful thinking, usually on the woman’s part. Men are wiser and do not even believe in it. Neither do I.”

Until a few months ago, he thought, he would have agreed with her. Perhaps he still did. Romance had not really done him any good in the last few months, had it, beyond making him eternally irritated?

“What about passion?” he asked her. “Would you not expect that in your marriage?”

“I most certainly would not!” she said, openly shocked now. “The very idea, Lucius!”

He gazed gloomily at her as she returned her attention once more to her embroidery, her hand as steady as if they had been discussing the weather.

“Have I ever said or done anything to lead you to expect that I would offer for you?” he asked her.

He had, of course—very recently. He had just admitted to coming here this morning to call on her father.

“You have not needed to,” she said. “Lucius, I understand that you are reluctant and procrastinating. I understand that all men are the same way under similar circumstances. I understand too that eventually they all do what they must do, as will you. And the consequences will not be so very dreadful. There will be a home and a wife and a family where there were none before, and they are necessary components of a comfortable, genteel life. But in the main the man’s life does not change a great deal and does not need to. All the fear of leg shackles and parson’s mousetrap and those other foolish cliches men use are really quite without foundation.”

He wondered briefly if she was really cold to the very heart or if she was just unbelievably sheltered and innocent. Was there some man somewhere who could spark passion in her? He doubted it.

“You are determined to have me, then, are you, Portia?” he asked her. “There is nothing that would deter you?”

“I cannot imagine anything that would,” she said, “unless Mama and Papa withdrew their consent, of course. That is most unlikely, though.”

Heaven help him, he thought, he was a goner—as if he had not realized that before. He was here, for God’s sake, was he not?

Damn Frances. Damn her all to hell. She could have rescued him from this. He had asked her to marry him and told himself afterward that he would not have done so if he had stopped to think. But if she had taken a chance as he had and said yes, he would not have needed to think. He would have been too busy feeling—elation, passion, triumph.

Love.

But she had said no and so here he was, facing a life sentence as surely as his name was Lucius Marshall. Without having done anything more than pay a morning call on a man who was not even at home, he had gone too far with Portia, it seemed, to withdraw.

But before the conversation could resume, the door opened to admit her mother, who was looking very smug indeed though she expressed chagrin that Lord Balderston had chosen that very morning to go early to his club when he always remained home until well after breakfast.

They conversed, the three of them, on a few inane topics that included the obligatory remarks on the weather and one another’s health until Lucius felt enough time had passed that he could decently make his escape.

What the devil was he about to get himself into? he asked himself as he strode off in the direction of Jackson’s, where he hoped to don the gloves and pound the stuffing out of someone or, better yet, have someone pound the stuffing out of him. Though there was nothing future about his predicament.

She was beautiful and refined and accomplished and perfect. She was also a woman he had never quite been able to bring himself to like—and their conversation this morning had done nothing to change that.

And yet he was as surely leg-shackled to her as if the banns had already been called. He had gone to see Balderston this morning, and both Lady Balderston and Portia knew it. There could be only one reason for such a