The Proposal

again.

“How long was this,” he asked, “after you fell off your horse and lost your unborn child?”

Well, she was committed now.

“A year,” she said. “A little less.”

“You had a marriage unusually punctuated with violence,” he said.

Her answer had not needed comment. Or, rather, not such a comment. She set her knife and fork down across her half-empty plate with a little clatter.

“You are impertinent, Lord Trentham,” she said.

Oh, but this was her own fault. His very first question had been impertinent. She ought to have told him so then.

“I am,” he said. “It is not how a gentleman behaves, is it? Or a man who is not a gentleman when he is talking to a lady. I have never freed myself of the habit, when I wish to know something, of simply asking. It is not always the polite thing to do, I have learned.”

She finished the food on her plate, moved the plate to the back of the tray, and drew forward her pudding dish. She picked up her wineglass and sipped from it. She set it down and sighed.

“My closest family members,” she said, “have always chosen to believe quite steadfastly that Vernon and I had a blissful love relationship that was blighted by accident and tragedy. Other people are notably silent upon the subject of my marriage and my husband’s death, but I can often almost hear them thinking and assuming that it was a marriage filled with violence and abuse.”

“And was it?” he asked.

She closed her eyes briefly.

“Sometimes,” she said, “life is too complicated for there to be a simple answer to a simple question. I did indeed love him, and he loved me. Often our love was blissful. But … Well, sometimes it seemed to me that Vernon was two different people. Often—most of the time, in fact—he was cheerful and charming and witty and intelligent and affectionate and a whole host of other things that made him very dear to me. But occasionally, although he remained in many ways much the same, there was something almost … oh, desperate about his high spirits. And I always felt at such times that there was the finest of fine lines between happiness and despair, and he trod that line. The trouble was that he never came out of it on the side of happiness. He always tumbled the other way. And then for days, occasionally even for a few weeks, he was plunged into the blackest of black moods and nothing I could say or do would pull him free—until one day, without any warning at all, he would be back to his usual self. I learned to recognize the moment when his mood was turning to the overe-xuberant. I learned to dread such moments because there was no coaxing him back from the brink. Though for the last year his moods hovered most of the time between black and blacker. And you are the only person, Lord Trentham, to whom I have spoken of such things. I have no idea why I have broken my silence with a near stranger.”

She was partly horrified, partly relieved that she had revealed so much to a man she did not even particularly like. Though there was much, of course, that she had not said.

“It is this place,” he said. “It has been the scene of much unburdening over the years, some of it all but unspeakable and all but unthinkable. There is trust in this house. We all trust one another here, and no one has ever betrayed that trust. Did you go on that mad ride when Lord Muir was in one of his excitable moods?”

“At that time in my marriage,” she said, “I still clung to the belief that I could avert his black moods by humoring his wild whims. He wanted me to ride with him that day and brushed aside all my protests. And so I went, and I followed wherever he led. I was terrified that he would hurt himself. What I thought I could do to keep him from harm just by being with him I do not know.”

“But it was not he who was hurt,” he said.

Except that in many ways he had been hurt as badly as she. And neither of them had been hurt as badly as their child.

“No.” Her eyes were shut tight again. Her spoon was clutched, forgotten, in one hand.

“But it was he who got hurt on the night he died,” he said.

She opened her eyes and turned her head to look coldly at him. What was he? Her inquisitor?

“That is enough,” she said. “He did not abuse me, Lord Trentham. He never raised a hand or voice to me or belittled me or lashed out at me with words. I believe he was ill, even if there is no name for his illness. He was not mad. He did not belong in an asylum. Neither did he belong on a sickbed. But he was ill nevertheless. That is hard for anyone to comprehend who did not live with him constantly, day and night, as I did. But it is true. I loved him. I had promised to love him in sickness and in health until death parted us, and I did love him to the end. But it was not easy, for all that. After his death I grieved deeply for him. I was also weary of marriage to the marrow of my bones. That one marriage brought me great joy, but it also brought almost more misery than I could bear. I wanted peace afterward. I wanted it for the rest of my life. I have had it now for seven years and am perfectly content to remain as I am.”

“No man could change your mind?” he asked.

Even just yesterday she would have said no without any hesitation at all. Even this morning she had been in denial of the essential emptiness and loneliness of her life. Or perhaps that brief moment on the beach had been instigated by nothing more serious than her quarrel with Vera and the bleakness of her surroundings.

“He would have to be the perfect man,” she said, “and there is really no such thing as perfection, is there? He would have to be an even-tempered, cheerful, comfortable companion who has known no great trouble in his life. He would have to offer a relationship that promised peace and stability and … Oh, and simplicity with no excessive highs and lows.”

Yes, she thought, surprised, such a marriage would be pleasant. But she doubted there was a man perfect for her needs. And even if there was one who seemed perfect and who wished to marry her, how would she know for sure what he was like until after she had married him and lived with him and it was too late to change her mind?

And how could she ever be worthy of happiness?

“No passion?” he asked her. “He would not have to be good in bed?”

Her head snapped around in his direction. She felt her eyes grow wide with shock and her cheeks flame with heat.

“You really are a plain-spoken man, Lord Trentham,” she said, “or else an extraordinarily impertinent one. Pleasure in the marriage bed need not involve passion, as you put it. It can be simply shared comfort. If I were looking for a husband, I would be happy with the shared comfort. And if you are looking for a wife who is practical and capable, passion cannot count a great deal with you either, can it?”

She was feeling horridly discomposed and had spoken quite indiscreetly.

“A woman can be practical and capable and lusty too,” he said. “She would have to be lusty if I were to marry her. I am going to have to give up other women when I wed. It would not be seemly to seek my pleasure outside my marriage bed, would it? It would not be fair to my wife or a good example to my children. And there is middle-class morality for you, Lady Muir. I am lusty but believe in marital fidelity.”

She set her spoon down on her plate, careful this time not to let it clatter. And then she spread her hands over her face and laughed into them. Could he possibly have just said what she knew very well he had said?

“I am really quite, quite sure,” she said, “that this has been the strangest day of my life, Lord Trentham. And now it has culminated in a short lecture on lust and middle-class morality.”

“Well,” he said, pushing back his chair and getting to his feet, “that is what you get when you sprain your ankle within sight of a man who is not a gentleman, ma’am. I will remove that tray from across your lap and set it down on the table here with my dishes. You have finished eating, have you?”

“I have,” she said while he suited action to words and then turned back to look down at her.

“Why the devil,” he asked her, “were you staying with Mrs. Parkinson? Why are you her friend?”

She raised her eyebrows at both the blasphemy and the questions.