The Proposal

present when he was finally shot.”

“Oh,” Gwen said, grimacing.

Now she felt worse than ever. This was far more terrible than imposing upon a simple house party. And her own sprained ankle seemed embarrassingly trivial in comparison with what the duke and his six guests must have endured.

Lord Trentham had picked up a shawl from the back of a nearby chair and came closer to spread it over Gwen’s injured leg. At the same moment the drawing doors opened again and a woman came inside carrying a tea tray. She was a lady, not a maid. She was tall and very straight in posture. Her dark blond hair was pulled back in a chignon, but the simplicity, even severity, of the style emphasized the perfect bone structure of her oval face with its finely sculpted cheekbones, straight nose, and blue-green eyes fringed with lashes a shade darker than her hair. Her mouth was wide and generous. She was beautiful, despite the fact that her face looked as though it were sculpted of marble. It looked not only as though she never smiled but as if she were incapable of doing so even if she wished. Her eyes were large and very calm, almost unnaturally so.

She came toward the sofa and would have set the tray down on the table beside Gwen if Lord Trentham had not taken it from her hands first.

“I’ll see to that, Imogen,” he said.

“George guessed that you would consider it quite improper to be in a room alone with a strange gentleman, Lady Muir,” the lady said, “even if he did rescue you and carry you back to the house. I have been designated as your chaperon.”

Her voice was cool rather than cold.

“This is Imogen, Lady Barclay,” Lord Trentham said, “who never seems to consider it improper to stay at Penderris with six gentlemen and no chaperon.”

“I would entrust my life to any of the six or all of them combined,” Lady Barclay said, inclining her head courteously to Gwen. “Indeed, I have already done so. You are looking embarrassed. You need not. How did you hurt your ankle?”

She poured three cups of tea as Gwen described what had happened. This, then, she thought, was the lady who had been with her husband when his torturers had killed him. Gwen had an inkling of the torments she must have lived through every minute of every day since. She must forever be asking herself if there was anything she might have done to prevent such a disaster. Just as Gwen forever asked it of herself with regard to Vernon’s death.

“I feel very foolish,” she said in conclusion.

“Of course you do,” Lady Barclay said. “But it could have happened to any of us, you know. We are always up and down to the beach, and that slope is quite treacherous enough even without the shifting stones.”

Gwen glanced at Lord Trentham, who was silently sipping his tea, his dark eyes resting on her.

He was, she thought in some surprise and with a little shiver of awareness, a terribly attractive man. He ought not to be. He was too large to be either elegant or graceful. His hair was too short to soften the harshness of his features or the hard line of his jaw. His mouth was too straight and hard-set to be sensuous. His eyes were too dark and too penetrating to make a woman want to fall into them. There was nothing to suggest charm or humor or any warmth of personality.

And yet …

And yet there was an aura about him of almost overpowering physicality. Of masculinity.

It would be an absolutely wonderful experience, she thought, to go to bed with him.

It was a thought that shocked her to the roots of her being. In the seven years since Vernon’s death she had shrunk away from the merest thought of another courtship and marriage. And she had never in her life thought of any man in any other connection.

Did this unexpected and rather ridiculous attraction have anything to do with the equally unexpected wave of loneliness she had felt down on the beach just before she met him?

She made conversation with Lady Barclay while these strange thoughts buzzed about in her head. But really it was difficult to concentrate fully upon either words or thought. Pain, as she remembered now from the time when she broke her leg, could never confine itself to the injured part of one’s body but throbbed instead all through it until one did not know quite what to do with oneself.

Lord Trentham got to his feet as soon as she had finished her cup of tea, took an unused linen napkin off the tea tray, and crossed to a sideboard, where he must have found a jug of cold water among the liquor decanters. He came back with a wet napkin from which most of the water had been squeezed, spread it over Gwen’s forehead, and held it in place there with one hand. She rested the back of her head against the cushion again and closed her eyes.

The coolness, even the pressure of his hand, felt very good.

Where was the insensitive brute she had judged him to be?

“I have been hoping to distract her with conversation,” Lady Barclay said. “She is as pale as a ghost, poor thing. But she has uttered not a moan of complaint. She has my admiration.”

“Jones is certainly dragging his feet,” Lord Trentham said.

“He will come as soon as he is able,” Lady Barclay said. “He always does, Hugo. And there is no better doctor in the world.”

“Lady Muir has suffered a previous injury to the same leg,” Lord Trentham said. “I daresay it hurts like a thousand devils.”

They were talking of her as if she were not there to speak for herself, Gwen thought. But for the moment she did not care. For the moment she was distancing herself as far from the pain as she could get.

And there was warmth in their voices, she noticed. As if they were fond of each other. Almost as if they were genuinely concerned for her.

Even so, she wished the physician would come soon so that she could ask the Duke of Stanbrook again for a carriage to take her to Vera’s.

Oh, how she hated to be beholden to anyone.

Chapter 3

When Flavian returned with the doctor, he brought Mrs. Parkinson too. It was that lady who hurried into the drawing room first. She curtsied low to Imogen and Hugo and assured them that His Grace was kindness itself, that they were kindness itself, that she would be grateful to Lord Ponsonby for the rest of her days for bringing her word of her dearest friend’s accident so promptly and insisting upon bringing her here in His Grace’s carriage despite the fact that she would have been happy to walk ten times the distance if it had been necessary.

“I would walk five—nay, even ten—miles for dear Lady Muir’s sake,” she assured them, “even if it was careless of her to wander onto His Grace’s land when I had specifically warned her to be careful to avoid giving offense to such an illustrious peer of the realm. His Grace would have been quite justified if he had chosen to refuse her admittance to Penderris, though I daresay he hesitated to do so when he learned she is Lady Muir. I suppose it is that fact I have to thank for my invitation to ride in the carriage, for such a distinction has never been offered me before, you know, despite the fact that Mr. Parkinson was the younger brother of Sir Roger Parkinson and was fourth in line to the title himself after his brother’s three sons.”

It was only after she had delivered herself of this remarkable speech, looking from Hugo to Imogen as she did so, that the lady turned toward her friend, her hands clasped to her bosom.

Hugo and Imogen exchanged a poker-faced glance in which volumes were spoken. Flavian had come to stand silently just inside the door, looking openly bored.

“Gwen!” Mrs. Parkinson cried. “Oh, my poor dear Gwen, what have you done to yourself? I was beside myself with worry when you did not return from your walk within the hour. I feared the worst and blamed myself most bitterly for having felt too low in spirits to accompany you. What would I have done if you