What Price Love?

“We’ll go back to the Hall eventually, of course, but first…”

He hadn’t specified, but it seemed clear that “we” meant he and Adelaide. He’d slipped into the habit of referring to them in the plural-just as Dillon insisted on doing with her and him. It was always them. Us.

Suddenly aware that Rus had stopped speaking, she looked, and found him regarding her with unusual seriousness.

What are you going to do? was on the tip of his tongue; instead, he looked over her head. “If you’re still at the Hall, you might well be an aunt by then.” His lips curved lightly. “You could help take care of our children.”

Pris narrowed her eyes to slits, but he refused to meet her gaze. “It’s no use, you know. I won’t be prodded.”

He glanced at her. “Adelaide suggested a little nudge might help.”

She widened her eyes in an affronted glare. “You know better.”

He sighed. “Well, anyway.” Blithely, he returned to his life, his future, and left her to plan her own.

Which still wasn’t any easy matter. Adelaide had known where to prod.

Returned to Dillon’s side at the end of the mea sure, she grasped the excuse of a trailing flounce to escape to the withdrawing room. While repairing the damage, she tried to bring some order to her thoughts, to approach the vexed question of her future-as Dillon’s wife or not?-from a different angle.

If she didn’t marry Dillon, what would she do?

The answer wasn’t heartening. What, outside marriage, remained for her to achieve?

Rus was safe, welcomed into his chosen field, and he and her father were reconciled. Indeed, they were all three in greater harmony than she could ever recall. Her younger siblings were happy and well cared for, largely as a result of her planning; they didn’t need her to be there, on hand. While she would instantly return should any trouble threaten, with her father, Eugenia, Rus, Adelaide, and Albert all present and in league, it was difficult to imagine what such trouble might be.

As for the Hall, her home, she’d grown up knowing it would never be hers to run; the reins would pass to Adelaide, Rus’s wife. Leaving, establishing her own home…she’d always assumed she would one day.

She’d traveled with Eugenia to Dublin, to Edinburgh, to London. She enjoyed cities well enough, enjoyed their distractions, but she enjoyed the country more.

She’d felt at home in Newmarket.

The thought slid through her mind. Wrinkling her nose, she sat before a mirror to tidy her curls.

A movement to her left drew her attention. A lady, elegantly gowned and coiffed, sank onto a chair alongside and simply stared.

Slowly, Pris turned and looked-directly-at the lady.

She blinked. “Oh.” Her eyes remained round as she studied Pris’s face. She seemed disposed to simply stare.

“Is there something I can help you with?” Pris asked.

The lady’s eyes lifted to hers, then her shoulders slumped. “No. That is…” She frowned. “You’re very beautiful. My sisters warned me, but I didn’t really believe…” Her frown deepened. “You’ve made things very difficult.”

Pris blinked. “In what way?”

“Why, over Dillon Caxton, of course.” The lady, blond and brown-eyed, regarded Pris with increasing disfavor. “It was supposed to be my turn-mine, or Helen Purfett’s, but if I say so myself, my claim is the stronger.”

“Your claim?” Pris frowned back. “To what?”

Glancing about, the lady leaned closer and hissed, “To him, of course!”

Pris looked at her; she didn’t appear demented. “I don’t understand.”

“Every time he visits London, there’s a…a competition of sorts. To see who can catch his eye and lure him to her bed. We all know the rules-only matrons of the ton, only those he hasn’t indulged before. My sisters-all three of them-have had their turns. We’re all acknowledged beauties, you see. So I was quite determined that next time he came to the capital, he would be mine. But instead”-the lady glared at Pris-“he’s spent all his time chasing you. He hasn’t spared so much as a glance-not for me, or Helen, or anyone else!” The lady leaned back; surveying Pris, she spread her hands. “And just look at you!” Her lower lip quivered. “It’s not fair!”

Pris understood the plight of the bored matrons; they’d married for the socially accepted reasons and consequently were reduced to searching for excitement outside their marriage vows. They epitomized the reason she refused to marry other than for love; she felt a certain compassion for their straits. However…“I’m sorry. I can’t see how I can help you. I can hardly change my face.”

The lady’s frown grew more pointed. “No, and I daresay it’s senseless asking you to refuse him. Besides, he seems totally committed. But you could at least marry him quickly, then, once you’re settled, he’ll be free again for us.”

Pris blinked. It took effort, but she managed not to react, not to, succinctly and with great clarity, disabuse the lady of that notion. If she married Dillon, he’d look at another lady at his peril. However, as she read it, this was a matter of the ladies looking at him-almost as…as if he were she. This was a mirror image of the way men too often viewed her.

Her wild and reckless self stirred.

She summoned a smile-a sweet, Adelaide-like expression of willing but uncertain helpfulness. Deception might be beyond Dillon; it was definitely not beyond her, not in a good cause, specifically theirs.

Theirs. The word rang in her mind, made her hesitate for one instant, then she accepted it. “I’d be happy to marry him with all speed, but…” She shrugged lightly. “To do that, I need to bring him to the point sooner rather than later.” She looked innocently at the lady. “You-or at least your three sisters-must know him well. Perhaps you could give me some hints of how to…encourage him?”

For a moment, she feared the lady wouldn’t be gullible enough to share her sisters’ knowledge. Her eyes narrowed, her lips pursed, but then she grimaced. “It will probably shock you, and goodness knows, it’ll certainly shock him coming from a naive young lady like you, but…”

The lady tapped a finger to her lips, glanced around, then leaned closer. “First, you must arrange a private interlude. Then-”

Pris listened, and learned. The lady was most helpful.

Later that night, Pris waited in her bedchamber for Dillon to appear.

They’d attended the usual three balls, then he’d seen them home and gone off, she presumed to his club. Soon he would return, to her room, to her. A robe belted over her nightgown, she paced before the hearth, and waited.

She’d made up her mind. It hadn’t been Flick’s insight that had tipped the scales irrevocably, but rather what the lady-Lady Caverstone-had revealed. It had suddenly dawned that if she didn’t accept Dillon-didn’t take the risk, grasp the chance, and make of them what might be-she would condemn him to precisely the sort of life she would never accept for herself.

They were very alike. Outward beauty set them apart, yet few understood the dramatic passions that lay beneath. Regardless, until now, she hadn’t perceived just how closely their mirror-destinies matched.

If, as Flick had suggested, she was special to him, the only one he’d ever pursued with a view to matrimony, if, as he’d told her, she was the one woman with whom he felt complete, then…if she didn’t embrace all she was, and allow herself to be who he needed her to be-his wife, and more, that wild, tempestuous, passionate goddess who could hold his heart and soul-if she instead refused his suit and went back to Ireland to live a quiet, unchallenged life, where would that leave him?

At the mercy of ladies such as Lady Caverstone and her sisters.

A deadening existence, one with no fire and passion, no wild and reckless thrills, no real comfort.

No. Not that road.

The idea of him dwelling in such soul-eating aloneness, the emotion that notion had evoked, had not just answered her questions but dismissed them. They didn’t matter; this-he-did.

It was time to make an end, to declare her decision, to make her direction known.

After listening to Lady Caverstone, she knew precisely how.

When the door to her bedroom opened, she was ready.