First Comes Marriage (17 page)

Her speech, hastily delivered with hardly a pause for breath, trailed off and there was a moment of silence.

No, he had not misheard. Or misunderstood.

He had stopped walking abruptly and turned to face her. She stopped too and looked up at him, directly into his eyes, her own wide. Her face was flushed.

As well it might be.

He could not think of anyone else who had such power to render him speechless.

“Please
say
something,” she said when he had not responded within ten seconds or so. “I know this must be a shock to you. You could not have expected it. But
think
about it. You cannot really
love
Meg, can you? You scarcely know her. You have chosen her because she is the eldest—and because she is beautiful. You do not know me either, of course, though you may
think
you do. But really it cannot make much difference to you which of us you marry, can it?”

I know this must be a shock to you.
Had there ever been more of an understatement? Marry
her
?
Mrs. Dew?
Was the woman quite, quite mad?

She bit her lip, and her eyes seemed to grow even larger as she waited for him to speak.

“Let me get one thing straight, Mrs. Dew,” he said, frowning. “Do I interpret your flattering proposal correctly? Are you by any chance offering yourself as the sacrificial lamb?”

“Oh, dear.” She looked away from him for a moment. “No, not really. It would be no sacrifice. I believe I would like to be married again, and I might as well marry for convenience, as you would be doing. It really
would
be convenient if we were to marry each other, would it not? It would make things far easier for Meg and Kate—and for Stephen too. And maybe your mother will not mind
too
too much if it is not Meg, though of course I am not as beautiful as she—or beautiful at all, in fact. But I should do my best to see that she approved of me once she had accustomed herself to the idea.”

“My mother?” he asked faintly.

“She clearly indicated yesterday,” Mrs. Dew said, “that she approved of Meg as a potential daughter-in-law. She did not say so openly, of course, because that was for you to do. But we understood her nevertheless.”

Damnation!

“Mrs. Dew.” He clasped his hands behind him and leaned a little closer to her. “Is this by any chance how you came to marry Dew?”

He had the sensation for a moment that he was falling into her eyes. And then she lowered her lids over them, shutting her soul from his sight. He frowned at the top of her bonnet.

“Oh,” she said. “Yes, as a matter of fact it was. He was dying, you see. But he was very young and there was so much he had wanted to do with his life—including marrying me. He loved me. He wanted me. I knew that. And so I insisted that he marry me though he was not willing to trap me, as he put it.” Her eyelids came up again, and her eyes looked back into his own. “I made his last year a very, very happy one. I do not deceive myself about that. I know how to make a man happy.”

Good Lord! Was this a frisson of sexual awareness he was feeling? Impossible! Except that he did not know what else it could be.

He shook his head slightly and turned away from her to stride onward in the direction of the lake. She fell into step beside him.

“I am sorry.” She sounded dejected. “I have made a mess of this, have I not? Or perhaps there
was
no other way I might have approached you or explained myself.”

“Am I to understand,” he said testily, “that Miss Huxtable will not be disappointed if she discovers that you have stolen me from under her nose?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” she assured him. “Meg does not want to marry you, but I am afraid she will if you ask because she has a fearful sense of duty and she
will
insist upon doing what she thinks is right for the rest of us even though there is no real need for her to do so any longer.”

“I see,” he said, quelling the urge to bellow with rage—or perhaps with laughter. “And she does not wish to marry me because . . . ?”

He slowed his steps and turned his head to look down at her again. He began to wonder if he would perhaps wake up at any moment now to find that he had dreamed this whole bizarre encounter. It surely could
not
be real.

“Because she is dreadfully in love with Crispin,” she said.

“Crispin?” He believed he had heard the name before.

“Crispin Dew,” she told him. “Hedley’s elder brother. She would have married him four years ago when he purchased a commission and joined his regiment, but she would not leave us. They had an understanding, though.”

“If they are betrothed,” he said, “why would you fear that she might accept an offer from me?”

“But they are not,” she said, “and he has not been home or sent any message to Meg in almost four years.”

“Is there something I am not grasping here?” he asked after a few moments of silence. They had arrived at the bank of the lake and stopped walking again. The sun was shining. Its rays were sparkling on the water.

“Yes,” she said. “The female heart. Meg’s is bruised, perhaps even broken. She knows he will never come back to her, but while she is single there is always hope. Hope is all she has left. I would
really
rather you did not make her an offer. She would probably accept, and she would make you a good and dutiful wife for the rest of both your lives. But there would never be a spark of anything else between you.”

He leaned a little toward her again.

“And there
would
be between you and me?” he asked her. He was still not sure if it was anger or a bizarre sort of hilarity he felt at this whole ridiculous conversation. But he suspected that one or the other was about to erupt at any moment.

She flushed a rosy red again as she stared back into his eyes.

“I know how to please a man,” she said almost in a whisper and sank her teeth into her lower lip.

He would have thought them the words and gesture of a practiced coquette if it had not been for her blush and her wide eyes. Good God, she was probably as innocent as a babe despite her short-lived marriage to a dying man. Did she really know what she was saying? Did she know she was playing with fire?

“In bed?” he asked her very deliberately.

She licked her lips, another provocative gesture that he guessed was unconscious.

“Yes,” she said. “I am not a virgin, if that is what you were wondering. Hedley was capable—Well, never mind. Yes, I would know how to please you in bed. And out of it too. I know how to make people cheerful. I know how to make them laugh.”

“And I need to be cheered up and to laugh?” he said, narrowing his eyes on her. “And you can make it happen even though I have no sense of humor?”

“Oh,
that
.” She looked away from him to gaze out at the lake. “I hurt you, did I not? Somehow that seems to be the worst insult one can cast upon anyone. People will admit to all sorts of vices and shortcomings except a lack of humor. And I did not actually
say
that you had none, did I? I merely said that you never smile. I meant that you take life too seriously.”

“Life
is
serious,” he said.

“No, it is not.” She looked back at him. “Not always or even frequently. There is always something to marvel over. There is always joy to be found. There is always the possibility of laughter in almost any situation.”

“And yet,” he said, “you lost a husband in a particularly cruel manner. Was not
that
serious?”

“Not a day passed,” she told him, her eyes suddenly bright, “in which we did not marvel at the wonder of our world and our life together. There was not a day without laughter. Except the last. But even then he smiled. It was the last expression on his face as he died.”

Lord! He did not need this. He waited with some impatience to wake up and find it still early morning with himself still safely in his own bed—preparing to pay his addresses to Miss Huxtable.

“But we have strayed from the point,” she said. “
Will
you marry
me
instead of Meg?”

“Why either of you?” he asked her. “Would you not prefer your freedom if I assure you that I will not then pay my addresses to your sister?”

She stared at him again.

“Oh,” she said, “you really do not want me, do you?”

Of course
he did not want her. Good lord! She was surely the last woman on earth he could possibly ever want. She had nothing—
nothing!
—to commend her.

He opened his mouth to confirm her suspicion.

Except one thing—she had
one
thing to commend her. How had his mother phrased it yesterday?
Loyalty and devotion.
That was two things. But she had them both—directed not toward him, but toward her family.

She had realized yesterday from something his mother had said that he was considering offering marriage to her elder sister—and Miss Huxtable had realized it too. Mrs. Dew knew that her sister would accept his offer even though doing so would shatter her already bruised heart. So she had thought desperately of how she might prevent such a disaster. And she had concocted her scheme—instead of taking the easy and obvious course of coming to him today and simply explaining the situation to him. Perhaps she had thought him too much of a monster—or too arrogant!—to listen to reason. However it was, she had decided to offer herself as the family sacrificial lamb. And she had done so even though she had never made a secret of the fact that she disliked and disapproved of him.

And now he was about to humiliate her in perhaps the worst way imaginable. She had offered herself and he was about to spurn the gift—eloquently and brutally.

And serve her right too, he thought nastily, frowning at her.

But he closed his mouth.

“I am not even pretty, am I?” she said. “And I have been married before. It was terribly foolish of me to think that my plan might work and you would be willing to take me.
Will
you promise not to offer for Meg, though? Or Kate either. She needs someone different from you.”

“Someone more
human
?” he asked. His eyes narrowed again.

She closed her eyes briefly.

“I did not mean that the way it sounded,” she said. “I merely meant that she needs someone younger and . . . and...”

“With a sense of humor?” he suggested.

She looked at him and smiled unexpectedly—a smile full of laughter and mischief.

“Do you keep hoping you will wake up and find it is still last night?” she asked him. “
I
do. I have never in my life made such an idiot of myself. And I cannot even ask you to forget this ever happened. It would be impossible to forget.”

Yes, it would. He was suddenly angry again.

He leaned forward and set his lips to hers.

She jerked her head back like a frightened rabbit and he raised his eyebrows.

“It is just that I would like a little proof,” he said, “that your twice-made boast was not entirely idle.”

She looked at him in incomprehension for a moment.

“That I know how to please a man?” Her eyes were huge again, her cheeks aflame.

“Yes,” he said softly. “
That
boast.”

“It was not a boast.”

When he did not move, she lifted her gloved hands to frame his face, raised her puckered lips to his, and kissed him very softly and gently on the lips.

It was the saddest apology for a kiss he had ever been given by any woman who was not either his mother or one of his sisters.

But
that,
he thought as she released him and looked anxiously into his eyes, was
definitely
a frisson of sexual awareness he felt tightening his groin area. More than a frisson, in fact.

Good Lord!

“Hats and gloves
are
an impediment, are they not?” he said, removing his own and dropping them to the grass, and then pulling free the ribbon beneath her chin and sending her bonnet to the ground behind her.

She slid off her gloves, biting her lip as she did so.

“Now,” he said, “you can make a less inhibited demonstration.”

She framed his face with her hands again—they were warm and soft—and gazed into his eyes until she kissed him.

Her mouth was still softly puckered, but this time she moved it over his lips, parting her own slightly so that he could feel the moist heat within. And her fingers crept up into his hair. She kissed his chin, his cheeks, his closed eyelids, his temples, very softly, very gently. And then his mouth again, touching the tip of her tongue to his lips, running it slowly along the seam.

No other part of her body touched him.

He stood very still, his arms at his sides, his fingers slowly curling into his palms.

And then she was done with her demonstration. She stepped back, and her hands fell to her sides.

“You must understand,” she said, “that Hedley had no experience at all before I married him. And I did not either, of course. And he was very, very ill through most of our marriage. I do not ...I am sorry. It
was
a boast.”

He looked downward, stooped to pick up a flat pebble, and turned toward the lake to send it bouncing across the water, leaving tiny whirlpools in its wake.

He had suddenly realized something. It was too late simply to dismiss her preposterous suggestion with the contempt it deserved. He had invited her to kiss him, and she had done so. If he had not exactly compromised her, he had at least toyed with her sensibilities.

There was the small matter of honor to be addressed now.

“Yes, it
was
a boast,” he said, turning back to her, speaking almost viciously. “I
am
experienced, you see, Mrs. Dew, and I would make far more demands on a wife than a sick man ever did. I daresay you would retract your kind offer to marry me in a moment if
I
made
you
a demonstration.”

“I would
not,
” she said, her eyes flashing back at him. “I am not a child. And there is no cause for you to be angry. I have made a perfectly civil offer and you are quite at liberty to say no—though I do hope you would not then offer for Meg after all.
Make
your demonstration and I shall tell you if I wish to retract my offer.”