The Charmer (25 page)

“Haven't we? I have learned that you did consider proposing. You should not have assumed that I would know that you wanted me in that way. I am not nearly that self-confident. When you did not come to see me when I returned, I began imagining that I had misunderstood everything. We women have a tendency to do that at the slightest provocation.”

“You may have imagined it, but I refuse to accept that you believed it. This has hardly been a casual affair, Sophia.”

“It was enough to make me hesitate, and wonder, and worry about how you would react to the vote and the nominations and to the rest of it.”

“Ah, yes, the rest of it. You wanted to tell me about that. If it refers to your plans to marry and execute your duties to Everdon, I must warn you that I will react badly. It would be best not to ruin our time together by speaking of it.”

Our time. Our last time.

“I'm afraid that I must risk it. I want to tell you.”

He exhaled with the exasperation of a man cornered by a woman who did not have the sense to sidestep a painful topic. It was not a very promising sound. She lay beside him, looking at the ceiling, frightfully aware that this was not how she had imagined it at all.

His arm rested beside hers. She sought his hand and entwined her fingers through his.

“I want you to work out the rest of it with me, Adrian. I want you to help me to see it all through.”

“If you expect me to advise you on your marriage, you ask too much. Speak with Dot. She probably knows more about the suitable prospects than I do.”

“I do not want your advice. I have decided on my own. I already know who I want it to be. All I need is for you to agree it was the right choice.”

He turned so that he could see her. “What are you saying?”

She took a deep breath, and prayed that he wasn't completely selfless after all.

“Will you marry me, Adrian?”

She suffered the long minutes of silence, not daring to look at him. She could tell that he was surprised.

He cupped her chin and turned her head so that she could not avoid his gaze.

“Taking in another stray, Duchess?”

“That isn't fair. I decided this long before today. I knew I would ask even before I went to Marleigh. It is why I wanted to settle things with the past. If you had come that first night, I had planned to ask you then. Although I am proud of your stand today, this has nothing to do with it.”

“Then why? Are you so intent on destroying Everdon that you seek to pollute its bloodline?”

“You credit me with cruel motives. That was a harsh thing to say.”

“No more harsh than what you will hear from others.”

“I don't care what is said.”

“You will. A marriage to me will be the scandal of the year. I know that your motives are not cruel, but I wonder what they are, nonetheless.”

“I can trust you to take care of Marleigh and the other estates. To manage them well.”

“A good employee can do that.”

“I would have more confidence in you.”

“Then hire me. At the moment I might accept, with my future being ambiguous.”

“It isn't just that. I want my children to have a good father.”

“There is no evidence that I will be one. I have no experience with children, or even with good fathers.”

“You will be a wonderful father. There is the rest of it too. The seat in the House of Lords, for example. I know that you will use Everdon's place there well.”

“Where I will speak in your name?”

“In Everdon's. We will discuss matters, but I would not expect to dictate to you. I would know better than to try.”

She had not only been giving her reasons, but also enumerating the benefits and power. She could tell that he was waiting for more. She suddenly wished that he had compromised his political principles. It might have made him less obliged to adhere to others.

“I do not want to marry anyone else. You are my best friend, Adrian. In a way, my only friend.”

“You have other friends. Attila and Jacques are true to you, and would be so even if the largesse ended today. However, you have created a habit of buying affection, Sophia, and I find myself stuck with the notion that you will now buy mine.”

“I cannot help that Everdon comes with me.”

“No, but you can help that duty to Everdon motivates this proposal. And I can wish that it did not.”

Frustration made her eyes blur. “What more do you want from me, Adrian? I am offering you everything that I have.”

“That is not true, damn it.”

He was going to refuse her. The realization flooded her with desolation. She pictured the dry, formal, dead life she would be forced to lead. The thought of marrying some carefully chosen, appropriate man left her nauseous.

She closed her eyes to hold in the tears, but they dripped down her temples. She wished that she were half as impetuous and emotional as Alistair had always accused.

The cracks in the glass were still there. The perfect emotion dripped in, continuing its rhythm. How long before the trickle filled her and turned the love that she felt for Adrian into something free and peaceful and unquestioning?

Too long.

She wished that she could lie.

She wished that he did not know her so well that he could tell if she did.

She turned and embraced him desperately. “Listen to me. Please listen and believe me. It is not duty to Everdon that makes me ask this. It is not. It is keeping you with me. It is holding you like this, and being magnificent and not knowing the loneliness again. It is being loved, and loving as much as I am able, more than I ever thought I could. It is about tasting heaven and not wanting to find places to hide in hell.”

His arm encircled her and pulled her closer, along his whole body. He kissed the tears on her temple, and then her mouth.

She ached for that complete intimacy again. She caressed him and deepened the kiss, urging his arousal while her heart cried with longing.

“I have never had much defense against your sadness, Sophia. But I need some time to think about this. I have to consider what you are offering, and whether we can be happy together.”

His passion showed her again what that could mean, and why she dared not lose him.

chapter
25

T
he next morning Adrian met Colin at an auction called to sell the horses of a profligate lord whose gambling debts had gotten out of hand. He found his brother near a corral on a Kent estate, examining a tall chestnut gelding with handsome lines.

“There you are, Adrian. Hope I didn't drag you away too soon. I would have come in last evening instead of leaving the note, but I saw her carriage around the corner.”

Adrian did not need Colin to remind him that it had been an indiscreet night. And an infuriating one.

He did not know why he was reacting to her proposal like this. Only a fool would hesitate. If a duchess in her own right was foolish enough, brave enough, to marry a man with his shadowed history and lack of fortune, that man would have to be an idiot not to agree.

Instead he kept viewing the proposal with caution. He did not doubt her affection, and his heart welcomed the chance to stay with her and take care of her. A simmering annoyance, however, would not permit much happiness with the other opportunities that she had offered him.

He could not shake the notion that this marriage would make him a more intimate and expensive version of Attila or Hawkins, and that she would actually be more comfortable with their relationship if it did. The power and wealth that she gave him would tip them back to her old way of managing men and interpreting their interest. The small, impossible distance still separating them might never be breached, and he would resent that gap every day of his life.

Perhaps he would view it differently in a few days. Right now, still heady with the liberation embraced in the Commons, he did not fancy looking in the mirror ever again and seeing an owned man.

“Your message made it very clear that we should meet here, Colin. Was there a reason for that besides your desire to bid on that gelding?”

Colin patted the chestnut's rump and then motioned Adrian aside. “Unfortunately, yes. I did not want you going to Dincaster House.”

“I take it the earl is displeased with my speech.”

“Displeased does not begin to cover his humor yesterday. He has given orders that you are not to be admitted. Ranted about your traitorous face never darkening his threshold again. He cursed himself for not having repudiated you at birth, and declared that he was disowning you.”

“He essentially did that long ago.”

“Dot is sick about it, and plans to work on him once things calm down.”

“I will arrange to see Dot and reassure her that this is not the catastrophe it seems.”

“He has ordered her to plan a ball as soon as possible. One to which you will pointedly not be invited. His way of declaring things to society at large.”

“I have lived on the edge of society for so long that falling out will be a very small drop.”

They began walking toward the auction circle. “If it means anything, I was very proud of you yesterday. I was out of town, but got back in time to hear you. I was in the gallery, but I doubt you noticed anyone but her.”

“I noticed. Thank you.”

“A damn fine speech. Everyone knew what it cost you. Even the conservatives were moved. When those other men rose and joined you . . . well, you will long be remembered for it.”

How long? A year? Five? What was the name again of that promising young man who threw away his future on a matter of principle?

“I did not just rouse you to warn about the earl, Adrian. I've some news.”

“What news?”

“I have found him. Captain Brutus.”

The chestnut gelding was led into the auction circle just then, so Adrian had to wait impatiently until Colin finished bidding.

“I am feeling smug about how brilliant I have been,” Colin explained while they walked to a tent to settle the bill of exchange. “I remembered how you said the duchess had described him as educated, so I took a chance and went to the universities. I found a don at Cambridge who remembered a student from about that time, blond-haired and radical, average build. Guess what his name was?”

“John Brutus.”

“Damn, how did you know?”

“I have wondered if it could have been his real name.”

“John Brutus Marsham, to be complete. Son of a clergyman from York. I rode to York and looked up the father and there he was, in the sitting room, as if he had been expecting me.”

“The father?”

“Aren't you listening? Captain Brutus himself was there. I said that I found him.”

“Did you warn him off? Tell him for me that it is worth his life to stay away from Sophia?”

“Well, that is where it starts getting confusing. Let me pay up and I will explain.”

Adrian cooled his heels while Colin settled the bill and arranged for the gelding's move to Dincaster's stables. A quarter of an hour later they headed for their horses.

“He has been back in England almost a year,” Colin said. “Came back a changed man.”

“To be sure. Instead of burning threshing machines, he moved on to burning homes and threatening women. The hard life turned him into a hard man.”

“It seems the opposite occurred. He studied for the Church at Cambridge and rediscovered the spiritual life while indentured. He has rejected all forms of violence. Still radical, but supports peaceful persuasion now.”

“When confronted with the evidence against him, I do not doubt the scoundrel would claim that.”

They stopped at the horses. Colin shrugged and ran his fingers through his blond hair. “I believed him.”

Adrian had been indulging in a fantasy of beating Captain Brutus bloody. Colin's statement cut it short.

“I do not question your ability to judge a man, but events indicate he lied to you.”

“Perhaps. It is not only my judgment, however. He swears he hasn't left York since he returned ten months ago, and his family supports him. He was troubled to learn that his name has been used on those broadsides, and that someone has threatened the duchess. If he is a liar, so is his father, and they both lie very well.”

Adrian absorbed the implications. If Colin's impressions were correct, it cast a new light on what had been happening to Sophia the last few months.

“If not John Brutus, then someone else sent those letters and lit that fire, Colin.”

His gaze met Colin's in a mutual acknowledgment of who that someone might be.

But it made no sense.

Of course it didn't.

His mind laid it out, and it all fit together like a cobblestone path winding into a dark maze. That path led to dangerous conclusions and sickening suspicions.

His blood chilled. If he was right about half of it, they were dealing with a monster.

He didn't have a dot of proof. Unless . . .

He swung up on his horse. “I have been blind, Colin. You have my heartfelt gratitude for discovering the truth.”

“If you are going where I think, let me come with you.”

If his ugliest suspicion was true, he would not want Colin learning of it. Or anyone else. “Better if you are not involved.”

“Damn it, if he is cornered he could be dangerous. Rats usually are. He almost killed you once. At least tell him that I know, too, so he doesn't think that removing you will solve it for him.”

“I will not confront him until I have enough proof that nothing will solve it for him.”

He turned his horse and went looking for the only person who might provide that proof.