The Rules of Seduction (17 page)

It was the jump from mistress to wife that confounded her. She had all but agreed to the former. He did not need to offer the latter.

“Why did you not press your advantage?”

“I try not to be ruthless, even when a pretty lady is willing to allow it. I have behaved badly with you, but I will not be responsible for your final fall. I want you, however. In such cases a gentleman offers marriage.”

“That want, peculiar as it is, will pass.”

“If it does, I will have a wife who does not expect me to lie to her, any more than she misunderstands that want now.”

She should be elated. A wealthy, handsome man from one of England’s best families had just proposed. A joy did want to take hold of her, but it could not find an anchor in her heart.

Being his mistress would be limited. It was not irrevocable. As she had said that day on the house tour, it was an honest form of trade.

Being his wife—that meant a lifetime. Forever. Even so, she should grab the security. She should not miss this chance. But deep in her heart, a girl who had once thrilled to love’s exciting romance stared out, appalled. It was one thing to accept she would probably never know that again. It was another to take the step that would make it forever impossible.

Nor would this be just any practical marriage. He was Hayden Rothwell. She heard Timothy’s slurred voice damning her. She saw Rose turning away. She would not be able to help them if she did this. Rose would not accept a penny from Rothwell’s wife.

He watched her closely as she sorted her reactions. She suspected he knew her decision before she did. After one final, long gaze in the looking glass, she unfastened the necklace.

She was about to do the most impractical thing she had ever imagined.

She walked over and placed the necklace on the mantelpiece. “It is a wonderful offer for any woman, but I cannot accept. As I said when I entered, this was not the day for this conversation.”

“But it was a day to proposition you, I take it.”

“Perhaps so. I had begun justifying that temporary practicality after I left Rose today.”

“You are an amazing woman, Alexia.” Since an edge of anger tightened the statement, it did not sound like a compliment. “The Longworths will be far better off if you marry me.”

“Ah, you do know how to press your advantage when you choose to. However, you are wrong. They will never forgive me if I marry you. They would never speak to me again.”

“They will come around. But this is not about them. It is about you and me.”

“They are all the family I have.”

He allowed her to walk past him to the door. His voice followed her. “It is not only because they are your family. It is about him too. They are your bond to Benjamin. Despite what you learned yesterday, you still hold him in your heart.”

His accusation made her throat burn. She could not deny that despite the new distance and new truths, Ben’s memory still touched something deep inside her. “Is that so wrong?”

She braced herself for a blunt response, the same one that her own mind quietly spoke. Yes, it was wrong. She was stupid.

Instead, he smiled with a warm kindness that touched her. “No, it is not so wrong, Alexia. It is very…romantic.”

A cleansing clarity entered her. She might have blinked away a latent drowsiness after waking from sleep.

It
was
romantic. Hopelessly, childishly so. A handsome man of significant wealth had just offered marriage, and there were not many good reasons for any woman to refuse. For a woman in her situation—poor, homeless, adrift, and ruined—there wasn’t a single one that did not sound like a bad line of poetry.

“You are correct, Hayden. Sometimes I forget myself and indulge in sentimentality.” She gestured to the mantel. “You promise it is mine, to do with as I choose?”

“Any jewels are yours. I expect there will be others.”

If I am pleased.
He did not say it, but she heard it. The negotiations of becoming a wife were not much different from those of becoming a mistress, when you got down to it.

“There will also be a settlement, of course,” he said simply, although his expression revealed sharp awareness that she had reopened negotiations.

“I bring nothing to a settlement.”

“I will provide for you. Whether I live or die, you will never count pennies again.”

Never again. The lure of eternal security had the effect he intended. He offered a safety and peace she had not known since she was too young to understand how close she walked to poverty.

“Can I assume we will have the usual sort of marriage, such as I see in polite society?” she asked.

“I will not be around much, if that is what you fear.”

Except at night. Oddly enough, that part of marriage seemed the least onerous and dangerous. With time he would go elsewhere for that too, as was normal in aristocratic marriages. She might, as well, if she ever fell in love again.

“You will have your own friends and your own life.” He moved closer as he answered a question her racing thoughts had not considered yet.

“Even Phaedra? I do not want you forbidding—”

“Even Miss Blair. I do not approve of men who interfere with their wives’ interests and friends.”

She tallied up the obligations and payments in this marriage. The balance tilted so much in her favor it could not be denied. If one had to accept a practical match, one could not do better than marrying Lord Hayden Rothwell. That was so obvious that even Rose would see it eventually.

She silenced the final, whispered objections of the silly girl inside her. She took a deep breath, walked back to the mantel, and picked up the necklace. “I accept your proposal, Hayden. I will marry you.”

CHAPTER
TWELVE

T
hey made good time back to town, but then a coach and four with a crest on the door usually did. Hayden had Alexia ride with him, although he guessed she would rather not. He spent the time contemplating what marriage to this woman would mean. Her expression suggested her thoughts dwelled on the future too.

He was doing the right thing, there was no denying it, but he could not evade the notion that he also tempted both history and fate. Sometimes the right thing was not the best thing. Even though he showed the honor his father preached, he wondered if he would also prove the old man correct about the impulse of passion and the misery it created.

Hayden’s mother had not married a man she loved either but instead accepted the proposal of the peer who bedazzled her that first season with his power and wealth. Ten years later, after giving her husband three sons, she had asked him to let her go to the army officer whom she had always held in her heart. Whatever warmth there had been in their marriage died the day he refused.

She found a way to go anyway, of course. In response, her husband had arranged for her lover to be posted in a distant colony, where he died of fever. The chill in their marriage had turned to ice after that.

He could hear his father, intoning his lessons at the dinners his mother ceased to attend.
Romance is an invention of poets. It is a drama devised to make men’s base needs more acceptable to women. Play the role if you must, but have no illusions such sentiments last or really matter.
He did not know his sons had guessed the whole of their parents’ own drama very early, and even knew the name of the lover she pined for in her isolation.

Of course, Alexia was not a sixteen-year-old ingenue accepting a proposal with starry eyes. She possessed an honesty that should spare them the worst marital storms.

And if someday she fell in love again and reclaimed the illusion she had known with Ben…His reaction to the idea surprised him. Underneath the generosity he wanted to think he would have, beneath the understanding that could accept such an arrangement, a primitive instinct bared its teeth.

He tamed the beast by retreating into the most logical of deliberations. He turned his mind to numbers and how he would arrange the settlement. He was debating the size of her allowance when she turned her gaze from the passing countryside toward him.

“There was a big debt,” she said. “You asked in the park why Ben did not enjoy his success. Rose told me today that there was a large final debt to repay, inherited from his father.”

He looked across the coach, and a shadow veiled the future. She had just become engaged. She sat with her future husband. Her mind, however, had been thinking about the Longworths. Perhaps she had been rehearsing what she would say to bring her cousins around. Nothing he would want to hear, he was sure.

“Well, that explains it, then.”

“It is a bit odd that the debt went away when Ben died. Would it not have in turn been inherited by Timothy?”

“The remaining amount could have been so little that the man whom they owed forgave the rest when Ben died. Or it may not have been a collectible debt at all, and Ben repaid it only out of honor, not legal necessity.”

“That would be like Ben. He was the most honorable of men.”

“A paragon of virtue.” He managed to thwart the sardonic note that tried to color his agreement.

It was in his interest now to let her know the truth about Benjamin. He had only to picture her tears in the attic to know she would not learn it from him, however. His word of honor to Timothy would be compromised then, but another reason sat across from him. He did not want to see her that hurt again.

“Alexia, we should make some decisions about this marriage.”

“A quick wedding, I think. Very private, with a simple announcement, if you do not mind. Everyone will know that you would marry a penniless governess only to do the honorable thing. It would be in bad taste to have a large, dramatic wedding.”

“We will do it that way if you prefer. However, this season we will host a ball and you will order an exorbitantly expensive gown for it.”

“To make up for the small wedding?”

Yes, and for the first season and all the feminine indulgences and joys she had been denied. “It will be a convenient way to introduce you to all of my friends.”

She smiled weakly. The notion of facing his friends sent her back into her private contemplations. She did not emerge from them until they entered London. “We have been in this coach for hours, but you have not even tried to kiss me.”

“Have you been waiting for a grand seduction all this time?” Temptation’s arrows had prodded him the whole way, but he’d be damned before he admitted it. Passion might pass and not really matter, but for now it ruled him more than he thought possible. “I thought I would wait until we are married.”

That amused her. “So now I am an innocent again, until the wedding? It is a charming hypocrisy, but I appreciate your care with my dignity.”

“Since you requested a quick wedding, I need not wait long. I can afford to be magnanimous.”

She laughed. The setting sun’s light flooded her face. Its golden glow eliminated the shadows of caution that had darkened her eyes the whole day.

He did not bring her back to Hill Street. Instead, he took her to Easterbrook’s. She did not ask why. This was not a man whom one challenged over small decisions.

He settled her in the drawing room, where she had negotiated for use of the carriage.

“I gave instructions for a late supper to be prepared,” he said. “I have also sent for my brothers.”

“Do you intend a dramatic announcement?”

“Absolutely.”

“Would it not be more prudent to inform them privately?”

“Prudence has never marked my behavior with you, and I see no reason to dredge it up for my brothers’ sake. Or do you mean so you will not see their astonishment? I promise you that any shock they reveal will have nothing to do with you.”

He looked very relaxed. Almost lighthearted. The notion of surprising his brothers amused him.

A young man, perhaps twenty-five in age, wandered in a few minutes later. They had never been introduced, but she recognized him as Lord Elliot Rothwell, the precocious author of a renowned volume on the last years of the Roman army in Britain.

He did not appear much the scholar, although she could imagine his dark, brooding eyes taking the step toward total distraction that such endeavors might induce. Perhaps it was his attention to fashion that was incongruous with the source of his fame. The snug fit of his double-buttoned, knee-length dark gray frock coat showed the very latest style. The layered cut of his thick dark hair was that of a young man about town.

Hayden introduced her. Elliot’s manner was more personable than his countenance promised. His smile put her at ease. He asked after his aunt, but Hayden interrupted.

“Elliot, Miss Welbourne has accepted my proposal of marriage.”

Elliot’s surprise was noticeable but brief. “That is wonderful. I look forward to the day I address you as sister, Miss Welbourne. Have you begun planning the particulars, Hayden?”

“We will be wed as soon as I procure the special license.”

“Then I will be sure to remain in town for the next fortnight or so. Have you told Christian yet?”

“I have asked him to come down so I can.”

“I do not think he will respond to the request. He has had one of
those
days.”

“If he will not come down to us, I should go to him. It would not do for him to learn about my engagement from the servants’ gossip. Will you stay with Miss Welbourne, Elliot?”

He left her to his younger brother’s care. She tried to call up enough pleasantries to fill the time. Elliot examined her like a man who had just found a butterfly and tried to determine what specimen it might be.

“Did he seduce you?”

The question startled her. The poise she had donned as armor to survive this visit suddenly felt paper-thin.

“Considering the abruptness of our impending nuptials, and the fact you and I have never met before, I cannot blame you for wondering about that. I did not expect the question to be put so baldly, however.”

“Remarkable.” He suddenly found the specimen very interesting indeed.

“I realize that I am not what you expected, under these circumstances or any other.”

“I had no expectations, other than expecting he might never marry at all. It is not his choice of woman that I find remarkable. It is the evidence that he did something impetuous. Four or five years ago, possibly, but now—it is amazing.”

“You do not appear displeased.”

“Not at all. Assuming, of course, that you do not make him forever regret his moment of madness.”

This man had arrived at a request for reassurance by a peculiar path, but they stood at its crossroads all the same. He asked for something even Hayden had not broached, other than stating he expected her fidelity for as long as he wanted it, which implied he did not expect it forever.

And she had accepted the proposal without fully weighing the private obligations entailed. They loomed now. The naked truth of her decision pressed on her.

It would be a marriage. It would mean the forever she had initially rejected. She would owe him more than temporary fidelity and the right to her body. Being a wife meant more than that.

She contemplated her response to Elliot’s overture. Her words would be important, to herself as well as to him. She looked in her heart to discover what she could honestly promise.

“I will try to be a good wife, if that is what you mean.” It sounded very thin, but her heart beat heavily, as if she had committed to a momentous goal.

His smile of approval heartened her in a silly way, but her poise refused to reassemble itself. She remained too aware of the changes waiting in her life. Elliot’s bluntness had forged a bond, however. She sensed that this brother might be an ally and a friend in the years ahead.

“Why did you say he might have acted impetuously in years past but not now?”

“He has lived several different lives. There is the one you see, sensible and efficient and a little stern, the one unlikely to seduce Miss Welbourne. Then there is the one he lives every morning. You will learn about that one soon enough.” He laughed, then spoke very seriously. “It is not entirely of this world, that life, and you must make sure he does not get lost in it.”

“You make him sound like someone for whom moments of madness are common rather than amazing things. Pray, do not frighten me.”

“It is a type of madness, I suppose, but he controls it. Then there was the life he led as a youth. Dutiful and boring and correct. It was the same with Christian. They were two soldiers under command of a field marshal.”

“That would be your father.”

He nodded. “Our father brooked no arguments. He molded my brothers, but when he passed away, the molds suddenly crumbled. Faced with the freedom to be themselves, my brothers did not seem to know who those men were. Hayden tried being the blood on the town, then the political extremist, then other selves. Eventually he discovered the self you see now.”

“Of all the ones to choose, why this one?”

“One’s true nature may win out in the end, and this is his.” He shrugged. “Going to Greece may have done it. The decision was foolhardy, full of romantic ideals and little practicality. Perhaps the reality of battle taught him the costs of sentiment too well. I would not know. He does not speak of it to anyone.”

That was not true. He had spoken of it to her, a little. “You describe your brothers’ journeys to find their true selves. Were you spared?”

“As youngest, it was easy to escape my father. I learned to hide in the library.”

Where he hid still. She wondered if he had escaped as much as he thought.

“Enough about my brother. You will know him too well soon enough. Tell me about yourself, Miss Welbourne, and how you came to be my cousin’s governess.”

She did not care to have this observant man analyzing her life. She began her story. Considering all the details she intended to leave out, it would not be a long tale.

Christian’s sitting room was dark, but a lamp glowed in the bedroom. As Hayden aimed for it, something moved near him in a corner. He stopped and peered into the deep shadows. Christian sat there on a wing chair, too upright for sleep. He might have been sitting there all day, for all Hayden knew.

“Are you drunk?” he asked.

“Cold sober, actually.” Christian’s tone reflected profound distraction and irritation that he had been disturbed.

Hayden never knew what to do when his brother got like this. Christian’s total escapes from the world were brief but disturbingly intense. Nor did he work formulas or read documents while he was gone. He appeared to do absolutely nothing at all.

“I told the butler to have a supper prepared. Come down and join us.”

“I think not.”

“It is not healthy to indulge your melancholy like this.”

“Is it melancholy that sends you to those numbers, Hayden? Or Elliot to his libraries? I have not been visiting any dark chambers in my mind, if that is what you fear.”