“Why not? It’s what ladies do, isn’t it?”
Phoebe clenched her jaw. “Yes,” she said. “It’s just—it’s only—” She blew out a breath, her nails scratching at the delicate fabric of her gown. “Babies tend to follow weddings,” she blurted out in a rush.
A strange silence followed, long and tense. “You don’t want children,” he said.
“Not particularly.” Even that was a prevarication, but she had long become accustomed to pretending she was the sort of lady she was meant to be rather than the one she was. “No,” she said at last. “No, I don’t. I never have.” Just the admission felt like a great weight lifted from her chest. “I have got seven siblings,” she said. “Between them, I have got twenty-seven nieces and nephews. And I love them all, I do, but—” But she had never wanted that life for herself. Had never felt much of a calling toward cleansing sticky faces or enduring the unending, ear-piercing shrieks. Had never viewed childbearing as the miracle it was touted as being. On those rare occasions when she had been invited to feel the movements of the babies her sisters had carried, she’d experienced revulsion rather than the wonder that had been expected of her. “I’ve never had a desire for them. It’s not very maternal of me—”
“It’s reasonable enough. You’re not a mother. You don’t want to be one.”
“But it’s expectedof me.” A sigh tore itself from her lungs. “I thought I could simply slip into becoming a spinster,” she said. “That I’d manage to escape marriage entirely.” The general pity an unmarried woman of her age experienced would have been preferable by far. “But I’ve attracted an entirely new sort of suitor instead. Widowers with children, looking for someone to mother them.”
“I can’t say I envy you.”
Somehow, she managed a laugh. “I don’t want to motherchildren of my own, much less someone else’s,” she said. “Some think me the ideal candidate, however. From a large, fertile family, accustomed to the constant patter of tiny feet. I wouldn’t put it past one or two of them to secure a wife—a mother for their children—however they had to. And there is only one way to avoid it.” She shivered, busking her bare arms with her hands to chase away the chill bumps that had risen on her skin.
“Ah,” he said, reflectively, voice gone pensive. “You don’t want to marry. But you need to marry a man of your own choosing, before that choice is taken from you.”
Put into ordinary terms, yes. “You make it sound so much simpler than it truly is.”
“I beg to differ,” he said. “It’s quite simple. You could marry me.”
∞∞∞
“What?” she whispered, her voice hardly more than a shred of sound. “What?”
“You need husband,” Chris said. “And as it happens, I need a wife. A proper lady to ease me into society. For Emma’s sake. You are that, are you not? You might be only amiss, but—”
“My father is a viscount,” she snapped defensively.
“Good.” Probably he couldn’t ever have dreamed to reach much higher. A viscount’s daughter would do nicely. “Good enough for me.”
“Have you not been listening to a word I’ve said?”
In fact, he’d listened to all of them quite closely. Moreover, he’d paid studious attention to every article he’d read, every tiny tidbit of gossip upon which he could lay his hands. “You don’twant children,” he said. “Neither do I. Likely can’t produce them, anyway.”
A heavy silence, as if she were mulling the words around in her head. “Oh?” she asked at last, her voice laden with a sudden interest.
“Caught the mumps when I was twenty,” he said, “and followed it up with a particularly nasty case of scarlet fever. I very nearly died. The doctor managed to save my worthless life, but he’d seen similarly severe cases in his time. Suggested it was unlikely I’d ever produce children.” At the time—a young man in his prime—it had seemed a blessing. And as he’d grown, that feeling had never changed. He’d had no desire to marry, and even less of one to populate London with his bastards. He’d had mistresses enough in his time, and not one of them had ever come up pregnant, though not for lack of trying.
“I haven’t got a title,” he said, “or a hereditary estate to pass down. I don’t need an heir. But I do need a damnedwife. Someone to keep my damned servants from running me ragged, and to manage my house, and to wrest order from chaos. Can you manage a household?”
“I should say so.” This, with a frosty sort of dignity that suggested it had been offensive that he had even asked. “What are proposing, exactly?”
“A marriage of convenience,” he said. “If you’ve a dowry—”
“I have. It is not insubstantial.”
“Then the whole of it is yours to do with as you please. I’ve no need of it.” He had enough within his accounts for several lifetimes. Even the purchase of his house had hardly put a dent in his coffers.
“And what would you require of me?” she asked.
“A good deal less than any other husband, likely. We’d maintain separate bedchambers, of course. I value my privacy,” he said. “Keep my house, fill my library with books, and lend meyour respectability when I’ve need of it. I’ll ask no more of you than that.”
“No children?” She breathed the words so hopefully, like a prayer tossed into the ether.
“None.”
For a long moment there was just the rustle of the wind through the trees, the distant clatter of carriage wheels upon the street. She said at last, “My parents would never permit it.”
