“Marj, m’dear,” he said, “I thought ’twas women who were the romantics.”
She looked at him long and hard again. “Do you believe so?” she said. “Do you really believe so?”
“Egad,” he said, “but only one thing bothers me. If she loves the lad, why would she not have him? Perhaps I am wrong.”
“Oh, pshaw!” Lady Sterne said. “That should be as plain as the nose on your face, Theo. And as plain as the nose on mine. I would have seen it sooner if I had but crossed my eyes. Why else would she refuse him? Of course she loves him. Why else would she have said no?”
“There it is,” Lord Quinn said, his brows knitted into a frown. “Female logic. I never could get the hang of it, by my life. But you agree with me, Marj?”
“Faith, but you have deflated all my hopes,” she said. “I brought her here to find her a husband, Theo, despite all the odds. But if she loves Lord Ashley and will not have him, she will doubtless not have anyone else either.” She sighed.
“Then perhaps, m’dear,” he said, “we had better do what we did before. We had better bring them together.”
“Lud, but how?” she said. “He has offered and she has said no. He has gone off to Penshurst and she has come to town. How can we bring them together? With Luke and Anna ’twas easy. They were to attend the same ball; all we had to do was arrange it so that they took a good look at each other.”
“Egad, but ’twas more than that,” he said. “There was Luke swearing he would never marry. There was Anna swearing thatshenever would. But marry they did. We have to get the boy to London, Marj.”
“How?” she said. “He has just gone to Penshurst, nursing a broken heart over that poor dead wife of his. Doubtless he is also nursing a sense of shame over Emily. Does he love her, do you suppose, Theo?”
“He will,” Lord Quinn said. “But we have to bring him here to see her enslaving all the other young bucks, Marj. I can think of one sure way.”
She gazed at him. “You are looking positively sheepish, Theo,” she said. “Whatever are you plotting?”
“’Tis like this, Marj,” he said. “I believe ’tis time I made an honest woman of you, m’dear.”
Lady Sterne stared at him with incredulity for a few moments, and then she tipped back her head and laughed. “Theo,” she said when she was able, “you have been making a sinner of me for longer than twenty years. We have agreed on a number of occasions that ’tis better so, that neither of us fancies the shackles of matrimony.”
“If we were to get shackled, Marj—in St. George’s, of course, with all the fashionable world in attendance—my nephy would have little choice but to come too.”
“We would marry,” she said, “merely to bring Lord Ashley to town, Theo? ’Twould be the most eccentric reason for marrying I have ever heard.”
He tightened his arm about her and kissed her hard. “The fact is, Marj,” he said, “I have been a bachelor all my life and have never thought of loneliness—till recently. But with the creeping of the years, I find myself with a hankering to have someone to wake up to in the nights and in the mornings. And someone in the chair on the other side of my hearth in the mornings and the evenings.”
“You have been eyeing the crop of young girls this Season,” she said. But she was blinking her eyes hard to keep the tears at bay.
Lord Quinn chuckled. “I am old enough to value comfort, Marj,” he said. “I am comfortable with you, m’dear.”
“Comfortable?” Her eyebrows shot up.
“Egad,” he said, “’twas not well expressed, by my life. You know I love you, Marj. I loved you in those days when you were married to Sterne. I loved you after you were widowed. I still love you. There has never been another woman for me. Never will be.”
She turned her face in to his shoulder. “But to marry in order to promote another match, Theo,” she said. “You must mean soon, do you?”
“We could have the banns read for the first time next Sunday,” he said. “You see, Marj, I have thought of how you will be after the gel has gone. Shewillbe gone, y’know, either back to Bowden or off to Elm Court when summer comes. Or else she will marry someone, though I cannot see it happening. But the gel is not my main concern. You are. You will be unhappy, m’dear. You will be lonely. Again. You think I have not noticed in the last year or two that some of the sparkle has gone out of you? Perhaps you need a new life, a new challenge, one that will be a little more permanent than finding a husband for Anna’s young sister. I’ll be a challenge. I promise to be a challenge.”
“Oh, Theo,” she said, her face still against his shoulder. “Lud, but I am tempted. ’Tis ridiculous.”
“After the Season is over,” he said, “I would be able to take you to France, Marj, and to Italy and Austria and all the other places you always say you would visit if you but had the chance. Harkee, we could be young again, m’dear. Not in years—I have no wish to be young in years again. But young in hope. Egad, I like the sound of it. Marry me, woman.”
“And Lord Ashley will come to town for the wedding, and we will convince him that he loves Emily,” Lady Sterne said, laughing, “and convince Emily that he loves her. And then we will attend their wedding. ’Tis the wildest of wild schemes, Theo.”
“We will do it,” he said, raising himself on one elbow and leaning over her. “Now say yes, Marj, and kiss me. Without any more delay. There is still time to have each other again at our leisure. You know I hate to be rushed. Let us waste no more time, then.”
She sighed audibly. “Yes, then,” she said. And she raised her head to meet his lips with her own.
•••
Emilyhad never had any desire to go to London, to enter society. She might have done so with Anna and Luke, who occasionally went to town. She had always shuddered at the thought of being away from the countryside, of being forced to dress and behave as a lady all day and every day, of having to be in company with people who would look on her as a kind of freak. She had made sure before deciding to take Lord Powell’s courtship seriously that he was the sort of man who spent most of his time on his own estate. Luke had understood that when choosing her suitors.
