“Yes,” Lucas said. “It did. It took a long time because itneededa long time.” He suddenly noticed the rose lying in its packaging on the table next to where he had been sitting and picked it up rather than allow it to be found by someone after he left. “Please accept this, Lady Philippa. My grandfather suggested a dozen red roses times two, on the assumption that you might be so impressed you would not even consider refusing my offer.”
She came close to smiling as she took the package from his hand and peeped in at the peach rosebud.
“Thank you,” she said. “A single rose need never be multiplied. Indeed, itoughtnot. It is perfection in itself.”
He bowed to her and inclined his head to Stratton, who looked back at him with a hard, unreadable expression.
“I thank you for allowing me this time with your sister,” Lucas said to Stratton. “And I thank you for listening to me, Lady Philippa. I will take no more of your time.”
And he strode from the room and from the house rather as though he had the hounds of hell on his heels. Though no doubt there were a couple more of them awaiting him at Arden House.
—
What am I missing?” Devlin asked after the door had closed behind the Marquess of Roath. He frowned at Philippa in obvious perplexity as she folded back the paper from her rose and breathed in its sweet perfume.
She looked up at him and smiled ruefully. “He explained to me,” she said. “He told me the story behind those words he spoke, never intending to speak them aloud, never meaning to be overheard. It is a story he had never told before and one I will never repeat. I am sorry, Dev, for you listened tomystory last year, and you made all the difference in my life. I would not be here now if you had not listened and comforted me and given me the courage to claim my life back. But I cannot share this.”
“All is forgiven, then?” he asked. “When he wrecked your life for years at a very crucial time for you? Merely because he told you a story?”
“Y-yes,” she said. “All is forgiven. But that does not mean I will ever marry him. It does not mean that he will ever wish to marry me. That is all in the head of the Duke of Wilby, who came to London to see his grandson and heir married to someone eminently eligible and met me almost at the very moment of his arrival. I was sitting at the table in the breakfast parlor at Arden House with his family members and Steph. And with the Marquess of Roath, of course. My presence there must have seemed like fate to the duchess and him.”
“But not to you?” he said.
“No,” she told him. “And not to the marquess either.”
“What are you going to tell Mama and Steph and Gwyneth?”he asked, raising his eyes to the ceiling and the drawing room above them.
“That he came here to talk to me rather than to offer me marriage,” she said. “That we did talk, quite amicably, but that we agreed we are not ready to marry each other and perhaps—probably—never will be. I have been in London for only a very short while, Dev. I have just begun to mingle with thetonand meet people. I have met several single gentlemen I like and who I think may like me. I believe it would be a mistake to try to press the issue of marrying anyone too soon, however—assuming two or three of them have enough interest to court me seriously, that is. I may be twenty-two, but I am notdesperate.I will explain everything when I go upstairs. Shall we go? They must be in suspense.”
But he did not immediately move toward the door. He had still not stopped frowning. “Pippa,” he said. “Was hekissingyou?”
She sighed. “And I was kissing him,” she said. “Dev, it is complicated.Lifeis complicated. We do not hate each other.”
“One more question, then,” he said. “Do youloveeach other?”
She laughed and sniffed her rose again. “Well, that Icananswer,” she said. “Absolutely, unequivocallynot.”
The lady doth protest too much.Where had she read those words or some very like them?
He went ahead of her to open the door and hold it for her. He wasstillfrowning.
“I think I should just have killed him and been done with it,” he said as she passed him.
—
So let me be clear on this,” the Duke of Wilby said with an ominous calm of voice that was starkly contradicted by his nearly purple face. “I went to all the trouble of inviting Stratton, aman with whom I had no previous acquaintance, to join me for luncheon at the House. I condescended to make clear to him that a marriage between his sister and my grandson, an eligible and advantageous connection for both of them, would have my blessing and that of Her Grace. He was good enough to indicate his approval of the proposed match by inviting you to wait upon him at Stratton House at an appointed hour this morning. The idea was that you would discuss a marriage contract with him and then make a formal offer to Lady Philippa Ware herself. I am correct so far, I believe? Set me right if I am wrong. I am an old man with an old brain and a memory that is perhaps playing tricks on me.”
He paused for someone to answer. There were only three of them in the vast drawing room at Arden House, the duke and duchess seated like bookends on either side of the fireplace, and Lucas himself. Her Grace clearly felt no need to assure the duke that he was not falling into senility. Obviously she had learned a thing or two about rhetorical questions in her many years with Grandpapa.
“You are correct, Grandpapa,” Lucas said—and there was no point in continuing with a sentence that would begin with the wordbut.He had already explained himself perfectly clearly.
“A woman of great beauty and charm and impeccable lineage,” his grandfather continued. Lucas was standing, like a schoolboy hauled before the headmaster for a tongue-lashing preceding a caning. “A woman moreover who bestows the warmest of her smiles upon you whenever you are in company together. Yetyou did not ask her to marry you?”
There was no more wrong with his grandfather’s hearing, Lucas thought, than there was with his mind. He had already told his grandparents that he and the Earl of Stratton had not discussed a marriage contract but had talked of other things, and that he hadnot offered marriage to Lady Philippa but had talked of other things with her too. Admittedly, it must all seem very vague. If not odd.
“I did not,” he said. “She has no wish to marry me, and I will not embarrass or harass her by forcing the question upon her. Unlike me, Grandpapa, Lady Philippa Ware feels no great urgency to marry the first man who asks her.”
“Were you the first, Luc?” his grandmother asked.
