“Nothing could be simpler,” he said.
She let out a little whoosh of air.
Relief?
He was, for an instant, taken aback.
He was, he knew, a matrimonial prize. Unwed women would sell their souls for the chance to become the Duchess of Marchmont. Some of the wed ones, given the least encouragement, would happily do away with their husbands.
But the Duke of Marchmont had never taken himself seriously, and even his vanity was of the detached variety, far from tender. If her tiny sigh of relief wounded his feelings, the blow was merely a glancing one.
She had every reason to be relieved, he told himself. She would not have gone to the extreme of proposing to him if her appalling sisters had not, in their usual way, exaggerated the difficulties of her situation.
“Nothing simpler?” one of them cried. “How drunk are you, Marchmont?”
He ignored her and kept his attention on Zoe-not Zoe. “For reasons which elude me, I am fashionable,” he said. “For reasons which elude nobody, I am highly eligible. The combination makes me welcome everywhere.”
Zoe glanced at her sisters for confirmation.
“I grieve to say it is true,” said Gertrude.
“It is very tiresome, and I find the responsibility onerous, but it can’t be helped,” he said. “My presence determines the success of a gathering.”
“Like Mr. Brummell,” said Zoe. “That is what they said. The man must be like Mr. Brummell.”
“Not altogether like him, I hope,” he said. “If you ever hear of my bathing in milk or discarding a neckcloth because every fold and dent is not precisely where it ought to be, I hope you will be so good as to shoot me.”
She smiled then, a slow upward curve of her lips.
Visions of this exotic, grown-up version of Zoe dancing in veils crept into his mind, along with the first part of her qualifications:I know all the arts of pleasing a man.
Perhaps, after all, he should have said yes.
No, absolutely not. Though he wasn’t altogether sober, he was well aware that the little brain between his legs was trying to take charge of the situation. He told himself not to be an idiot. He shoved the visions into the mental cupboard.
“In short,” he said, “you need me, but contrary to your sisters’ hysterical assumptions, you don’t need to marry me. You don’t need to marry anybody until you’re quite ready.”
Another little whoosh of air. “Oh,” she said. “Thank you. You are very handsome and desirable, and I was so glad of that—but I was married from the time I was twelve years old, and it seemed a very long time, and I would rather not be married again straightaway.”
“You may leave everything to me,” he said.
“That is one of the most horrifying sentences I have ever heard,” said Augusta.
“Everything?” said Zoe. She gazed at him expectantly, her eyes like two dark seas, deep enough to drown a man.
He set down his glass. If his mind was sliding into metaphor, he’d had quite enough to drink. “Everything,” he said firmly. “Come with me.”
“Go with him?” cried a sister.
“Go where?”
“What can he be thinking?”
“Thinking? When does he ever think?”
While the harridans recommenced playing the Greek tragic chorus, Marchmont took Zoe’s arm and led her out of the room.
The long-fingered hand wrapped about Zoe’s arm was very warm. The heat spread out from there and raced up and down, from one side of her body to the other.
