His mouth firmed into a thin, harsh line, his only reaction. “She is my dead brother’s widow, and the emotion I feel for her is far from love. But I cannot deny that infuriating her and removing her from my home are unifying priorities, and a marriage between us could accomplish both.”
For some strange reason, the effect the widowed Lady Anglesey had upon him bothered Izzy, but learning the reason why was not a burden she wished to undertake just now, thanks to her aching head and dry mouth. With each moment that passed, their future as husband and wife seemed more inevitable.
“Marriage,” she said, the word strange on her tongue. Odder still in her mind, when she thought of what it would entail. Marriage to the Earl of Anglesey. Just yesterday morning, she would have laughed and dismissed the notion as lunacy.
But now…
Now, he was standing before her, holding her hands in his. And she had nothing left to cling to, no chance that Arthur would change his mind and come crawling back to her, begging her forgiveness. Even if he would, she would never take him as her husband. He had already proven himself inconstant and disloyal. A liar, it was true. All those words of love he had written, the letters she had tied with ribbon and kept in a special wooden box she had been gifted as a child…
Lies, every bit of it.
And what future awaited her on the Continent if she fled? At least if she remained in England and faced the consequences, she would not be so far removed from her sisters and brother and parents. Her family was important to her.
More important than her pride.
“Marriage,” Anglesey repeated, giving her a wry smile. “We’ve no other choice. But even so, we could each benefit with a union.”
His pragmatism surprised her.
She rather admired it.
And, reluctantly, him. If only for the moment.
“How do you propose we benefit, my lord?” she found herself asking.
“I will help you to make your faithless Mr. Penhurst stew in a sea of jealousy,” he said. “We will make him resent the day he ever decided to throw you over for a crass Yank fortune.”
“And you?” she pressed. “Am I to make Lady Anglesey stew as well?”
“No,” the earl denied coolly, releasing her hands. “She means less than nothing to me. Her presence at my home is a burden rather than a boon. You will help me by removing me from consideration and speculation. No lady will be aiming her cap at me if I am already married. I will be free to carry on as I wish. And if I require an heir at some juncture, I shall have you to aid me.”
An heir.
A frisson of something hot and altogether unwanted trilled down her spine at the prospect of sharing a bed with Anglesey. Somehow, in all her frenzied musings since she had risen that morning to a host of troubles, the notion of intimacy—true intimacy, between a husband and wife—with the earl had not occurred to her. But it did now.
“No need to rush on that matter, naturally,” Anglesey said, as if he had heard her madly whirring thoughts. “I am not in a hurry to spawn. The mere notion of small children—especially my own—is enough to induce a case of the hives. And I am more than capable of entertaining myself elsewhere.”
Mistresses, he meant. Lovers like Lady Falstone. Of course. He was a notorious Lothario who possessed, as Wycombe had politely said,an innumerable list of ladies he refers to by their given names. And that is hardly the worst of it…
Whatwasthe worst of it?
Did she want to know?
She did not dare ask, for fear of the answer. Anglesey was right. This sordid, tangled web of her own making had caught them. There was no choice, and if they must marry, why not make the best of a dreadful situation? It was not as if she wanted to marry for love. That ship had broken up on the rocks and sunk to the bottom of the sea.
“What you are proposing,” she said, searching his gaze, needing to understand everything completely for her own sake before she agreed, “is that we are to live separate lives as husband and wife?”
“It is commonly done, is it not?”
Yes, it was. It had never been what she wanted for herself. Her parents shared a great love for each other, and she had hoped to find the same in her own marriage. But that had been before.
She nodded. “It is the way of things for many, I suspect.”
“We can make certain our union proves mutually advantageous, Izzy,” he said, once more making use of the name her family called her. “What say you? Will you marry me?”
And whether it was the weariness she felt to her bones, the still-present aching in her head, or the earnestness of the Earl of Anglesey’s eyes upon her, she could not say. Whatever the reason, she found herself agreeing to the most madcap proposal of marriage in the history of matrimony.
“Yes,” she said. “I will.”
