“It will please my mother,” she said, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “And I suppose that is my primary objective in marrying.”
Well, he had already known this would not be a joining of passion.
She tilted her head, watching him with that same unnerving stare as before. “How long have you been in love with her?” she asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, is it a secret?” She frowned. “If I know it’s a secret, I assure you I can keep it.”
He pinched his nose. “About whom are you referring?”
“Oh!” She looked surprised, as though this ought to have been obvious. “Lady Bolton, of course.”
“Of course?”
“You were looking at her as though you wanted to sweep her up and carry her out of the room,” Miss Winton said. “But perhaps I misread the signs. I do that sometimes, you know. Misread signs and think people mean something they don’t.” She lapsed back into silence as he stared at her, attempting to marshal his thoughts into some sort of order. The attack had come out of nowhere, and to think that she had observed him for a handful of minutes and come to that conclusion was mortifying.
“Miss Winton,” he began, then stopped, unsure how to continue.
She gave him the most gentle smile she had bestowed on him yet. “It’s quite all right if you are. I won’t be offended.”
“That’s not the—” He was not sure how the conversation had come to this. “I was not . . .” Confound it all. “I’m not in love with anyone, Miss Winton.”
“No? Well then.” She seemed a little surprised, but not overly shocked either way. “If we are to be married, I would like us to be frank with one another.”
Henry had the feeling someone had dunked his head in ice water. “About whether I am in love with someone else?”
“It seems quite unavoidable at some point or other, seeing as you won’t be in love with me,” she said practically. “I suspected either your feelings were already accounted for, or they would be at some point in the future. After all, how can one contrive to only love the person they will marry when there are so many others? The chances of that seem singularly low.”
“I see,” Henry said, hardly knowing what he was saying at all. “And you? Are your affections engaged elsewhere?”
“I am not capable of the tenderer feelings.” She said the words bluntly, without affectation. “And I have no wish for them. Iunderstand this is unusual, but no matter how I try, I simply cannot persuade myself to want it.”
“Ah,” he said, and glanced across to where Knight was still watching Louisa. And Louisa, face wreathed in smiles, seemed utterly oblivious to either of their existences. “Is it likely that in the future . . .” He cleared his throat, looking back at Miss Winton. “That you might, in the future, discover that you are fond of . . . affection?”
“I think it unlikely,” she said, with no trace of embarrassment. “Although I do hope we will be good friends.”
This was precisely the kind of marriage he had been searching for. A wife whose heart would not be broken by his lack of interest in her. An arrangement that was based on mutual convenience and respect.
At some point, he would be grateful that the process had been so easy.
“If I may be frank,” he said, “the situation between Lady Bolton and me is not as you assume it to be.”
“Oh?”
“We are not—there is no affection between us.”
Venetia’s grey eyes were shrewd as they rested on him. “Is that so?”
“She hates me,” he explained. “The situation is untenable.”
“So I had presumed, given your intention to marry me.”
“Therefore there is no further reason to discuss it—it does not pertain to us or our future.”
Her face was alive with interest, the most animated he had ever seen it. “Does she know? Of your feelings for her?”
“There’s nothing to know,” he said, and caught sight of Knight moving across the room towards Louisa. “Excuse me.” He rose from the chair and strode across the room, just catching Miss Winton’s murmured “Of course there is not” as he reached Louisa at the same time as Mr Knight.
