He canted his head, watching her as though he could read every flicker of expression across her face. “Would you believe me if I said I did?” he asked, sounding almost curious. “Would that absolve me of my sins? Or are you determined to cast me in the role of villain?”
“If the shoe fits,” she said tartly.
“Well then.” He leant back in his chair, the wood creaking ominously, and shrugged. “There’s nothing more to say on the matter. But let me say this. I have never once lied to your sister.”
Emily scoffed. “A likely story.”
“I’m no monster. Your sister wants nice things, and I offered to provide them for her. A house, trinkets, a place in society. It would have been the same as any marriage made for the purpose of marrying.”
Emily reared back in her seat. “My sisterlovesyou.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“Not in as many words, but—”
“Then what do you know about the matter?”
“My sister would never marry a man she didn’t love!”
“Then perhaps you don’t know your sister,” he said. “We have been perfectly clear with each other about what this is. Oh, she likes me well enough, but love? I don’t believe she ever had any intention of loving me.”
Emily shook her head. Isabella was not that materialistic. Yes, she wanted an escape from this life, but not with a near-stranger. Not with a man prepared to whisk her away to Scotland in order to marry her illicitly—she would never have done that unless she loved him.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Mr Beaumont said impatiently. “If she married me, she would have everything she wanted. London society, the association with my excessively titled relatives, and a house she could be mistress of.”
Emily folded her arms, trying to ignore the sheer exhaustion in her limbs. She had been run down for so very long. “And what of you? What do you gain from the arrangement?”
“A wife,” he said at once. “I have need of one.”
Emily buttoned her lips as another maid brought their breakfast over, slamming the plates onto the table. Piles of sausages and bacon and fried eggs, the yolk breaking and seeping out across the grease. She stared, stomach turning. So much rich food—far more than she’d had in a very long time.
“There’s bread coming,” the girl informed them. A different wench from before, but just as comely. And Mr Beaumont seemed just as happy to grin up at her, handsome and boyish, full of charm and boisterous fun.
There seemed not a serious bone in his body.
Thiswas what Isabella had wanted?
If so, could Emily justify standing in her way?
Chapter Five
Olivertappedthetableas he viewed the woman sitting opposite. What the devil was he supposed to do now? He had taken the wrong sister. By rights, he should askherto marry him instead; it was the correct thing to do, unless he could return her home without anyone noticing her absence—an unlikely feat in this snowstorm.
And he did need a wife.
If Henry were here—and Oliver was damn glad he wasn’t—he would have suggested marriage.
Oliver’s gaze flicked down to Miss Brunton’s hands. Poor, cracked things, blistered and almost bloody by the knuckles where the skin had split countless times. He could only imagine how painful they were.
“What is your age?” he asked.
She blinked, brows slashing down in a frown. He noticed she had done that often in the time since they’d met. Did she ever smile—or, heaven forbid, laugh?
“My age?”
“Yes,” he said. “Your age. I’m three-and-twenty. There, now you have mine.”
“Four-and-twenty.”
