“I know you never had dreams of being a part of theton,” Michael told him. He picked up his glass of brandy and swirled the liquid around, watching the tracks it left on the inside. “I can concede that this marriage of yours was the best thing to secure your position as Duke of Heathmare, but that was never something you used to care about. To see you devote your whole life to it like this… you can’t blame us for feeling some concern for you. And now you tell me outright that you only married her to advance your investments—well, I did know that, of course, but to hear you say it…”
“If you knew it, how can that be alarming?”
“Not alarming,” Michael said. “But we do want you to be happy, Norman. We’d have liked to see you married to someone you truly loved, not just tied to whoever was most advantageous for your future prospects.”
“I’m perfectly happy,” Norman insisted.
He didn’t know whether that was true. He hadn’t married for love. He had married for convenience, for advancement—Susan had done the same. But they were both getting what they wanted out of that arrangement, so could either one of them claim to be dissatisfied with it? He didn’t see how.
And he had never thought of a love match for himself—that was, not since accepting his new title. He could admit now that, had he married for love, Susan was the sort of woman he might have been interested in. But neither of them wanted to fall in love. She had made that fact clear, and as for him… marrying for love seemed like something you just couldn’t do if you were to manage a dukedom. It didn’t matter that she captivated his attention whenever he was around her—he couldn’t allow himself to fall in love with her. That was the kind of thing a person did when he had no other responsibilities in life, no duties to tenants, no need to worry about anyone beyond himself. It wasn’t something Norman could have done now.
And yet…
Was it true that he hadn’t made a love match? How was a man truly to know? It wasn’t as if a physician could test a racing heartand a fluttering stomach to see what the cause was, when the cause was nothing more than being enamored of one’s wife.
Why am I even considering this question? Of course, I’m not in love with Susan. All right, so my feelings about her have grown more complicated since we married, but that’s because I’m coming to realize that I like her and enjoy her company. It doesn’t mean I’m in love with her.
He shook his head. His aunt and his cousin had filled his mind with all sorts of unwelcome ideas. “These are foolish questions,” he said. “And they’re going nowhere.”
“All right,” Michael said. “I can see you don’t want to discuss it.”
“That’s right. I’m doing well for myself. I’m achieving everything I wanted to achieve as a member of society. That should be enough for you and Aunt Tabitha, without my having to constantly worry about the question of whether I should have married for love.”
“Nobody wants you to be worried about it,” Michael said. “That’s not why we ask, Norman. We just want you to be happy. It seems to me that a love match would make a man happier than an arrangement like yours, but if that isn’t true for you, I won’t press the issue.”
“It isn’t true for me,” Norman said stoutly. “I’m happy.”
But deep down inside, he wondered.
CHAPTER 22
“We’re going to have to return to our old habits tonight,” Norman said as the carriage pulled up in front of Montgomery Manor. “We’re going to have to put on a show.”
Susan nodded. “I’m ready for it,” she assured him. She had thought it through and understood that it had to be done.
“We won’t stay too long,” Norman said. “But it’s vital to appear in public now that our honeymoon is officially over. We need to let people see that things are good between us—that we are still very much in love.” He glanced at her. “At least, that has to be the public story.”
“And it will be,” Susan told him confidently. “We may have our problems, but this is one thing we know we can do convincingly.
The truth was, her faith in her ability to lie about her feelings for Norman had been rocked by Lady Keethroad’s visit to the house.It seemed clear to her now that Lady Keethroad understood that the whole thing had been a farce. In fact, Lady Keethroad had seemed to think there was even less care between herself and Norman than there actually was.
That would be difficult to accomplish.They were so distant from one another that she couldn’t imagine there beinglessthere.
And yet, there was still the strange camaraderie of sharing in a lie. That bound them together, even if nothing else did.
And there was also the fact that Susan really was starting to feel something for Norman. The strange, unexpected times they’d opened up to one another. The night she had fled to his room in fear, and he had allowed her to stay, taking the settee for himself.
He had become someone she could rely on, even if there were no feelings between the two of them. Not lovers, but allies, perhaps—and that was more than Lady Keethroad believed them to be.
Which means our farce hasn’t worked on her. She should think us madly in love.
She steeled herself. Maybe Lady Keethroad hadn’t fallen for it, but others had. Even Marina, who knew Susan better than anyone in the world, had believed her to be in love, and that meant that the rusehadworked. Lady Keethroad had seen through it for some reason, but that was no reason to believe it wouldn’t work tonight.
The Montgomery Ball was a new event to the season’s lineup, hosted by the Earl of Montgomery in honor of the fact that his eldest daughter had made her debut. The Earl had four daughters, all close in age, so it was reasonable to expect that this ball would continue until all of them were married. Walking in, Susan noticed the younger ones clustered on a balcony, looking down at the partygoers in awe, and thought of her own family. Would the Earl insist that his daughters marry in order of their ages, or would one of them be allowed to move ahead of another if she happened to find the right gentleman sooner?
Norman’s arm wrapped around her waist, and his hand came to rest on her hip. A shiver passed through her at his touch. She didn’t remember it affecting her at the beginning of their time together. It had always been unfamiliar and exciting to be close to a man, of course, but there was something specific aboutNormannow that drew her in, as if no one else would have been capable of stirring her in quite the same way. She could barely spare any attention for anyone else in the room.
And so it was that her father managed to take her by surprise. “Here you two are,” he said, approaching from an angle so that Susan didn’t even see him until he was standing right in front of her. “I was beginning to wonder if maybe you weren’t coming.”
