Her words hit him hard.
“I am aware of your prior betrothal and wish you to know I am not . . .” She struggled. “I have no feelings towards another and no reason to imagine any may develop.” She finally looked at him. “Marriage is a contract meant to benefit two parties, my lord, and I would enter into it with no more expectation than that of mutual respect. I am willing to provide a husband heirs in return for the security of his title and income.”
He appreciated, for once, that she spoke like an adult and not some simpering chit. And yet her words also left him cold, for she was all duty and no passion. No doubt she’d make a perfectly proper duchess yet remain as invigorating as a sack of potatoes between the sheets.
“And you do not foresee feelings between husband and wife developing over time?” he pressed.
“I would not know, sir,” she said determinedly. “I have never been in love.”
“I see.”
“But I do not find you disagreeable, Lord Wellesley.” She blushed again, prettily. “That is, I believe you to be a man of honor, and you are not unattractive in appearance.”
He laughed. “Miss Mowry, your honesty astounds me, but I am grateful for it, truly.” He searched her face. “And youwould not oppose a husband who, in time, might take himself a mistress?”
“Don’t all husbands keep mistresses, my lord?”
He searched her face again. “Some wives take lovers too, once heirs are born.”
Her eyes widened. “But whyever would a lady . . . ?”
“Because it can be enjoyable, my dear, why else?” Wells’s smirk only made her blush more. Perhaps she was simply inexperienced, he thought, and not frigid.
Yet her answer disappointed. “Ishould never be so bold, sir.” She sounded resolute. “For were my husband to engage a mistress I imagine it would simply relieve me of my duties to him.”
Wells was again disheartened. “I am glad we had this discussion, Miss Mowry, so we each know where the other stands.” He extended her his arm. “Shall we continue our tour?”
“Yes.” She smiled up at him, as if grateful to have gotten the matter off her chest.
Inwardly Wells felt anything but grateful imagining this woman his duchess, dictating furnishings and décor, entertaining guests she’d invite from London. For the remainder of their tour, he did his best to hide his thoughts from Miss Mowry.
She did not seem to notice.
“My lord, a word please?”
Charles had traipsed over to the stables that evening—the men’s unofficial sleeping quarters—in order to find his lordship. Only upon arriving, his rowdy crew looked up at her as one, and snickered.
“Awordonly,” she stressed, “nothing more, you lecherous ingrates.”
Pinky was not the least deterred. “Wedon’t care no ways, miss.” He winked at Charles. “Y’ can bed ’im right ’ere, if y’ like.”
A few smothered guffaws rippled through the hayloft.
“Watch your tongue before I cuff you one, Pinky.” His lordship stepped out of the shadows to defend Charles’s honor. “Apologize at once to Miss Merrinan for your impertinence.”
“Sorry, lass.” Pinky barely looked contrite. “Meant no ’arm by it. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with it neither. You an’ he make a better match by far’n that prissy?—”
“Enough!” his lordship growled.
Pinky shut his trap as Lord Wells roughly grabbed Charles by the arm to march her out of the stables, across the courtyard, and up the Abbey’s formal staircase down another long hall and into the shell room.
“What did you wish to discuss, Charles?” He lit a sconce without bothering to stoke the dying hearth.
“It is my father, sir. My sister writes his health has worsened and that I ought to go and see him.”
“Can it not wait until our guests leave, woman? I do not think we can spare you right now given?—”
“That is the other matter I wish to discuss, my lord. We require more staff. We haven’t enough hands as is to?—”
