There would be a mother—there was always a mother in these situations, and from everything he had gathered about the Moreland family, this one was formidable.
There would be a sister, who was a duchess and therefore not easily managed. And there would be the girl herself, who had knelt in wet sand to take his pulse without flinching and thenlooked at him on the shore with those very blue eyes, and who had, in his considered estimation, never once in her life accepted a situation she had not first questioned thoroughly.
He had prepared for resistance, but he had not prepared for her face.
Her face, even with the evidence of a difficult twenty-four hours written plainly all over it—the slightly swollen eyes, the pinched mouth—was the kind of face that would stop a room on its best day.
On this particular day, with all the pretence stripped away and nothing between him and the full force of her expression, he found it considerably more arresting than he was prepared to account for.
She was slender, of medium height, with light brown hair that had been pinned up with more haste than usual and was doing what it apparently wanted regardless. A strand had escaped at her temple, and she hadn’t bothered with it, which for some reason he found immediately and inconveniently telling.
Her eyes were blue. Not the vague, polite blue of a great many blue eyes, but something more specific—clear and direct and currently trained on him with the focused attention of someone deciding what they thought of what they were seeing.
She was angrier than he had expected, which was fair. Her eyes were red at the edges. She had been crying, and the realizationlanded somewhere uncomfortable in his chest, in a way he chose not to examine.
She was also, despite the evidence of a difficult twenty-four hours, looking at him with an expression of such precise, contained fury that he found himself revising his plan slightly even as he was opening his mouth.
“Lady Cecily,” he greeted, pulling off his gloves. “I have come to make you an offer of marriage.”
He said it simply, because simplicity was generally more effective than an elaborate preamble, and because the situation was what it was, and decorating it would only waste time they didn’t have.
He watched her take it in. Watched the flash of something cross her face—not surprise, but more the expression of someone whose worst suspicion had been confirmed.
“Did you?”
“I did.”
She looked at him with those clear blue eyes, and he had the distinct impression she was deciding something—running him through some internal assessment he was not privy to and might not pass.
“And what,” she said, in a remarkably steady voice for a woman who had clearly spent the better part of a day crying, “makes you think I will accept a proposal from a man with your reputation?”
From the sofa, her mother made a soft, pained sound. The Duchess—the older sister, Beatrice—sat very still with the expression of someone watching a situation unfold that they have decided, wisely, not to attempt to control.
William kept his eyes on Cecily.
“I’m aware of my reputation,” he replied. “I won’t insult you by pretending otherwise.”
“That is something, at least.”
“What I will tell you is that I have never ruined a woman. In all the years the papers have seen fit to discuss my habits, that particular distinction has never applied to me, and I do not intend to allow it to begin now.” He kept his voice even, factual, the voice he used in business—not cold, but clear. “The story is already moving faster than either of us can outrun it alone. By tomorrow, it will be in every paper in London, with your full name attached. I can stop that. A special license takes two days. After that, there is no scandal, only a marriage, and people will find something else to discuss within the fortnight.”
“How efficient,” Cecily scoffed. “You make it sound like resolving an accounting error.”
“That is not–” He stopped. Tried again. “I am not trivialising your situation.”
“You are describing my future as a logistical solution to your inconvenience.”
“With respect,” he pointed out, “it is considerably more your inconvenience than mine.”
That landed badly. He saw it the moment it left his mouth—saw the color rise in her face, saw her anger shift from contained to incandescent.
She took a single step toward him. “Myinconvenience.” Not a question. Each word was placed with care, the way one placed things down when one was deciding whether to throw them. “I was on a walk. I found a man unconscious in the tide, and I chose to help him rather than leave him there, andmyinconvenience is the result.”
Another step. She was close enough now that he could see the brightness at the corners of her eyes. Not tears… Or not only tears, but also fury, which was its own kind of light.
“Yes. You are correct. I see the distinction very clearly.”
“Lady Cecily–”
