Edmund whirled. “And you! You called him Phineas! What is that about?”
She gritted her teeth and looked at him stonily. Edmund didn’t have a right to her secrets. No one did. She had only told him as much as she had in order to keep him from killing Phineas.
She felt a pang as she saw Phineas finally taking off his spectacles and putting them away inside his tailcoat. She should hate those spectacles. They were what had gotten her into such trouble. But instead, she felt an enormous affection for them. Such dear things. And they had made Phineas so irresistible. He was pretty irresistible without the spectacles—the lips, the hair, the grins, thedarlings. Thedarlingsthat made her so wet. But all that, along with the incongruity of the spectacles—quite simply, they had put her over the top and she had lost control.
“Damn.” Edmund was looking past her, over her shoulder. She turned around. The library door was open. Edmund took two enormous strides to the door and closed it.
“We are in very deep trouble,” he announced, his hand resting flat on the door before clenching into a fist.
“Why is that?” Phineas asked, sounding easy, unafraid. How comforting his voice was.
“I had forgotten the bloody door was open.” Edmund threw himself into a chair.
She held herself very still.
“And that is important for what reason?” Phineas asked.
Edmund leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “I am late because I ran into Lady Huxley, the biggest gossip in the wholeton, out in the street with her daughter Mrs. Winthrop, and we chatted awhile and I asked them both to come back here. I thought we would have some tea and Lady Caroline would come down and Lady Huxley would become reacquainted with her and ask her to come to her ball, which we all know is one of the most important events of the Season. So Lady Huxley and her daughter are just across the hall there in the drawing room and have heard everything that has passed in this room. Except this bit. Because the door is closed.”
“But there is no difficulty, Sudbury,” Phineas said, just as smooth and untroubled as before.
Oh, no. No. No. Not this. Please don’t.
“I would like your permission to ask for Lady Caroline Haskett’s hand in marriage.”
No. No. No.
She stumbled to the door and tugged on the knob and finally got it open. She heard her name being called out behind her by Phineas. She ran up the stairs to her bedchamber where she locked the door behind her and threw herself on the bed. Lavinia came over to her and whined.
No. No. No.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. She was supposed to enjoy her one night with him and never see him again. She wasn’t supposed to marry him. He wasn’t her husband. No one was.
She punched her pillow. She wasn’t suitable. She would never be suitable. She had accepted that long ago. Completely accepted it based on facts, on logic, on her peculiar circumstances.
Damn it, why couldn’t she have also accepted she would never experience physical pleasure with a man?
But, no. She had wanted, she had craved, she had longed. She had even prayed, knowing what she wanted was a sin. And in the end, she had thought she might safely have her kisses and her touches from him. From Phineas.
He was a notoriously indiscriminate lover of the fair sex. She would be just one drop of water in an ocean of women for him. She could slip into his bed and be able to slip out again just as easily.
She could have her one night of passion with no worry of attachment.
That was the plan.
But she hadn’t followed it. Instead, she had done foolish thing after foolish thing, starting with kissing him in her bedchamber. Then coming to London where she might see him around any corner. Kissing him in the drawing room. Fornicating with him in the bookseller’s. Kissing him again here in the library where they were sure to be caught by her brother.
She didn’t want to marry Phineas. And she wouldn’t. And it wasn’t because she didn’t love him. She didn’t, absolutely not. But not loving him had nothing to do with not wanting to marry him. After all, she had known from a young age that love and marriage had nothing to do with each other. Witness her parents. Her father, a man incapable of love. Her mother who had found her love in a bottle. Marriage for love was a fairy story and entirely irrelevant to her refusal to marry Phineas.
She didn’t want to marry him because . . . because he was a silly, irresponsible man who lay with serving girls and coupled with a woman he barely knew, standing up in a shop.
And she didn’t want to marry him because . . . because she didn’t want to spend any more time around him.
And she didn’t want to spend any more more time around him . . . damn damn damn damn . . . she didn’t want to spend any more time around him because shewouldfall in love with him.
She was sobbing now and wasn’t sure when she had started.
Every person she had ever loved had hurt her. Her father. Her mother. Even her brother had hurt her, leaving her alone in Sudbury with her father all those years.
