She nodded so nervously she had to remind herself notto be a ninny.
“The melding of lands?Compact of strangers?Cold conversation for dinner and separate bedrooms?”
“Yes, yes, that’s exactly what it is.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“My sisters?—”
“Your sisters aren’t typical of anything, except perhaps Hayden family misery.Look around you, Love.Much of the population manages quite well with a little warmth and affection.”
She supposed he meant that she should look at the common run of man.Haydens never considered what was common when they thought of their own lives.The idea confused her.
“Think, Love,” he said.“You say you want to stay with me.I want that too.I want you there more than just this night.I want you there in the morning.I want you to share my house—the one in Little Saint Mary’s or another if you prefer.I want you in my bed, not occasionally and furtively, but every night and every morning.I want to belong to you and with you, and I want the world to know it.”
His seductive voice tantalized her, but his words made little sense.Her parents rarely spent a night under the same roof, and never in the same bedroom.She suspected they must have gone about the quick begetting of children for the estate before going off on their separate ways, but they were indeed separate.That would be worse, much worse than what she had now.She was sure of it.
He drove the chaise past the outskirts of Cambridge proper.The moon hung low in the sky and would soon be gone, leaving them in darkness.
“I want...”She couldn’t complete the sentence.
“What is it you want, Georgiana?Do you know?”
“This beautiful thing between us, this fragile, private thing—it is mine...ours.I don’t?—”
“Don’t what?Don’t wish to marry me?”
The very word struck her with horror, and she could see by the look on his face that her horror hurt him deeply.
“I want you.I don’t want marriage.”
“Let’s look at this carefully,” he said.
How can he be reasonable and analytic at such a time?She wanted to scream.The horse ambled on, oblivious to her churning emotion, carrying them relentlessly on under darkened skies, the moon having sunk beneath the clouds.
“You said you wish to stay with me.Do you think you could live in my house?”He was as relentless as the horse.
“Certainly not!I mean, yes, but that isn’t the point.Of course I would love to be there with you, or in a grand house, or in a one-room croft.It isn’t the house.”And it wasn’t.She would have happily followed him to Spain and lived in a tent.She wouldn’t have missed her golden cage.
“Well then.One barrier removed.You should know that, while I’m not a wealthy man in the sense that your father is wealthy, my service and some opportunities it brought me left me well fixed.Many would consider it wealth.”
He skillfully maneuvered the team around a rutted part of the road.When she didn’t speak, he continued.
“I can afford to feed you, to provide a few servants, and to keep you in muslin and writing paper, while living as a gentleman scholar.”
The hard seat of the chaise cut into her back while she struggled in vain for words.The picture he drew tempted her, but she shrunk from it.Marriage meant trading the control of one man for the control of another.
“He can’t ruin me.”Andrew’s voice came to her from far away.He had grown impatient waiting for her reply.“There is nothing he can do to me.”
He mistook her silence.She knew that he assumed that she worried about him instead of herself, and the realization shamed her.He offered to marry her, knowing the harm her father could do.He was more generous than she.
“Do you hear me, Georgie?He can’t harm me.”
“You don’t know him.There are many ways to ruin a man.”And destroy a daughter.
Andrew let out a frustrated breath.“You don’t wish me to order your life.Very well, don’t order mine.I’m not twenty-two any longer or so easily dismissed.”He managed his horse one handed, and ran the other through his hair in frustration.
“Aren’t we getting ahead of things anyway,” he burst out.“Before we worry about his reaction, I believe the first step is to ask him for your hand.”
