A friendship? He couldn’t imagine what Miss Somerset and Lady Tallant had in common. He didn’t begrudge Lady Tallant her pleasures—from what he’d heard of her deceased husband, she’d earned them—but she wasn’t a proper choice of companion for an innocent young lady like Miss Somerset.
Then again, Miss Somerset wasn’t like most young ladies, unless every debutante in London had the courage to linger in a dark library and blithely read erotic passages fromSchool of Venusto a dangerously aroused marquess. “Lady Tallant recommended you readthatbook? May I ask why?”
“She’s helping me with something.”
“With what? What sort of help could she be giving you that includes readingSchool of Venus?Unless…” Finn wrapped his hands around her shoulders. “Is she teaching you how to seduce a gentleman?”
“No!” She squirmed loose from his grip. “Not seduction. That is, notonlyseduction, but about gentlemen, and how to judge a man’s character, and engage his affections. About…well, about marriage, and love.”
“Love?” Family connections, compatibility, fortune—these were all things one considered when embarking on a marriage, butlove? It only got in the way of making a wise choice, and in the end, the best one could say of it was it didn’t last. At worst, it ripped families apart and left nothing but pain and destruction in its wake.
She frowned at him. “Yes, Lord Huntington. Love.”
An awful thought occurred to Finn then. “Are you in love with Lord Wrexley?”
She tried to laugh, but it was a hopeless sound. “My situation is such that I no longer hope for love. I’ll have to make do with friendship and affection, but as our courtship clearly shows, I can be easily misled as to a gentleman’s true feelings. From the very first I suspected you lacked affection for me, but if I hadn’t overheard you with Lady Beaumont, I never would have trusted my own instincts. I don’t wish to repeat that mistake.”
She said it quietly, and without a trace of accusation, but her words landed with such painful impact Finn staggered under them.
I made her doubt herself.
When he spoke, his voice wasn’t quite steady. “Even if there isn’t a deep affection, a proper gentleman will always be kind and respectful to his wife, Iris.”
Her eyes widened at his use of her given name. “And if a lady should end up marrying a man who isn’t a proper gentleman, Lord Huntington? Young ladies aren’t trained to be discriminating. Look at poor Lady Honora. She hadn’t any idea she was betrothed to a cheat and a villain.”
“I don’t pretend to defend Harley, but Lady Honora’s is an unusual circumstance—”
“It is, my lord? You’ve spent the better part of a week trying to convince me Lord Wrexley is a similar kind of scoundrel.”
He wanted to argue with her, but as soon as he opened his mouth, Finn found he didn’t have a word to say that wasn’t an utter falsehood. The truth was, Wrexleywasa scoundrel, and if he hadn’t intervened, it was doubtful Miss Somerset would have realized it before it was too late.
She was shaking her head. “You see the trouble, my lord. Ladies are expected to find a suitor, someone with a fortune and a title, and once we’ve accomplished it, no one seems to care much about anything else. It’s almost as if we cease to exist once we become a wife.”
Finn’s chest went tight at the dejected look on her face, but before he could give in to the strange urge he had to press her head against his chest, the look was gone.
“None of this explains why Lady Tallant recommended you readSchool of Venus, Miss Somerset.”
She regarded him in silence for a moment, then reached behind him and retrieved the book from the table. “Those ladies you mentioned earlier—the ladies who don’t understand their own desires. What happens to them?”
Finn frowned. She was naïve, but she must understand at least the basics of what happened in the bedchamber. “They marry, and their husbands teach them.”
“I see. So once a gentleman marries, it’s his duty to attend to his wife’s desire and pleasure?”
“Yes.” It was his duty to get an heir on her, at least. That was nearly the same thing, wasn’t it?
“The gentlemen—husbands, that is—generally have a great deal more experience in those matters than their brides, I believe?”
“One hopes so, yes.”
“And their brides have less experience than courtesans and mistresses as well, I imagine? A lady of birth and connections in particular—the sort of lady who might marry a marquess, for instance—I think she must be among the most ignorant of brides when it comes to matters of the bedchamber.”
“If you’re asking if such a lady is a virgin when she first comes to her husband, then yes. That is, again, one hopes so.”
“But an experienced gentleman—the sort of gentleman with mysteriousdark desiresand handfuls of cravats—mightn’t he find such a lady quite dull? Predictable, that is.”
Finn couldn’t prevent a faint smile. She’d chosen that word deliberately. “Do you mock predictability, Miss Somerset? Some would say it’s a desirable quality in a wife.”
“Yes, I believe I’ve heard gentlemen say so, but as much as they pretend to want it, they scorn it, as well. One can’t blame them entirely for it, I suppose. Such a lady can’t be terribly exciting.”
