He also knew he meant to propose it.
Chapter 12
“I think,” Lord Westbridge announced with the grave countenance of a man proposing something entirely reasonable, “that we ought to allow society to believe I am courting you.”
Aurelia stared at him.
For one suspended instant, she was quite certain she had misheard. The distant rumble of carriage wheels, the murmur of passing voices and the soft crush of boots upon gravel seemed to fall away, leaving only his words hanging absurdly between them.
Then they arranged themselves into sense, and it made her burst into a boisterous chuckle. It escaped her before she could stop it, wholly improper and entirely sincere. She turned her face aside, pressing her gloved fingers lightly to her lips, but it was too late. The sound was out in the open air between them.
When she looked back at him, he was watching her with an expression of such controlled affront that, had she been less astonished, she might have laughed again.
“You find the idea amusing,” he frowned.
“I beg your pardon,” Aurelia managed, though she was still fighting the remnants of her mirth. “It is only that you said it so solemnly.”
“I was being solemn.”
“That was precisely the difficulty.”
His mouth tightened. “I had thought you might at least hear the merits of the case before dismissing it.”
That did sober her a little. She looked at him more carefully then. He was not teasing her. There was no smile hidden in the corners of his mouth and no glimmer of mischief in his eyes. He was in earnest, completely, impossibly in earnest.
Aurelia drew a steadier breath. “Very well. I am listening.”
That seemed to restore him somewhat.
He glanced ahead, where Clara and Captain Harrow had gone a little further along the path, deep in cheerful conversation and thankfully out of earshot. Then he lowered his voice.
“If people see me with you and begin to speculate, then we may as well use the speculation to our advantage. A publicunderstanding, that is, an appearance of attachment, would answer several difficulties at once.”
Aurelia opened her mouth, but he continued before she could speak, as though he had prepared the argument while walking in silence.
“It would protect your reputation,” he clarified. “If my intentions are understood to be honorable, then no one can say there is impropriety in my calling upon you or walking with you.”
Honorable.
The word was almost enough to make her laugh again, though now she restrained herself.
“It would also protect me,” he went on, “from my mother’s determination to parade every suitable unmarried woman in London before me as though I were a horse to be inspected.”
Despite herself, Aurelia felt the corner of her mouth lift.
“And it would protect you from any unwanted suitors,” he added. “Men are less inclined to trouble a woman when they believe another man has already declared an interest.”
He paused just long enough to ensure she was still listening.
“And most importantly, it would allow us to continue our investigation. If society believes I am courting you, then our calls, our walks, our conversations, all of it becomes perfectly respectable. No one will think it strange that we spend time together. In short,” he said, with an air of satisfaction at the neatness of his own reasoning, “it solves a great many problems.”
Aurelia looked at him in silence.
There was a part of her that still found it utterly absurd. This was Hyde Park, not a chessboard. One did not simply rearrange society’s rules to suit oneself by making declarations on a gravel path. And yet another part of her, the same part that had been sharpened by years of caution, by her mother’s disgrace, by all the humiliating lessons of reputation and propriety, could not help seeing the logic in what he said.
It would answer Charlotte Langley’s insinuations. It would give their continued acquaintance a shape society could accept. It would shield Clara, perhaps, from some of the worst interpretations. And it would allow Aurelia to keep speaking to him.
That last thought came softly and uninvited, and she turned her face away from it at once.
