She stopped walking and turned to look up at him.“With child?”
“Yes, with child.”
“Mr.Brown,” she said slowly, as if he had recently suffered a head injury.“What occurred between us does not a child make.”
“We cannot be sure.”
“Don’t you work on afarm,Mr.Brown?”
He sighed in true exasperation.“Obviously.”
“Then surely you understand the natural course of reproduction.”
“Nature has many unexpected quirks.”
“Have you everheardof such a thing?”
He hadn’t, not precisely.But he also wasn’t sure itcouldn’thappen.
“I am not sure,” he said, urging her along, irrationally anxious, now that he had broached this sensitive subject, that somehow George and Mrs.Perkins might amble within earshot.He could see Parkhorne looming up ahead, and they needed to complete this conversation as soon as possible.“But if any of my—”
“Please, donotsay it,” she hissed.
“If any ofthatgotinsideof—”
“I comprehend your meaning, Mr.Brown!”she squeaked.
Malcolm had been miserable before in his life.And he certainly spent many of his days feeling melancholy or, at the very least, glum.But he had never sincerely wanted to die to avoid going on living.Until now.Now, he wanted to sink into the earth and be swallowed up by it forever.
He was a beast.He was a beast who had defiled a princess.And he deserved to be damned for it.
“If that happened,” he forced himself to continue, turning toward her, “then it would be possible.”
A strange flicker passed over her face.A spasm of pain or consternation, he couldn’t tell which.
“As a lady in my situation, my knowledge on such matters is little.”
“I agree that it seems unlikely.Which, of course, is much better than the alternative.Still, I want you to know that I would do the honorable thing.If you were with child.”He was not looking at her face when he made this pronouncement, which made it easier to say.
“Are youproposingto me, Mr.Brown?”
“Only if the event of which we speak comes to pass.”
“Dear lord.”She moaned.
He tried not to think of all the other ways he would like to hear her moan…
No, he told himself.There he went again—being a beast.
And it was not, admittedly, how a man wanted his marriage proposal, even a conditional one, treated.
“I know you have no interest in such a fate.You have made that clear.But still I must live up to my own principles.”
The hall was close now.The others hung by the doors that led back into it.They could not speak for much longer.
“Very well,” she bit off in frustration.“I should know in two weeks whether any such trouble has arisen or not.”
“Your-your courses?”he said, trying to find the train of her logic.
