It was not usual for him to think of such matters, naturally.
“God, yes.”She groaned.“Isn’t it obvious?Must yousayit?”
“I am merely trying to understand,” he grumbled.
“I will inform you if there is a problem,” she said, releasing his arm and nearly running toward her sister, who waited for her.“But, in the meantime, Mr.Brown, please do all you can to trouble me no further.”
Chapter Twelve
When Scarlett enteredParkhorne Hall the next morning, she resolved to keep her distance from Mr.Malcolm Brown.
She was done with enduring his humiliations.
She supposed that, taken in a generous light, the concern he expressed on the walk back from church yesterday could be seen as honorable.
But all Scarlett had felt was searing mortification.This man had no desire to marry her.And yet to prove how honorable he was, how proper, despite not being a man of the metropolis, he kept offering to do so nonetheless.
He was so handsome, so evidently desirable, and she was so plain.He must assume that she was burning to accept him.Well, she hoped she’d showed him that, while physically unremarkable, she at least was not desperate.She had her dignity, if nothing else.
His concern about her being with child had struck her as immediately ridiculous.But then she had had a moment of pause when she remembered whatshehad done after he had left her room that night.How she had dipped her fingers in the seed left behind by his spend and used it to find her own pleasure.How she had taken that evidence of his presence, of his pleasure in her nearness, and introduced it deeper into herself.
She had not comprehended any risk at the time.She had enough friends who had married that she knew getting with child was not always as easy as it might seem.
But she supposed that it was notimpossible.
Christ, whathadshe been thinking?
When she imagined finding out that she was carrying Mr.Malcolm Brown’s child, a humiliating flutter of excitement ran through her.Then she would have to marry him.She should feel only horror at the prospect of a life relegated to the countryside with a man she hardly knew.
Unfortunately, she had to admit that it wasnotonly horror that she felt in the face of such a possibility.
Worst of all, she had been plagued last night by a variation of her usual dream—only in this one, the man holding her and rutting her deeply and a little roughly wasdefinitelyMr.Malcolm Brown.
Tilly had, of course, made much of his request to walk with her.
“Perhaps he has developed apreference, Scarlett!”Tilly had said, when she went to visit with her stepmother and sister in their room yesterday afternoon.
Scarlett obviously couldn’t explain the truth to her sister, so instead, she had insisted the man was just being polite.
Given that Tilly hadn’t mentioned him yet this morning, despite ample opportunity at breakfast, it seemed she had been convinced.The fact that Scarlett and Malcolm Brown had dined in near silence yesterday evening, more stilted and awkward than they had been even the night before, had done little to dispel her characterization of his interest in her.
And that was all for the better, as far she was concerned.
Yes, it would be gratifying to be the kind of woman who captivated a man like Mr.Brown, but Scarlett knew she wasn’t.And she was too proud to endure the humiliation of his proximity for any longer.Thus, when she entered the drawing room for the Marchioness’s scavenger hunt, she had resolved to avoid him.
Until, of course, she was immediately paired with the man for the duration of the morning.
The Marchioness of Leith was the one reading off the teams, each composed of a lady and a gentleman, and Scarlett and Malcolm were at the very top of her list.
She may have groaned audibly.
Tilly, at least, glanced up at her.
Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks,she swore.
Her sister also looked perturbed at her own pairing.She was not given George, but his brother, Mr.Severn Westmore, once more, and—worse, Scarlett was sure—Gertrude was paired with George.
Miss Marburry also looked upset.Even though she was Mrs.Salisbury’s supposed favorite, and a longtime friend of the family, Scarlett had noticed that the girl seldom found herself paired with George in anything.It seemed that Mrs.Salisbury had given up hope of that match coming to fruition.Scarlett made a note to mention it to Tilly later, as it would give her sister some small measure of relief.
