He didn’t precisely know the statistics on women’s marital ages in Grosvenor Square, of course.But he was sure it happened.
Especially when they are as beautiful as you.Especially when they make men go out of their heads imagining what they would do if they had you in their bed.
“It isn’t about marriage.Or at least my marriage,” she snapped.“It’s that mysisteris getting married.And I’ve spent the past four years chaperoning her around London, and managing her social visits, and making sure she didn’t step out with the wrong gentlemen—it’s been my life!A life that is about to be over.”
He reeled back.While he was flattered, under any circumstances, to be wanted by her, he couldn’t exactly saymy sister is getting marriedwas the most gratifying framework for her professed wish to bed him.
“You want to bed me because your sister is getting married?”
“No, that is notwhy.It’s just that I realized I am at a precipice—and I have very little of my own to show for the last four years.”
“So you think bedding the nearest gentleman willing to slaver after you like a dog will suffice to fill the void?”
“Thatis not what I said.Why are you willfully misunderstanding me?”
“I am not misunderstanding anything.Perhapsyoudo not understand what you are saying.”
“I shouldn’t have spoken of Tilly.It isn’t about her or her marriage, either.It isn’t about marriage in any respect!It is only that the prospect of Tilly wedding your brother makes me realize I have my whole life before me!”
Was she suggesting that now that her sister was respectably wed, she might bed any number of gentlemen quietly and discreetly?”
“I am sorry, Scarlett, if I do not delight in being merely the first of many.”
“That isnotwhat I mean.”
“Whatdoyou mean?”
He had never intended to quarrel with her.In fact, before this moment, he had not thought it possible that he would quarrel with Miss Scarlett Perkins again.Yes, they had sniped at one another upon their first meeting, but that had been because they had misunderstood each other.And yes, they had argued after their initial mishap, because it had been a trying, confusing situation.
But for this quarrel, he could locate no easily blamable extenuating circumstance.And yet quarreling they most certainly were.
“It is perfect, don’t you see?”Scarlett said.“We are drawn to one another.You can’t deny that we are.We keep coming together, even though we know we shouldn’t.”
“I am not going to stand here before you, Scarlett, and pretend that I don’t want you.”
She looked at him then for a hot, terrible, interminable second.He could feel all that he wanted from her in that moment.He could feel how easy it would be to sink to his knees and take her into his arms.
When she spoke again, her voice was softer.“We can’t resist each other.And yet we are capable of using our reason.Our lives are not at all compatible.I have lived all my life in London—it is all I know.And you belong here in Somerset.With your family and your duties.Our marriage would be impractical, particularly with regard to fortune.You are not a man of independent means, and I have not a cent to my own name.My stepmother keeps me completely.You have probably deduced that.I have no dowry to speak of.I can bring you no advantages.Yet we are both used to living decently.Together, it is doubtful how we would live.Therefore, marriage is desirable to neither.We can bed one another and part as friends.”
At her words, he felt a terrible pain somewhere near his chest.She saw him as a convenience—worse, she thought he saw her in the same way.She understood their marriage to be an impossibility.Her assessment of his monetary situation was not, on its face, wrong, although he wasn’t quite as penniless as she supposed.Still, he couldn’t give her luxuries.Only an independent establishment and a plain gentility.Nevertheless, it stung to see himself accounted for in such dry terms, to have his small stature in the world named so nearly.She would never leave London to settle into provincial, homely Somerset, no matter what daydreams might preoccupy him at idle, fanciful moments.He was a fool.
“And who even knows,” she murmured, hardly audible in the thick air of the room.“The future will bring us together again, surely.When George and Tilly marry, I mean.It would not have to be an end if we did not want it to be.If we found ourselves in the same place, even here at Parkhorne, in the future… we might enjoy each other as we have these few weeks.”
Malcolm Brown had, perhaps, never been in a situation as lowering as this one.Scarlett had spoken ofherhumiliation, but he did not know, at this moment, how she could not see the depth of his own.
“Miss Perkins,” he said, affront edging, he knew, into his tone.“I cannot accept such a proposition.”
Her face went white.“Oh,” she said.“Are you—very sure?”
“Yes,” he answered, not totally aware, however, of what he said.
“I don’t understand—last night—”
“I forgot myself,” he said brusquely.“I should have never touched you in such a manner.I am sorry for what I did.I can only be thankful that I did not take an even more fatal step.”
She looked at him, a crease of confusion between her brows.
And then an ashen look of horror fell over her features.“Youwant to marry,” she said, covering her mouth with her hand.“You love another.Or at least you want to marry another.Perhaps it is not a matter of love.Perhaps the match has other attrractions.It hardly matters, of course.”
