Page 32 of The Luckiest Lady in London

But that made no sense at all. “I don’t—”

“Our ten minutes are up,” he said, buttoning her blouse and wiping away the rest of her tears, his fingers sure and warm. “I will not allow any eclipsed second to besmirch my sterling reputation. Time for us to return to the drawing room, Louisa.”

He was already turning away when she gripped his hand.

Kiss me. Shouldn’t you at least kiss me when you propose to me?

But when she opened her mouth, out came, “I still want my house and my thousand pounds a year—for the duration of my natural life. And I want those conditions written into the marriage settlement.”

He tilted his head. She could not tell whether he was vexed or amused. “You do?”

She gathered her courage. “If something seems too good to be true, then it probably is. For all I know, you are secretly readying your solicitors for an annulment as soon as you’ve tired of me.”

“Such a cynic.”

“Better be unromantic than thoroughly used and still poor.”

He took her chin in hand. “And if I refuse?”

“Then I will tell Lady Balfour that I turned down your proposal.”

She could scarcely believe it, but she was extorting the most eligible bachelor in London.

“I will give you a house and five hundred a year,” he countered.

Her heart was in her throat. “I won’t marry you for a penny less than eight hundred. And it had better be a house with at least twenty rooms.”

His fingers cupped her cheek. The pad of his thumb rubbed against her lips. His gaze was cool and severe, and she was suddenly in a panic.

No, no, it’s quite all right. I will marry you for five hundred a year and a hovel. In fact, take my mother’s pearl brooch. Take my great-aunt Imogene’s jet pin. And you can also have the emergency money I’ve hidden away at home, all eleven pounds and eight shillings of it.

He smiled. “You will pay for this. You know that, right?”

The way he looked at her, so much wickedness, delight, and camaraderie. If she hadn’t been born with the constitution of a horse, she would have fainted from both relief and a tsunamic surge of sheer happiness.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”

A thousand yeses.

Chapter 7

Louisa’s life changed from the moment Lord Wrenworth declared to a roomful of breathless ladies that Miss Cantwell had consented to become his wife.

Within the crisp, freshly ironed pages of the next day’s Times, she found the engagement announced with all due pride and gravity. An hour later, an enormous bouquet of pink-tinged white orchids arrived at the house, courtesy of her husband-to-be. At noon, more evidence of his regard, a magnificent diamond ring, made its dramatic appearance, sending Lady Balfour into a swoon of ecstasy.

“What did I tell you, Louisa? What did I tell you?”

Notes of congratulations snowed upon the house, along with invitations to every event taking place from then to the end of the Season. Louisa spent two entire days answering the well-wishers. When she went on calls with Lady Balfour, amidst many an envious and sometimes incredulous look, much fuss was made of her.

The luckiest lady in London.

Louisa herself was no less staggered than any of her well-wishers. She giggled when she was alone. She gaped at her ring whenever she caught sight of it. Sometimes, as she lay in bed at night, she pummeled her mattress with both hands and feet, as gleeful and irrepressible as a child about to go on her first holiday.

But other times, her dumbfoundedness took a more sober turn. Clearly his proposal took place, but with each passing day it made less sense. A mistress was a temporary feature in a man’s life, a passing fancy to be discarded or replaced anytime he so chose. A wife, on the other hand, was a permanent installation, almost as irrevocable as a mother.

What could possibly have induced him to make such a decision? She had a healthy regard for herself, but even if she esteemed herself ten times as much, she still couldn’t comprehend what it was about her that had proved irresistible to a man who could have had any woman.

The tentative explanation she cobbled together was a discomfiting one. He enjoyed wielding power over her—almost from the very beginning, he had intentionally set out to disrupt and destabilize. She’d had to fight back for every inch of footing she could command, so that she was not entirely at his mercy.