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No, of course not.
“All right, so something happens, something that does not involve any actual compromising but merely the appearance of such. Then what? Sketch the post-discovery scene for me.”
“What is there to sketch? We will be discovered.” She raised a thumb. “You will refuse to marry me.” A forefinger joined the thumb in the visual list she was making. “I will be ruined.” Finger three. “And that”—she brushed both palms together as if ridding herself of an unwelcome bit of dust—“will be that.”
“Yes, except for my reputation.”
“What do you mean? It is the lady’s reputation that is the social currency here, is it not?”
“Yes, but only a rake of the worst sort would refuse to come up to snuff in such a situation.”
“And you do not want to be thought of as such?”
“Can you blame me?”
“Of course not, but you overlook the fact that you are rich. A peer. You’ll easily shake off the stink. Men always do.”
“The stink?” Good God.
“Yes. My reputation will be ruined forever. Yours will be rehabilitated by the next Season, particularly if you make it known that you are turning your mind to marriage.” She paused. “If that was what you were worried about.”
Simon had always thought he might marry one day, back when he was imagining himself living a quiet life as a country vicar. Since inheriting, he’d known he couldn’t consider taking a wife until his mother died. He would never subject anyone, much less someone he esteemed enough to marry, to the cruelties of the Dowager Countess of Marsden.
Still, there was no reason Miss Brown should know that. It was perfectly reasonable for her to assume that he, an eligible peer of the realm pushing thirty years of age, would be turning his mind to the succession.
He cleared his throat. “I am disinclined to marriage at this point in my life.”
Miss Brown seemed overly delighted by his stance. “So you are not concerned over your fate in the marriage mart—which, as a handsome, intelligent aristocrat, of course you needn’t be. So that’s one problem you shan’t have to worry about, should your reputation be briefly dinged.”
She thought he was handsome?
“Are you a member of a club that will expel you? Have you friends who will turn on you? A job to lose? Will you suffer materially?”
She thought he was handsome?
He didn’t answer—he wasn’t capable of speaking just now—so she answered for him.
“No, no, no, and no. What you’re up against, if I may be so bold, is a little social discomfort. It will be temporary, and superficial.”
He had to stop this. Perhaps she was deluded enough to think he was handsome. But that wasn’t all he was. “You are forgetting, I think, that I am an honorable man.” He refrained from adding You just said so yourself.
“I am not forgetting. That is why I am here, asking you to help me.”
“Even if I cared not a whit for what others would think of my actions, I care. God cares.”
She opened her mouth. Said nothing. Closed it.
“You want me to pretend to ruin you and then refuse to marry you. You, who are companion to my dearest friend’s mother. Even if I could ‘shake off the stink,’ as you say, you can’t possibly imagine that Archie would ever speak to me again. So the answer to one of those questions you just rattled off is yes. Do I have friends who will turn on me? Yes. Because they are also men of honor.”
Miss Brown remained silent.
“And what of you?” he asked. “Suppose you achieve your desired goal: ruination. Then what? You’re cast out of society. You have no family, I believe?”
She found her voice. “I shall secure a position as a governess. Somewhere else.”
“Somewhere else?” He was back to echoing her words. It couldn’t be helped. She was saying the daftest things.
“Not London. Not Kent.”
