Tess smiled at him. “It’s all right, Rafe,” she said. “I don’t mind.” And she let her smile grow, just to show him.
But he wasn’t looking at her. “What a fool I was,” he said. “Mayne hasn’t been himself since this past spring. I knew it, and I ignored it. I’m not used to the responsibility of being a guardian. There can’t be a worse guardian in all Christendom than I!”
He looked so unhappy that Tess almost laughed. “You are not a failure!” she said cheerfully.
He shook his head. “You don’t understand, Tess.”
“Yes I do. The Earl of Mayne has taken himself away and left me at the altar, so to speak.”
“Precisely.”
“But we weren’t really suited,” Tess noted.
“That’s irrelevant,” Rafe said. “The important fact is that the jackass has up and jilted you. Jilted you! I wouldn’t have thought it possible!”
“No one will know.”
“Everyone will know. The ton lives for this sort of gossip. Believe me. They’ll know.”
“Ah,” Tess said, not caring much.
“There is one solution.” Rafe paused. “It’s an odd one, and likely to cause as much scandal in its own way.”
“I don’t wish you to go after Mayne,” Tess said, alarmed.
“Never. No, no. It’s—well.” Rafe got up. “I think I’ll let someone else explain this particular possibility. But if you decide not to do it, my dear, I would be most happy to bring you out myself.” He walked over and touched her on the shoulder. “I’m sure you realized how little family I have. I am quite aware of my manifold failures as a guardian, but I am still glad to have you as my ward.”
Tess smiled up at him. “I’m so glad that Papa chose you, Rafe.”
He walked to the door and opened it. “One minute, then.”
When the door closed, Tess leaned her head back against her chair. She waited to feel tragic. The only thing she felt was stunned and rather pleased.
Of course, when the door opened, it was Lucius. She looked up at him. It was the oddest feeling: life had taken another sharp turn, as it had when her father died.
Lucius walked over, and then reached out a hand and brought her to her feet. His eyes didn’t even drift to her bosom, but suddenly her dress felt not tawdry, but dangerous, sensuous, and powerful.
“Miss Essex,” he said, “I have come to ask for your hand in marriage.”
“Why do you wish to marry me?” she asked, watching his face.
He flinched slightly. “You find yourself in an unenviable position,” he said, “due to my closest friend’s behavior. I am constrained, as an honorable man, to—”
“Is it because you wish to race Something Wanton in the Silchester cup?” she asked.
He looked surprised, and a drop of relief went down her spine.
“No,” he said.
“Doesn’t it seem rather a sacrifice, to marry only in order to ameliorate your friend’s ill deeds? You are not, after all, the earl’s brother.”
“No.”
She waited, but he wasn’t going to say anything else. Of course she would refuse him. She was no piece of firewood, to be delivered from hand to hand. She opened her mouth to give him a set-down, and a sharp one too.
However, she had made up her mind not to drift along like a leaf caught in a river eddy. She wasn’t merely an observer to her own life. The thought jumbled together with Imogen’s triumphant little note, and:
“All right.”
His eyes were on hers: blazing with a fallen-angel quality. “Why?”
She raised her hands to her mouth but her fingers were unsteady. So she shrugged instead. “I must needs marry.” She managed that fairly well. Her voice sounded light, almost uninterested, truly sophisticated. “You have no title, Mr. Felton, but…” Her voice trailed away.
“But I have the—the substance that you desire, is that it?”
“Something of that.” She had to get away.
“But—”
She turned back to him sharply. This was all too humiliating. “I shall be a comfortable spouse, sir. I promise you that.”
His hand fell from her arm. “I shall endeavor to be the same to you, Tess.”
“Thank you.” She said it coolly but with desperation. She had to leave now.
“Don’t you think that we should discuss our forthcoming marriage?”
Tess pressed her hands together tightly and said, “I don’t know much about marriage.”
He smiled slightly. “I shouldn’t expect you to have that particular knowledge.”
“Well, you know very little about me,” Tess said with a slight edge.
He tipped up her chin. She felt herself grow pink. “I know a few things.” His voice was velvet dark.
She opened her mouth, but he was still talking. “Have you shared an intimate breakfast, a supper a deux, a…bedtime chocolate?”
Tess desperately tried to think of something to say that would be sophisticated, urbane, funny—the sort of thing Annabel would say without thinking twice. “Why did you ask me that question?” she asked instead, looking straight into his eyes and ignoring the laughter there. “Do you really want to know what I think of marriage?”
The laughter disappeared, as if extinguished. “With good fortune, we’ll be married a very long time.”
That was something of an answer, Tess supposed. “I have seen marriages in which the couple never speak. They just walk past each other. Mrs. Stewart, whose land ran next to ours in Scotland, talked of her husband in the third person only, even when he was standing next to her: ‘He doesn’t care for asparagus,’ she would say, with Mr. Stewart just at her shoulder. ‘He will only eat cottage pie, and that only on a second Tuesday.’”
The edge of Lucius’s mouth curled, and Tess realized with a horrible shock how much she wanted him to be amused by her. Because otherwise—she mentally shook her head.
“I hope we shan’t have a silent marriage,” he said, taking her hand. “I feel that if we have clear expectations of each other, we are far more likely to have a happy marriage. And I would very much like you to be happy with me, Tess.”
Tess noticed that he didn’t say anything about being happy with her, but she wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“What are your expectations?” she asked. And then colored. Could this have something to do with bedroom matters? “I—I—”
There was that smile in his eyes again. “Simple things.” He was rubbing a thumb over her palm. “If we understand each other, I would hope that we don’t find ourselves in a chilly relationship.”
“What is there to understand?” Tess said, looking at him.
“I have an uneasy feeling that you know me so well already, just by watching me, that I can tell you nothing.”
“No!” she said.
“If I were a horse, would I win the race?” he asked, looking at her intently.
For a second she tried to look at him as a Thoroughbred. He would be a hugely muscled one, ready to kick a rival, edgy, faster than anyone else…a winner.