The Proposal: Number 1 in series (Survivors’ Club)

With every mile of his journey to Newbury Abbey, Hugo had asked himself what he thought he was doing. With every mile he had tried to persuade himself to turn back before he made a complete ass of himself.

But what if she was with child?

He had kept on going.

The more fool he. There had been that excruciatingly embarrassing fifteen minutes or so in the drawing room. And that had been followed by an equally embarrassing interview with Kilbourne in the library.

Kilbourne had been perfectly polite, even friendly. But he had clearly thought Hugo daft in the head for coming here and expecting that Lady Muir would listen favorably to his marriage offer. He had looked slightly embarrassed and had all but told Hugo that she would not have him. She had loved her first husband dearly, he had explained, and had been inconsolable at his death. She had vowed never to marry again, and she had never yet shown any sign of changing her mind about that. Hugo must not take it personally if she refused. He had almost said when she refused. His lips had formed the word and then corrected themselves so that he could say if instead.

Hugo was still in the library—alone. Kilbourne had gone back up to the drawing room, promising that he would send his sister down as soon as she appeared there herself.

Perhaps she would not come down. Perhaps she would send Kilbourne back with her answer. Perhaps he was about to come face to face with the greatest humiliation of his life.

And serve him right too. What the devil was he doing here?

He had done nothing to help his own cause either, he remembered with a grimace. The only thing she had had to say when he had seen her earlier was that she looked like a drowned rat. And he, suave and polished gentleman that he was, had agreed with her. He might have added that she looked gorgeous anyway, but he had not done so and it was too late now.

A drowned rat. A fine thing to say to the woman to whom one had come to offer marriage.

He thought the library door would never open again, but that he would be left to live out the rest of his life rooted to the spot on the library carpet, afraid to move a muscle lest the house fall about his shoulders. He deliberately shrugged them and shuffled his feet just to prove to himself that it could be done.

And then the door did open when he was least expecting it, and she stepped inside. An unseen hand closed the door from the other side, but she leaned back against it, her hands behind her, probably gripping the handle. As though she were preparing to flee at the first moment she felt threatened.

Hugo frowned.

Her borrowed dress was too big for her. It completely covered her feet and was a little loose at the waist and hips. But the color suited her, and so did the simplicity of the design. It emphasized the trim perfection of her figure. Her blond hair was curlier than usual. The damp must have got to it despite the bonnet she had worn and the umbrella she had held as she came hurtling up across the lawn. Her cheeks were flushed, her blue eyes wide, her lips slightly parted.

Like a foolish schoolboy, he crossed both sets of fingers on each hand behind his back and even the thumbs of his two hands.

“I came,” he said.

Good Lord! If there were an orator-of-the-year award, he would be in dire danger of winning it.

She said nothing, which was hardly surprising.

He cleared his throat.

“You did not write,” he said.

“No.”

He waited.

“No,” she said again. “There was no need. I told you there would not be.”

He was ridiculously disappointed.

“Good.” He nodded curtly.

And silence descended. Why was it that silence sometimes felt like a physical thing with a weight of its own? Not that there was real silence. He could hear the rain lashing down against the window panes.

“My sister is nineteen,” he said. “She has never had much of a social life. My father used to take her to visit our relatives when he was still alive, but since then she has remained essentially at home with her mother, who is always ailing and likes to keep Constance by her side. I am now her guardian—my sister’s, that is. And she needs a social life beyond mere family.”

“I know,” she said. “You explained this to me at Penderris. It is one of your reasons for wanting to marry a woman of your own kind. A practical, capable woman, I believe you said.”

“But she—Constance—is not content to meet her own kind,” he said. “If she were, all would be well. Our relatives would take her about with them and introduce her to all kinds of eligible men, and I would not need to marry after all. Not for that reason, anyway.”

“But—?” She made a question of it.

“She has her heart set upon attending at least one ton ball,” he said. “She believes my title will make it possible. I have promised her that I will make it happen.”

“You are Lord Trentham,” she said, “and the hero of Badajoz. Of course you can make it happen. You have connections.”

“All of them men.” He grimaced slightly. “What if one ball is not enough? What if she is invited elsewhere after that first? What if she acquires a beau?”

“It is altogether possible that she will,” she said. “Your father was very wealthy, you told me. Is she pretty?”

“Yes,” he said. He licked his lips. “I need a wife. A woman who is accustomed to the life of the beau monde. A lady.”

There was a short silence again, and Hugo wished he had rehearsed what he would say. He had the feeling that he had gone about this all wrong. But it was too late now to start again. He could only plow onward.

“Lady Muir,” he said, clutching his crossed fingers almost to the point of pain, “will you marry me?”

Plowing onward when one had not scouted out the territory ahead could be disastrous. He knew that from experience. He knew it now again. All the words he had spoken seemed laid out before him as though printed on a page, and he could see with painful clarity how wrong they were.

And even without that imagined page, there was her face.

It looked as it had that very first day, when she had hurt her leg.

Coldly haughty.

“Thank you, Lord Trentham,” she said, “but I beg to decline.”

Well, there. That was it.

She would have refused him no matter how he had worded his proposal. But he really had not needed to make such a mull of it.

He stared at her, unconsciously hardening his jaw and deepening his frown.

“Of course,” he said. “I expected no different.”

She gazed at him, that haughty look gradually softening into one of puzzlement.

“Did you really expect me to marry you merely because your sister wishes to attend a ton ball?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Why did you come, then?” she asked.

Because I was hoping you were with child. But that was not strictly true. He had not been hoping.

Because I have not been able to get you out of my mind. Pride prevented him from saying any such thing.

Because we had good sex together. No. It was true, but it was not the reason he was here. Not the only reason, anyway.

Why was he here, then? It alarmed him that he did not know the answer to his own question.

“There is no other reason than that, is there?” she asked softly after a lengthy silence.

He had uncrossed his fingers and dropped his arms to his sides. He flexed his fingers now to rid them of the pins and needles.

“I had sex with you,” he said.

“And there were no consequences,” she said. “You did not force me. I freely consented, and it was very … pleasant. But that was all, Hugo. It is forgotten.”

She had called him Hugo. His eyes narrowed on her.

“You said at the time,” he said, “that it was far more than just pleasant.”

Her cheeks flushed.

“I cannot remember,” she said. “You are probably right.”

She could not possibly have forgotten. He was not conceited about his own prowess, but she had been a widow and celibate for seven years. She would not have forgotten even if his performance had been miserable.

It did not matter, though, did it? She would not marry him even if he groveled on the floor at her feet, weeping and reciting bad poetry. She was Lady Muir and he was an upstart. She had had a bad experience with her first marriage and would be very wary about undertaking another. He was a man with issues. She was well aware of that. He was large and clumsy and ugly. Well, perhaps that was a bit of an exaggeration, but not much.

He bowed abruptly to her.

“I thank you, ma’am,” he said, “for granting me a hearing. I will not keep you any longer.”

She turned to leave, but she paused with her hand on the knob of the door.

“Lord Trentham,” she said without turning around, “was your sister your only reason for coming here?”

It would be best not to answer. Or to answer with a lie. It would be best to end this farce as soon as possible so that he could get back out into the fresh air and begin licking his wounds again.

So of course he spoke the truth.

“No,” he said.

Gwen had been feeling angry and so sad that she hardly knew how to draw one breath to follow another. She had felt insulted and grieved. She had longed to make her escape from the library and the house, to dash through the rain to the dower house in her overlong dress and on her weak ankle.

But even the dower house would not have been far enough. Even the ends of the world would not have been.

He had looked like a stern, dour military officer when she came into the library. Like a cold, hard stranger who was here against his will. It had been almost impossible to believe that on one glorious afternoon he had also been her lover.

Impossible with her body and her rational mind, anyway.

Her emotions were a different matter.

And then he had announced that he had come—as if she must have been expecting him, longing for him, pining for him. As though he were conferring a great favor on her.

And then. Well, he had not even made any attempt to hide the motive behind his coming to offer her marriage. It was so that she would use her influence to introduce his precious sister to the ton and find a man of gentle birth to marry her.

He must have been hoping that she was with child so that his task would have been made easier.

She stood with her hand on the door after he had dismissed her—he had dismissed her from Neville’s library. She was that close to freedom and to what she knew would be a foolish and terrible heartbreak. For she could no longer like him, and her memories of him would be forever sullied.

And then it occurred to her.

He could not possibly have come here with the intention of telling her that his sister needed an invitation to a ton ball and that therefore she must marry him. It was just too absurd.

It was altogether possible that he would look back upon this scene and the words he had spoken and cringe. She guessed that if he had rehearsed what he would say, the whole speech had fled from his mind as soon as she stepped into the room. It was altogether possible that his stiff military bearing and hard-set jaw and scowl were hiding embarrassment and insecurity.

It had, she supposed, taken some courage to come here to Newbury.

She could be entirely wrong, of course.

“Lord Trentham,” she asked the door panel in front of her face, “was your sister your only reason for coming here?”

She thought he was not going to answer. She closed her eyes, and her right hand began to turn the knob of the door. The rain pelted against the library window with a particularly vicious burst.

“No,” he said, and she relaxed her hold on the doorknob, opened her eyes, drew a slow breath, and turned.

He looked the same as before. If anything, his scowl was even more fierce. He looked dangerous—but she knew he was not. He was not a dangerous man, though there must be hundreds of men, both living and dead, who would disagree with her if they could.

“I had sex with you,” he said.

He had said that before, and then they had got distracted by a discussion of whether she had found it pleasant or more than pleasant.

“And that means you ought to marry me?” she said.

“Yes.” He gazed steadily at her.

“Is this your middle-class morality speaking?” she asked him. “But you have had other women. You admitted as much to me at Penderris. Did you feel obliged to offer them marriage too?”

“That was different,” he said.

“How?”

“Sex with them was a business arrangement,” he said. “I paid, they provided.”

Oh, goodness. Gwen felt dizzy for a moment. Her brother and her male cousins would have forty fits apiece if they were listening now.

“If you had paid me,” she said, “you would not be obliged to offer me marriage?”

“That’s daft,” he said.

Gwen sighed and looked toward the fireplace. There was a fire burning, but it needed more coal. She shivered slightly. She ought to have asked Lily for a shawl to wrap about her shoulders.

“You are cold,” Lord Trentham said, and he too looked at the fireplace before striding over to the hearth and bending to the coal scuttle.

Gwen moved across the room while he was busy and sat on the edge of a leather chair close to the blaze. She held her hands out to it. Lord Trentham stood slightly to one side of the fire, his back to it, and looked down at her.

“I never felt any strong urge to marry,” he said. “I felt it even less after my years at Penderris. I wanted—I needed to be alone. It is only during the past year that I have come reluctantly to the conclusion that I ought to marry—someone of my own kind, someone who can satisfy my basic needs, someone who can manage my home and help in some way with the farm and garden, someone who can help me with Constance until she is properly settled. Someone to fit in, not to intrude. Someone on whose private life I would not intrude. A comfortable companion.”

“But a lusty bed partner,” she said. She glanced up at him before returning her gaze to the fire.

“And that too,” he agreed. “All men need a vigorous and satisfying sex life. I do not apologize for wanting it within a marriage rather than outside it.”

Gwen raised her eyebrows. Well, she had started it.

“When I met you,” he said, “I wanted to bed you almost from the beginning even though you irritated me no end with your haughty pride and your insistence upon being put down when I was carrying you up from the beach. And I expected to despise you after you told me about that ride with your husband and its consequences. But we all do things in our lives that are against our better judgment and that we regret bitterly forever after. We all suffer. I wanted you, and I had you down in that cove. But there was never any question of marriage. We were both agreed upon that. I could never fit in with your life, and you could never fit in with mine.”

“But you changed your mind,” she said. “You came here.”

“I somehow expected,” he said, “that you were with child. Or if I did not exactly expect it, I did at least shape my mind in that direction so that I would be prepared. And when I did not hear from you, I thought that perhaps you would withhold the truth from me and bear a bastard child I would never know anything about. It gnawed at me. I wouldn’t have come even then, though. If you were so much against marrying me that you would even hide a bastard child from me, then coming here and asking was not going to make any difference. And then Constance told me about her dreams. Youthful dreams are precious things. They ought not to be dashed as foolish and unrealistic just because they are young dreams. Innocence ought not to be destroyed from any callous conviction that a realistic sort of cynicism is better.”

Is that what happened to you?

She did not ask the question aloud.

“A wife from the middle classes would not be able to help me,” he said.

“But I would?”

He hesitated.

“Yes,” he said.

“This is not your only reason for wishing to marry me, though?” she asked.

He hesitated again.

“No,” he said. “I had sex with you. I put you in danger of conceiving out of wedlock. There is no one else I want to marry—not at present, anyway. There would be passion in our marriage bed. On both our parts.”

“And it does not matter that we would be incompatible in every other way?” she said.

Again the hesitation.

“I thought we might give it a try,” he said.

She looked up again and met his gaze.

“Oh, Hugo,” she said. “One gives painting a try when one has never held a brush in one’s hand before. Or climbing a steep cliff face when one is afraid of heights or eating an unfamiliar food when one does not really like the look of it. If one likes it, whatever it is, one can keep going. If one does not, one can stop and try something else. One cannot try marriage. Once one is in, there is no way out.”

“You would know,” he said. “You have tried it already. I will take my leave, then, ma’am. I hope you will not take a chill from your soaking and from standing in here in a dress designed for summer rather than early spring.”

He bowed stiffly.

He was calling her ma’am; she was calling him Hugo.

“And one tries courtship,” she said and looked down again. She closed her eyes. This was foolish. More than foolish. But perhaps he would continue on his way out of her life.

He did not. He straightened up and stayed where he was. There was a silence in which Gwen could hear that there had been no abatement in the force of the rain.

“Courtship?” he said.

“I could indeed help your sister,” she said, opening her eyes and examining the backs of her hands as they lay in her lap. “If she is pretty and has genteel manners, as I daresay she does, and is wealthy, then she will take well enough with the ton even if not with the very highest echelon. She would take well, that is, if I were to sponsor her.”

“You would be willing to do that,” he asked her, “when you have not even met her?”

“I would have to meet her first, of course,” she said.

Silence descended once more.

“I daresay that if we like each other I will sponsor her,” she said, looking at him again. “But it will quickly become known who Miss Emes is, who her brother is. You will probably be surprised to find yourself quite famous, Lord Trentham. Not many military officers, especially those who are not born into the upper classes, are rewarded for military service with titles. And when people learn who Miss Emes is and who you are and who is sponsoring her, it will not be long before word will spread of our meeting in Cornwall earlier this year. Tongues will wag even if there is nothing for them to wag about.”

“I would not have you the subject of gossip,” he said.

“Oh, not gossip, Lord Trentham,” she said. “Speculation. The ton loves nothing more during the Season than to play matchmaker or at least to speculate upon who is paying court to whom and what the outcome is likely to be. Word will soon have it that you are courting me.”

“And that I am a presumptuous devil,” he said, “who ought to be strung up from the nearest tree by his thumbs.”

She smiled.

“There will of course be those who are outraged,” she said, “at you for your presumption, at me for encouraging it. And there will be those who are charmed by the romance of it all. There will be wagers made.”

Both his jaw and his eyes hardened.

“If you really wish to marry me,” she said, “you may court me through the coming Season, Lord Trentham. There will be ample opportunity—provided, of course, your sister pleases me and I please her.”

“You will marry me, then?” he asked, frowning.

“Very probably not,” she said. “But a marriage proposal is made after courtship, not before. Court me, then, and persuade me to change my mind if you do not change yours first.”

“How the devil,” he asked her, “am I to do that? I do not know the first thing about courtship.”

She smiled with the first genuine amusement she had felt for a long while.

“You are in your thirties,” she said. “It is time you learned.”

If he had looked hard-jawed before, he looked positively granite-jawed now. He gazed steadily at her.

Then he bowed again.

“If you would care to inform me after you have arrived in London,” he said, “I will wait upon you with my sister, ma’am.” “I shall look forward to it,” she said.

And he strode from the room and closed the door behind him.

Gwen sat gazing into the fire, her hands clasped very tightly in her lap.

Whatever had she done?

But she was not sorry, she realized. It would be … fun to launch a young girl upon the ton, especially a girl who was not of it. It would brighten the Season for her, make it different from all the rather tedious ones that had gone before it. It would rid her of the low spirits that had been dogging her. It would be a challenge.

And Hugo would be paying court to her.

Perhaps.

Oh, this was a colossal mistake.

But her heart was thumping with something very like excitement. And anticipation. She felt fully alive for the first time in a long, long while.