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

It had not been his fault, Gwen thought, that joke and the coincidence of her being on the beach today of all days. It just felt as if it were his fault. She resented him anyway. She had just been horribly embarrassed.

And Lord Trentham looked as if he resented her. Probably because he had just been horribly embarrassed.

His eyes were on the door as though he could still see his fellow guests through its panels and longed to be on the other side with them. She wished quite fervently that he was there too.

“Will Sir Benedict ever walk without his canes?” she asked for something to say.

He pursed his lips, and for a moment she thought he would not answer.

“The whole world beyond these walls,” he said eventually, still watching the door, “would say a resounding no. The whole world called him fool for refusing to have the legs amputated and then for not accepting reality and resigning himself to living the rest of his life in bed or at least in a chair. There are six of us within this house who would wager a fortune apiece on him. He swears he will dance one day, and the only thing we wonder about is who his partner will be.”

Oh dear, she thought after another short silence, this was going to be an uphill battle.

“Do you often see people down on the beach?” she asked.

He turned to look at her.

“Never,” he said. “In all the times I have been down there, I have never encountered another soul who was not also from this house. Until today.”

There was a suggestion of reproach in his voice.

“Then I suppose,” she said, “it seemed a safe thing to say to your friends, who were teasing you. That you would find a woman to whom to propose marriage down on the beach, I mean.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “It did.”

She smiled at him, and then laughed softly. He looked back, no answering amusement in his face.

“It all really is funny,” she said. “Except that now you will doubtless be teased endlessly. And I am confined here for at least a week with a sprained ankle. And,” she added when he still did not smile, “you and I will probably be horribly embarrassed in each other’s company until I finally leave here.”

“If I could throttle young Darleigh,” he said, “without actually committing murder, I would.”

Gwen laughed again.

And silence descended once more.

“Lord Trentham,” she said, “you really do not need to bear me company here, you know. You came to Penderris to enjoy the companionship of the Duke of Stanbrook and your fellow guests. I daresay your suffering together here for so long established a special bond among you, and I have now intruded upon that intimacy. Everyone has been most kind and courteous to me, but I am quite determined to be as little of a nuisance while I must remain here as I possibly can be. Please feel free to join the others in the dining room.”

He still stood looking down at her, his hands clasped behind his back.

“You would have me thwart the will of my host, then?” he asked her. “I will not do it, ma’am. I will remain here.”

Lord Trentham. He could be anything from a baron on up to a marquess, Gwen thought, though she had never heard of him before today. And if what Viscount Ponsonby had said was correct, he was also extremely wealthy. Yet he did not have the manners of a thick plank.

She inclined her head to him and resolved not to utter another word before he did, though she would thereby be lowering her manners to the level of his. So be it.

But before the silence could become uncomfortable again, the door opened to admit two servants, who proceeded to move a table closer to the sofa and set it for one diner. Before those servants had time to leave the room, two others entered bearing laden trays. One was set across Gwen’s lap while the other was carried to the table, where the various dishes were set out for Lord Trentham’s dinner.

The servants left as silently as they had come. Gwen looked down at her soup and picked up her spoon as Lord Trentham took his place at the table.

“I beg your pardon,” Lord Trentham said, “for the embarrassment a seemingly harmless joke has caused you, Lady Muir. It is one thing to be teased by friends. It is another to be humiliated by strangers.”

She looked at him in surprise.

“I daresay,” she said, “I will survive the ordeal.”

He returned her look, saw that she was smiling, and nodded curtly before addressing himself to his dinner.

The Duke of Stanbrook had an excellent chef, Gwen thought, if the oxtail soup was anything to judge by.

“You are in search of a wife, Lord Trentham?” she said. “Do you have any particular lady in mind?”

“No,” he said. “But I want someone of my own sort. A practical, capable woman.”

She looked up at him. Someone of my own sort.

“I was not born a gentleman,” he explained. “My title was awarded to me during the wars, as a result of something I did. My father was probably one of the wealthiest men in England. He was a very successful businessman. But he was not a gentleman, and he had no desire to be one. He had no social ambitions for his children either. He despised the upper classes as idle wastrels, if the truth were told. He wanted us to fit in where we belonged. I have not always honored his wishes, but in that particular one I concur with him. It would suit me best to find a wife of my own class.”

Much had been explained, Gwen thought.

“What did you do?” she asked as she pushed back her empty soup bowl and drew forward her plate of roast beef and vegetables.

He looked back at her, his eyebrows raised.

“It must have been something extraordinary,” she said, “if the reward was a title.”

He shrugged.

“I led a Forlorn Hope,” he said.

“A Forlorn Hope?” Her knife and fork remained suspended above her plate. “And you survived it?”

“As you see,” he said.

She gazed at him in wonder and admiration. A Forlorn Hope was almost always suicidal and almost always a failure. He could not have failed if he had been so rewarded. And good heavens, he was not even a gentleman. There were not many officers who were not.

“I do not talk about it,” he said, cutting into his meat. “Ever.”

Gwen continued to stare for a few moments before resuming her meal. Were the memories so painful, then, that they were not even tempered by the reward? Was it there that he had been so horribly wounded that he had spent a long time here recovering his health?

But his title, she realized, sat uneasily upon his shoulders.

“How long have you been widowed?” he asked her in what, she guessed, was a determined effort to change the subject.

“Seven years,” she said.

“You have never wished to marry again?” he asked.

“Never,” she said—and thought of that strange, crashing loneliness she had felt down on the beach.

“You loved him, then?” he asked.

“Yes.” It was true. Despite everything, she had loved Vernon. “Yes, I loved him.”

“How did he die?” he asked.

A gentleman would not have asked such a question.

“He fell,” she told him, “over the balustrade of the gallery above the marble hall in our home. He landed on his head and died instantly.”

Too late it occurred to her that she might have answered with some truth, as he had done a short while ago—I do not talk about it. Ever.

He swallowed the food that was in his mouth. But she knew what he was about to ask even before he spoke again.

“How long was this,” he asked, “after you fell off your horse and lost your unborn child?”

Well, she was committed now.

“A year,” she said. “A little less.”

“You had a marriage unusually punctuated with violence,” he said.

Her answer had not needed comment. Or, rather, not such a comment. She set her knife and fork down across her half-empty plate with a little clatter.

“You are impertinent, Lord Trentham,” she said.

Oh, but this was her own fault. His very first question had been impertinent. She ought to have told him so then.

“I am,” he said. “It is not how a gentleman behaves, is it? Or a man who is not a gentleman when he is talking to a lady. I have never freed myself of the habit, when I wish to know something, of simply asking. It is not always the polite thing to do, I have learned.”

She finished the food on her plate, moved the plate to the back of the tray, and drew forward her pudding dish. She picked up her wineglass and sipped from it. She set it down and sighed.

“My closest family members,” she said, “have always chosen to believe quite steadfastly that Vernon and I had a blissful love relationship that was blighted by accident and tragedy. Other people are notably silent upon the subject of my marriage and my husband’s death, but I can often almost hear them thinking and assuming that it was a marriage filled with violence and abuse.”

“And was it?” he asked.

She closed her eyes briefly.

“Sometimes,” she said, “life is too complicated for there to be a simple answer to a simple question. I did indeed love him, and he loved me. Often our love was blissful. But … Well, sometimes it seemed to me that Vernon was two different people. Often—most of the time, in fact—he was cheerful and charming and witty and intelligent and affectionate and a whole host of other things that made him very dear to me. But occasionally, although he remained in many ways much the same, there was something almost … oh, desperate about his high spirits. And I always felt at such times that there was the finest of fine lines between happiness and despair, and he trod that line. The trouble was that he never came out of it on the side of happiness. He always tumbled the other way. And then for days, occasionally even for a few weeks, he was plunged into the blackest of black moods and nothing I could say or do would pull him free—until one day, without any warning at all, he would be back to his usual self. I learned to recognize the moment when his mood was turning to the overe-xuberant. I learned to dread such moments because there was no coaxing him back from the brink. Though for the last year his moods hovered most of the time between black and blacker. And you are the only person, Lord Trentham, to whom I have spoken of such things. I have no idea why I have broken my silence with a near stranger.”

She was partly horrified, partly relieved that she had revealed so much to a man she did not even particularly like. Though there was much, of course, that she had not said.

“It is this place,” he said. “It has been the scene of much unburdening over the years, some of it all but unspeakable and all but unthinkable. There is trust in this house. We all trust one another here, and no one has ever betrayed that trust. Did you go on that mad ride when Lord Muir was in one of his excitable moods?”

“At that time in my marriage,” she said, “I still clung to the belief that I could avert his black moods by humoring his wild whims. He wanted me to ride with him that day and brushed aside all my protests. And so I went, and I followed wherever he led. I was terrified that he would hurt himself. What I thought I could do to keep him from harm just by being with him I do not know.”

“But it was not he who was hurt,” he said.

Except that in many ways he had been hurt as badly as she. And neither of them had been hurt as badly as their child.

“No.” Her eyes were shut tight again. Her spoon was clutched, forgotten, in one hand.

“But it was he who got hurt on the night he died,” he said.

She opened her eyes and turned her head to look coldly at him. What was he? Her inquisitor?

“That is enough,” she said. “He did not abuse me, Lord Trentham. He never raised a hand or voice to me or belittled me or lashed out at me with words. I believe he was ill, even if there is no name for his illness. He was not mad. He did not belong in an asylum. Neither did he belong on a sickbed. But he was ill nevertheless. That is hard for anyone to comprehend who did not live with him constantly, day and night, as I did. But it is true. I loved him. I had promised to love him in sickness and in health until death parted us, and I did love him to the end. But it was not easy, for all that. After his death I grieved deeply for him. I was also weary of marriage to the marrow of my bones. That one marriage brought me great joy, but it also brought almost more misery than I could bear. I wanted peace afterward. I wanted it for the rest of my life. I have had it now for seven years and am perfectly content to remain as I am.”

“No man could change your mind?” he asked.

Even just yesterday she would have said no without any hesitation at all. Even this morning she had been in denial of the essential emptiness and loneliness of her life. Or perhaps that brief moment on the beach had been instigated by nothing more serious than her quarrel with Vera and the bleakness of her surroundings.

“He would have to be the perfect man,” she said, “and there is really no such thing as perfection, is there? He would have to be an even-tempered, cheerful, comfortable companion who has known no great trouble in his life. He would have to offer a relationship that promised peace and stability and … Oh, and simplicity with no excessive highs and lows.”

Yes, she thought, surprised, such a marriage would be pleasant. But she doubted there was a man perfect for her needs. And even if there was one who seemed perfect and who wished to marry her, how would she know for sure what he was like until after she had married him and lived with him and it was too late to change her mind?

And how could she ever be worthy of happiness?

“No passion?” he asked her. “He would not have to be good in bed?”

Her head snapped around in his direction. She felt her eyes grow wide with shock and her cheeks flame with heat.

“You really are a plain-spoken man, Lord Trentham,” she said, “or else an extraordinarily impertinent one. Pleasure in the marriage bed need not involve passion, as you put it. It can be simply shared comfort. If I were looking for a husband, I would be happy with the shared comfort. And if you are looking for a wife who is practical and capable, passion cannot count a great deal with you either, can it?”

She was feeling horridly discomposed and had spoken quite indiscreetly.

“A woman can be practical and capable and lusty too,” he said. “She would have to be lusty if I were to marry her. I am going to have to give up other women when I wed. It would not be seemly to seek my pleasure outside my marriage bed, would it? It would not be fair to my wife or a good example to my children. And there is middle-class morality for you, Lady Muir. I am lusty but believe in marital fidelity.”

She set her spoon down on her plate, careful this time not to let it clatter. And then she spread her hands over her face and laughed into them. Could he possibly have just said what she knew very well he had said?

“I am really quite, quite sure,” she said, “that this has been the strangest day of my life, Lord Trentham. And now it has culminated in a short lecture on lust and middle-class morality.”

“Well,” he said, pushing back his chair and getting to his feet, “that is what you get when you sprain your ankle within sight of a man who is not a gentleman, ma’am. I will remove that tray from across your lap and set it down on the table here with my dishes. You have finished eating, have you?”

“I have,” she said while he suited action to words and then turned back to look down at her.

“Why the devil,” he asked her, “were you staying with Mrs. Parkinson? Why are you her friend?”

She raised her eyebrows at both the blasphemy and the questions.

“She lost her husband lately,” she said, “and was feeling unhappy and lonely. I know both feelings. I knew her long ago and have corresponded with her from time to time ever since. I was free to come and so I came.”

“You realize, I suppose,” he said, “that she feels nothing whatsoever for you, but only for your title and your close connection with the Earl of Kilbourne. And that she will come here daily only because it is Penderris Hall, home of the Duke of Stanbrook.”

“Lord Trentham,” she said, “Vera Parkinson’s loneliness is very real. If I have helped alleviate it in some small degree during the past two weeks, then I am satisfied.”

“The trouble with the upper classes,” he said, “is that they rarely speak the truth. The woman is a horror.”

Oh, dear. Gwen feared she would hug that last sentence to herself with glee for a long time to come.

“Sometimes, Lord Trentham,” she said, “tempering the truth with tact and kindness is called good manners.”

“You use them even when you scold,” he said.

“I try.”

She wished he would sit down again. Even if she were also standing he would tower over her. As it was, he looked like a veritable giant. Perhaps the enemy against whom he had led the Forlorn Hope had taken one look at him and fled. It would not surprise her.

“You are not by any manner of means the sort of woman I am in search of as a wife,” he said, “and I am in a totally different universe from the husband you hope to find. But I feel a powerful urge to kiss you, for all that.”

What?

But the trouble was that his outrageous words aroused such a surging of raw desire to all the relevant parts of her body that she was left gaping and breathless. And despite his massive size and his cropped hair and his dour, fierce countenance, and his lack of gentlemanly manners, she still found him overpoweringly attractive.

“I suppose,” he said, “I ought to restrain myself. But there was the coincidence of that meeting on the beach, you see.”

She closed her mouth and mastered her breathing. She was not going to let him get away with such impertinence, was she?

“Yes,” she heard herself say as she gazed into his eyes far above her own, “there was that. And there is a school of thought, I have heard, that claims there is no such thing as coincidence.”

Was he really going to kiss her? Was she going to allow it? She had not gone unkissed for seven years. She had allowed a few restrained embraces from various gentlemen of her acquaintance. But never from any to whom she had felt any greater attraction than liking. And none from any real physical desire—not on her part, anyway.

For a few moments she thought he would not kiss her after all. There was no unbending of his stiff posture and no softening of his expression. But then he leaned forward and downward, and she lifted her hands to set on his shoulders. Oh, goodness, they were broad and solid. But she knew that. He had carried her …

He touched his lips to hers.

And she was engulfed in a sudden heat of desire.

She expected that he would crush her in his arms and press his mouth hard against hers. She expected to have to ward off a hot outpouring of ardor.

Instead, he spread his hands lightly on either side of her waist, his thumbs beneath her bosom but not pushing up against it. And his lips brushed softly over hers, tasting her, teasing her. She moved her hands in to cup the sides of his great neck. She could feel his breath against her cheek. She could smell that faint soap or cologne scent she had noticed earlier—something enticingly masculine.

The heat of her desire cooled. But what replaced it was almost worse. For it was not a mindless embrace. She was very aware of him. And she was very aware that, despite all appearances, there was gentleness in him. She had felt it in the touch of his hands on her ankle, of course, but she had ignored it then. It had seemed to be contrary to all else she had observed of him.

He lifted his head and looked steadily into her eyes. Oh, goodness, his were no less fierce than they usually were. She gazed right back and raised her eyebrows.

“I suppose,” he said, “if I were a gentleman, I would now be offering abject apologies.”

“But you gave me advance warning,” she said, “and I did not say no. Shall we agree, Lord Trentham, that this has been a very strange day for both of us, but that now it is almost over? Tomorrow we will put all this behind us and return to more decorous behavior.”

He stood upright and clasped his hands behind him. She was beginning to recognize it as a familiar pose.

“That seems sensible,” he said.

Fortunately, there was no time to say more. A tap on the door was followed by the appearance of two servants come to clear the table and take away the trays. And within moments of the door closing behind them, it opened again to admit the duke and his other guests returning from the dining room.

Lady Barclay and Lord Darleigh came to sit close to Gwen and engaged her in conversation while Lord Trentham moved away to play cards with three of the other gentlemen.

If she were to awake now, Gwen thought, she would surely judge the dream of today to be the most bizarre she had ever dreamed. But alas, the events, beginning with the arrival of her mother’s letter this morning, had been just too bizarre not to have been real. And was it possible to dream of taste? Somehow she could still taste Lord Trentham on her lips, though he had eaten the same food and drunk the same wine as she.