Courtney Milan (27 page)

“I have never said that. Surely, in all of Leicester—once we include the surrounding areas—somewhere there must be some man who is undiscriminating enough to marry you.”

Lydia felt curiously light. “I’m sure there is,” she said, very quietly. “And what I most fear is that I am undiscriminating enough to let him do it.”

He didn’t say anything to that.

“Take Captain Stevens, my former fiancé. Not only did he threaten my best friend, but he was putting the most extraordinary pressure my father. And I knew that when he asked. I agreed to marry him, because I thought if I did, it would stop. I convinced myself that we would do well together—that he cared for me, that he would make a good husband. I knew I didn’t care for him in that way, and that was his greatest recommendation. I thought that made me safe.”

Grantham didn’t say anything to that.

“Listen to what I am saying. I convinced myself that George Stevens was safe when he was leaning on my father.” Lydia threw her hands in the air. “And Tom Paggett—I wasn’t the only girl he interfered with. A few months after he left town, the residents of his new city caught him with a thirteen-year-old child. They couldn’t prove…in any event, he was only thrown in the stocks, but the people were so riled that they threw more than fruit, and he…” Lydia didn’t want to finish the sentence, but she didn’t need to. Grantham likely knew what happened to a man who was hit with stones at close range. “And so yes, Doctor, I’m sure that there is some man who will be sufficiently interested. But what I most fear is that I’ll convince myself that he’s safe. I’ll marry him because it will make my family’s life easier, and tell myself again and again that he’s the best thing for me.” Her jaw clenched. “All the while, he’ll be nothing more than a common criminal. You were right about at least one thing. I am overly cheerful, and no group less deserves my cheer than the men who are interested in…”

She bit her lip. She couldn’t say that word, not to a man. She
couldn’t.
But he was looking at her, and somehow she found the courage.

“No group less deserves my cheer than the men who are interested in my vagina. But we were not talking about me. We were talking about you.” She looked down. “Now that I’ve discovered that you aren’t as bad as I thought, I’m amazed anew. How is it that you could have been fixed on one person for so long? I can understand her not returning your regard—that makes perfect sense.”

“Of course,” he said repressively.

“Not that I mean to be cruel, but you are a little…”

“I am well aware of my flaws,” he said. “We can save their enumeration for some later time, if it pleases you.”

“So—she has refused your suit. Unequivocally. And you are still fixed on her? That seems surprisingly illogical of you.”

Grantham looked at her. “She has not refused my suit. If you must know, I haven’t asked.”

“Haven’t asked her? Doctor Grantham, you can tell a patient straight out that she ought to make a rubber mold of her cervix. You cannot make me believe that you are unable to propose to a woman.”

“The time has never seemed right.” He folded his arms. “There were other people about, or she didn’t seem to be in the proper mood, or I ruined everything by making a stupid joke about gonorrhea. I have not completely crushed my sense of social obligations. In any event, even I have fears. I am afraid that she will turn me down. And once she does so unequivocally, that will be the end of it all.”

“Does she even
know
that you feel this way about her?”

“She knows,” he said calmly. “At this point, she would have to be an idiot not to know, and she’s not that. I suspect that for her own inscrutable reasons, she doesn’t want to admit it to herself. I am ornery and difficult, but I am not a particularly subtle individual, and there can be no other explanation for my attention to her.”

He looked into her eyes as she spoke, and she felt an unwelcome thrill deep in her belly, as if these words had found their target deep in her solar plexus. She shook off that odd feeling and turned away from the direct intensity of his gaze.

“Believe it or not, Doctor Grantham, I am beginning to like you. Your personality may be…well, a bit abrasive, but it grows on me. I want to help you, give you a push. Even abrasive, difficult men deserve happiness. I should be able to figure out who you’re enamored of without too much difficulty.”

“Yes, you should,” he said.

Every sentence sent a little pulse of excitement through her.

She made herself look up at him with a smile on her face. “Maybe I could help you. Put in a good word for you, that sort of thing.”

He smiled faintly. “When you figure it out,” he said, “I’d be much obliged. Tell her that I may be difficult, but I am remarkably constant in my affections, that I have thought of her every day for these last sixteen months. Even when it made no sense.”

And that left her with the biggest thrill of all, her whole body vibrating with an unexplainable urgency.

Chapter Nine

F
OR THE SECOND NIGHT IN A ROW,
Doctor Grantham had left Lydia in a state of bewilderment. After he’d returned her to her doorstep, her confusion had refused to untangle. She’d thought of what he’d said as she entered the house, throughout dinner. She was still thinking about it when she joined her parents in the back parlor.

He’d admitted that he’d been taken with a woman for more than a year. It was such a romantic thing to say. Which was why she could hardly countenance it from him.

If someone had asked her before today, she would have imagined that he was the sort to say that all women were alike. He’d use medical terms. One vagina, he might say, was much like another. Both provided the same stimulation to the pleasure centers. She bit her lip, imagining him saying that in his dark, gravelly voice.

But he hadn’t said that. And today, behind the tree…

She would never be able to explain how much it had meant to have his arms around her. He’d made her feel that all would be well, even though she had never cried like that before. Even though that scent of pine had reminded her of that long-ago hurt. He’d helped her, at the cost of his personal embarrassment. It was only fair that she try to advance his cause.

As she sat next to her mother, embroidering her tablecloth, her mind kept shying back to Grantham.

“Mother,” she said, finally, “what do you know of Grantham?”

“You’re going on a few house calls with him, aren’t you? Is there any interest there?”

Lydia colored. “No, no. Of course not.” She wasn’t so foolish as to become interested in a man who wanted another. Even if she
did
want to know who it was.

Her mother looked at her for a long while, until Lydia dropped her eyes. There wasn’t any interest on her part. Just…curiosity, that was all. She wanted to know what sort of woman would capture the imagination of that sort of man.

He was singularly straightforward. His regard would be a compliment in a way that another man’s would not. He wouldn’t be the sort to imagine a girl perfect because he was confused by his physical desire. He would see her—all her faults—and would decide that he wanted her anyway. Lydia simply wanted to know who this paragon was who had earned his affection.

Whoever it was, she had to be pretty. He wouldn’t have made a list of pretty women if he didn’t value the characteristic. Maybe it was Joanna Perkins. She was absolutely lovely, with that bright golden hair and that brilliant laugh. He’d like a woman who laughed—they could laugh together.

But he’d said he’d paid her marked attention, and she could not recall Grantham once walking with Miss Perkins and courting that laugh of hers. She tried to remember seeing him talking to another woman. He was so tall that he would have to bend to murmur sweet nothings.

That mental image—the idea of Grantham leaning over another woman the way he had with Lydia today, giving her that dark, wicked smile that seemed meant for her alone—that made her fists clench in a way that she didn’t care to examine. She would have remembered seeing him talk to another woman that way. She couldn’t have helped but remember it.

Maybe he was more circumspect than she’d imagined. She’d tell him that tomorrow that he needed to be more marked in his affections.

Her father had joined her mother today. They sat next to each other, she embroidering, he reading through a list of reports, his spectacles perched on the end of his nose.

“What do you think of Grantham?” Her heart raced as she spoke.

Her father looked over the rims of his spectacles at her. “Am I going to have to have another talk with him?”

“No. No. I’m just accompanying him on a few house calls.” And hitting him, and bursting into tears, and letting him hold her. And then there were the topics of their conversation. Safe to say that she wouldn’t tell her father that Grantham was instructing her on the use of French letters. He might take that amiss.

Lydia looked up at the ceiling. “He’s an interesting man. I only want to figure him out.”

“Hmm,” her father said. He glanced over at her mother, who gave him a repressive shake of her head.

Grantham had said she could figure out who it was, and Lydia wouldn’t be able to sleep until she did. It couldn’t be that he’d been in love with
Minnie,
could it? Lydia’s best friend had married recently, and it would make perfect sense if he liked her. She was intelligent and beautiful—perhaps not the kind of beauty that would land on lists, but the kind that anyone with eyes could see, if only they looked long enough. It would explain why he hadn’t said a word. Lydia could have ceded him to Minnie without even thinking.

Except…

Except that up until two months ago, Minnie hadn’t had a decent prospect at all, and she’d been near the point of desperation. Grantham would have had only to speak the word, and she would have been his.

Not Minnie.

Doctor Grantham had told her that he had a few defects in his character.

Lydia knew she had a few faults of her own, and one of the things she knew she was shockingly good at was telling lies to herself. She had convinced herself she would be happy to marry a man she didn’t care for, simply because it made sense to marry him and would have done her father good. She’d convinced herself that there was
something else
that would happen when she married—something besides the unholy joining of male and female forms, something beside the emission of seed, simply because the man she loved had said it was so.

She’d convinced herself that she wasn’t angry about what had happened to her. Lydia knew that she lied to herself as assiduously as Grantham told the bare truth.

But occasionally, she managed to shock even herself.

She had just thought to herself that she could have
ceded
him to her friend. As if the mere fact that he’d held her this afternoon meant that he belonged to
her
. She didn’t want him for herself, did she? She couldn’t want him. He was… He was…

Lydia swallowed.

He was in love with another woman.

She knows,
she remembered him saying calmly.
I am not a particularly subtle individual.

“Oh,” she said aloud, “you sly little…sneaky…ridiculous…”

She ran out of insults just as her parents both looked up at her.

“Not you,” she said to her father. “Not you either, Mother.”

But he hadn’t been sly or sneaky. He’d been remarkably upfront. He’d told her that he was madly in love with her, that he had been for months. And he’d said it just sarcastically enough that she’d shook her head and refused to think about the flutter in her belly. It didn’t make any sense, though. He couldn’t be in love with her. Why, he knew that she’d been pregnant—that she’d had relations with another man outside of marriage.

The hymen is just a membrano-carneous structure…

Oh, God. If she started with the premise that he wanted her, this whole wager took on an entirely different complexion.

If she started with the premise that he wanted her, she didn’t even know if she could talk to him. Their easy conversation of the last day, their friendship, his jokes about gonorrhea… The way he’d put his arms around her and held her, even when doing so had made the circumstance of his physical arousal so apparent. Everything had been so simple.

I may be difficult, but I am remarkably constant in my affections, and I have thought of her every day for these last sixteen months.

He was talking about
her
. He’d been talking about her the whole time. He’d known it and he’d looked straight at her and said those things, knowing precisely what he was saying and who he was saying it to.

And he was right. She’d known it. Even when she had been unable to admit it in her mind, her body had known, inclining to his, molding to his. She’d thrilled when he’d looked at her. That was neither fear she felt nor antipathy. That shock that traveled through her when he looked at her…that was attraction.

Lydia swallowed.

She should have been happy at the discovery. She was beginning to like him—perhaps more than like him. To realize that he felt the same way about her, that he’d been so fixed on her despite all the things she’d said to him…