The Proposal (32 page)

“Shame!” someone said before being shushed. But it was not clear whether he addressed Grayson or Hugo.

Hugo could feel all eyes upon him even though he looked nowhere but back at Grayson.

“It is your word against mine, Grayson,” he said. “I do not intend to brawl with you.”

From the corner of his eye he could see Constance. Damn it all, she was back from the river already and had moved into the circle of listeners.

He turned to Lady Muir and inclined his head stiffly.

“I will take my leave, ma’am,” he said, “and take my sister home.”

And then a weak, rather reedy, but perfectly audible voice spoke up from behind him.

“There is one survivor right here to contradict you, Muir,” Frank Carstairs said. “I have no reason to love Emes. He took the command that ought to have been mine on that day. And then his bravery showed up my cowardice and has preyed upon my conscience every moment of every day since. I wanted to abort the charge when the men started to die in droves, but he forced us onward. At least, he charged onward himself and did not look back to see if we followed. And he was
right
. We were a
Forlorn Hope,
dash it all. We volunteered for death. We were the cannon fodder that would allow the real attack to break through behind us. Captain Emes led
from the front,
and he earned all the accolades he has received since.”

Hugo did not turn. Nor did he move. He felt stranded in the midst of surely the worst moment of his life, worse even than the day he had gone out of his head. Though no, perhaps not worse than that. Nothing could ever be worse than that.

“Dear me,” a languid voice said, “I am for my tea. Lady Muir, Trentham, do join Christine and me at our table. It has the advantage of being in the shade.”

It was a man he had just met, Hugo saw when he looked away from Grayson at last—the one with the autocratic air and the silver eyes and the jeweled quizzing glass, which was currently trained upon the suddenly retreating figure of Grayson. The Duke of Bewcastle.

“Thank you.” Lady Muir took Hugo’s arm. “We will be delighted, Your Grace. And the shade will indeed be welcome. The sun becomes uncomfortably warm when one has been out in it for a while, does it not?”

And suddenly everyone was moving again and talking and laughing again, and the party had resumed as if nothing untoward had happened. Carstairs was not looking his way, Hugo saw when he looked directly at him, but was talking quite pointedly to his wife. It was the
ton
’s way, Hugo realized.

But doubtless polite drawing rooms and club rooms throughout London would buzz with the interchange for days to come.

Chapter 19

I have decided,” Lord Trentham said. “I am not going to court you.”

Gwen picked up her embroidery without really realizing she was doing so, and began to stitch. She had been about to say,
Is it for certain this time?
But there was nothing in his face that suggested he might be inviting some verbal sparring from her.

He had arrived at the house just as she was about to leave with Lily and her mother. They were going to make a round of afternoon calls with Lauren. Neville was at the House of Lords.

“Very well,” she said.

He was standing in the middle of the drawing room, in his usual military stance, though she had invited him to be seated. He was glowering. She knew he was. She did not have to lift her head to confirm the fact.

“If you would be so good as to escort Constance to the remaining entertainments she has agreed to attend,” he said, “I would be grateful to you. But it does not matter if you feel you cannot do it. She has begun to understand that the world of the
ton
is not necessarily the promised land.”

“I will certainly do that,” she said. “And she may accept more invitations too if she wishes. I will be happy to continue to sponsor her. There is no such place as the promised land, but it would be foolish to reject even an unpromised land as worthless without first inspecting it thoroughly. She has taken well with the
ton
and can expect to make a perfectly respectable match with a gentleman of her choosing if she should so desire.”

He stood there looking down at her, and she wished she had not picked up her embroidery. She had to concentrate hard to keep her hand steady. And her green silk thread, she noticed, was filling in the broad petal of a rose instead of the leaf on its stem. The other petals were a deep rose pink.

She decided she would not be the one to break the silence.

“I daresay,” he said, “your family had a thing or two to say about your allowing yourself to be caught up in that unseemly scene yesterday.”

“Let me see.” She held the thread above her work for a moment. “My brother was in favor of slapping a glove across Jason’s face and calling him out for the insult he so publicly dealt me—and himself. But Lily persuaded him that it would be a far worse punishment for a man like Jason to be soundly ignored. My cousin Joseph also wanted to call him out, but Neville told him that he must stand in line. Lily suggested that we add Mrs. Carstairs to our list of ladies to be called upon this afternoon, since her husband did something extraordinary yesterday and the lady always looks so desperately lonely anyway. Mama said that she had never been more proud of me than when I told Jason that I chose my own companions—
and
when I took your arm after the Duke of Bewcastle invited us to join him and the duchess for tea. She added that as far as she could see, I chose my companions both wisely and well. Lauren told me that after watching you take that verbal assault with such stoic dignity, she suspected every unmarried lady within hearing range and a few married ones too fell head over ears in love with you. Elizabeth, my aunt, thought it must have been very painful for me to watch Viscount Muir, the man who succeeded to my husband’s title, behave so badly in public. At the same time she thought I must be proud of how my chosen companion conducted himself with such dignity and restraint. She considers you a true British hero. The duke her husband believes that rather than tarnishing your fame, Jason’s vicious lies and their exposure by Mr. Carstairs have actually enhanced it. Shall I continue?”

She attacked her embroidery with renewed vigor.

“Your name will be on lips all across London today,” he said. “It will be coupled with mine. I am sorry about it. But it will not happen again. I shall stay in town awhile longer for Constance’s sake, but I will remain in my own proper milieu and among my own people. Society gossip, I have heard, soon dies down when there is nothing new to feed it.”

“Yes,” she said, “you are quite right about that.”

“Your mother will be relieved,” he said, “despite what she said to you yesterday. So will the rest of your family.”

She had finished embroidering the green rose petal. She did not finish it off. It would be easier to unpick later if she did not. She threaded her needle through the linen cloth and set it aside.

“I suppose that somewhere in the world,” she said, “there is someone else with as great a sense of inferiority as you possess, Lord Trentham, though it must surely be impossible that there is anyone with a
greater
sense.”

“I do not feel inferior,” he said. “Only different and realistic about it.”

“Poppycock,” she said inelegantly.

She glared up at him. He scowled back.

“If you really wanted me, Hugo,” she said, “if you really
loved
me, you would fight for me even if I were the queen of England.”

He stared back at her. His jaw line was granite again, his lips a hard, thin line, his eyes dark and fierce. She wondered for a moment how she could possibly love him.

“That would be daft,” he said.

Daft.
One of his favorite words.

“Yes,” she said. “It is daft to believe that you could possibly want me. It is daft to imagine that you could ever love me.”

He resembled nothing more than a marble statue.

“Go away, Hugo,” she said. “Go, and never come back. I never want to see you again. Go.”

He went—as far as the door. He stood with his hand on the knob, his back to her.

She glared at his back, buoyed by hatred and determination. But he must go soon. He must go
now
. Please let him go now.

He did not go.

He lowered his hand from the knob and turned to face her.

“Let me show you what I mean,” he said.

She looked back at him, uncomprehending. Her hands were all pins and needles, she realized. She must have been clasping them too tightly.

“This has all been a one-way thing,” he said. “Right from the start. At Penderris you were in your own world, even if you did feel awkward at landing there uninvited. At Newbury Abbey you were in your own world and among your own family, not a single one of whom, I noticed, was without a title. Here you have been right in the center of your world—in this house, on the fashionable circuit in Hyde Park, at the Redfield House ball, at the garden party yesterday. I am the one each time who has been expected to step into a world that is not my own and prove myself worthy of it so that I can aspire to your hand. I have done that—repeatedly. And you criticize me for not feeling at home in it.”

“For feeling inferior,” she said.

“For feeling
different,
” he insisted. “Does there not seem something a bit unfair about it all?”

“Unfair?” She sighed. Perhaps he was right. She just wanted him to go and be done with it. He was going to go eventually anyway. It might as well be now. Her heart would be no less broken a week from now or a month.

“Come to
my
world,” he said.

“I have been to your house and met your sister and your stepmother,” she reminded him.

He looked steadily at her, without any relaxing of his expression.

“Come to my world,” he said again.

“How?” She frowned at him.

“If you want me, Gwendoline,” he said, “if you imagine that you love me and think you can spend your life with me, come to my world. You will find that wanting, even loving, is not enough.”

Her eyes wavered and she looked down at her hands. She stretched her fingers in an effort to rid them of the pins and needles. It was true. He had been the one to do all the adapting so far. And he had done well. Except that he was uncomfortable and unsure of himself and unhappy in a world that was not his own.

She would not ask
how
again. She did not know how. Probably he did not either.

“Very well,” she said, looking up again, glaring at him defiantly, almost with dislike. She did not want her comfortable world to be rocked more than it already had been by meeting and loving him.

Their eyes continued to do battle for a few silent moments. Then he bowed abruptly to her, and his hand came to rest on the knob of the door again.

“You will be hearing from me,” he said.

And he was gone.

While Gwen and Lily had been on Bond Street this morning, they had met Lord Merlock and had stood talking with him for a while before he offered to take them to a nearby tea shop for refreshments. Lily had been unable to accept. She had promised her children that she would be home in time for an early luncheon before they all went to the Tower of London with Neville. But Gwen had accepted. She had also accepted an invitation to share his box at the theater this evening with his four other guests.

She was still going to go. She was going to do her best to fall in love with him.

Oh, how absolutely absurd. As if one could fall in love at will. And how unfair to Lord Merlock if she were to flirt with him as a sort of balm to her own heartbreak without any regard whatsoever for his feelings. She would go as his guest, and she would smile and be amiable. Just that and no more.

How she wished, wished,
wished
she had not taken that walk along the pebbled beach after her quarrel with Vera. And how she
wished
that having done so, she had chosen to return by the same route. Or that she had climbed the slope with greater care. Or that Hugo had not chosen that morning to go down onto the beach himself and then to sit up on that ledge just waiting for her to come along and sprain her ankle.

But such wishes were as pointless as wishing the sun had not risen this morning or that she had not been born.

Actually, she would hate not to have been born.

Oh, Hugo,
she thought as she picked up her embroidery again and looked in despair at the lovely silky green petal of her pink rose.

Oh, Hugo.

Gwen neither saw nor heard from Hugo for a week. It felt like a year even though she filled every moment of every day with busy activity and sparkled and laughed in company more than she had done in years.

She acquired a new beau—Lord Ruffles, who had raked his way through young manhood and early middle age and had arrived at a stage of life perilously close to old age before deciding that it was high time to turn respectable and woo the loveliest lady in the land. That was the story he told Gwen, anyway, when he danced with her at the Rosthorn ball. And when she laughed and told him that he had better not waste any more time, then, in finding that lady, he set one slightly arthritic hand over his heart, gazed soulfully into her eyes, and informed her that it was done. He was her devoted slave.

He was witty and amusing and still bore traces of his youthful good looks—and he had no more interest in settling down, Gwen guessed, than he had in flying to the moon. She allowed him to flirt outrageously with her wherever they met during that week, and she flirted right back, knowing that she would not be taken seriously. She enjoyed herself enormously.

She took Constance Emes with her almost everywhere she went. She genuinely liked the girl, and it was refreshing to watch her enjoy the events of the Season with such open, innocent pleasure. She had acquired a sizable court of admirers, all of whom she treated with courtesy and kindness. She surprised Gwen one day, though.