Rex smiled in commiseration. “I know what you mean. I shudder to think what might happen if my mother and father were ever in the same room together again. One of them would end up dead, I’ve no doubt. Your father and your brother sound very much the same. Did your father’s drinking cause the breach?”
“Partly. Papa became erratic and foolhardy, making foolish business decisions and spending money like water, and the drinking contributed to his poor judgement, I’m sure. When Jonathan pointed that out, that’s when Papa tossed him out.” She paused and took a sip of tea. “You know, when I see my father like this, I wonder if I should forgo the remainder of the season. Perhaps I should return home before he gets any worse.”
“I doubt it would matter if you did.”
“I daresay you’re right. Irene and I used to search the house, tossing out his brandy bottles whenever we found any, but he always managed to get more somehow. His valet, I suppose. Anyway, I would ask that you disregard the things he said. Particularly,” she added, wincing, “his blatant matchmaking efforts.”
“My great-aunt is rather the same. Another thing you and I seem to have in common.” Rex smiled, hoping to ease her embarrassment. “It’s awful when they’re so obvious about it, isn’t it? Still, however clumsy his efforts, you can’t really blame him for trying to help you gain what you want from life.”
“I don’t blame him,” she answered at once. “I realize he is motivated by a genuine concern on my behalf. I think he knows—”
She broke off and a hint of pain crossed her face. “I think he knows,” she resumed after a moment, “that he’ll kill himself with drink one day, and I think he wants to see me settled properly before that day comes.”
“He knows, and yet, he won’t stop the drink?”
Clara’s sweet face took on a hard glimmer of cynicism that hurt him, somehow. “Should he?” she asked. “Can a rake ever genuinely reform?”
He inhaled sharply, sensing they were not talking only about her parent any longer, but what could he say in his own defense? He’d indulged his rakish tendencies at every opportunity when he’d been able to afford it, and though he lived more like a monk than a rake nowadays, no one knew that. And besides, he’d probably go back to his previous wild ways at the first opportunity, because . . . why not?
“No,” he said, the admission a bit bitter on his tongue. “I suppose true rakes don’t reform. But let’s talk about a more pleasant subject. You, for instance.”
“Me?”
“It’s a more interesting topic than your father’s fondness for brandy.”
“Well, a less embarrassing one, at any rate,” she said with a hint of humor. “What would you like to know?”
He considered a moment. “Why do you want so much to be married?”
“Nearly every girl wants that, I suppose.”
“An answer which neatly sidesteps the question. I’m curious as to why you want it.”
She seemed a bit surprised, as if the answer was obvious. “Until a woman marries, she has no real purpose in the world. Oh, she can work for charity and help the vicar with parish activities, and perfect her needlework. If she’s fortunate, she can go into society, but unless she wants to be like my sister and defy all the conventions, she’s stuck in a life that is quite dull, until she marries.”
He couldn’t help a laugh at that. “I know many married women, and I can assure you that most of them are bored silly.”
“Perhaps, but God willing, a married woman has at least one preoccupation that is denied to single women. She has children to care for.”
“Not all women would regard that as a blessing. How do you know you would do so?”
She laughed. “I’ve known since I was thirteen. Our cousin Susan became ill that summer, and I went to Surrey to help care for her. She and her husband have eight children and a big house in the country, and because my father had taken to drink again, Irene thought it would be good for me to go away for a bit. In Surrey, I discovered not only how much I love children, but also that I have a talent for managing them.” She paused, and though she didn’t smile, her face lit up suddenly, as if the sun had just come back out, looking through him, past him, into her future. “If I had children, I’d never be bored.”
His cynical side was impelled to remind her of reality. “Yes, you would.”
“Well, perhaps I would sometimes,” she said. Unexpectedly, she grinned. “But not often, I can promise you, because like my cousin Susan, I intend to have at least eight. Maybe ten. How often can one be bored with a family of ten? What?” she added, her grin changing to a puzzled frown as he laughed.
“Ten children, my sweet, is not a family. It’s a village.”
“Oh, I want that, too,” she assured him. “A village, I mean.”
“Greedy girl.”
“I am, I confess it. I want that big house in the country, and I want a village nearby, and thatched-roof cottages, and a parish church. And horses and dogs and apple orchards and a husband who loves me like mad.”
“And you’ll all live happily ever after,” he said solemnly.
She made a face at him. “Make fun of me if you like, but that’s the life I want.”
“Is it?” he asked before he could stop himself. “Or is it merely that you want escape from the life you’ve had?”
Her smile vanished, her face went stiff, and he wanted to bite his tongue off. Still, damn it all, with that rosy picture in her head, she was just begging for life to disappoint her. Worse, he was reasonably sure she had no idea how easy it would be for a man to take advantage of her idealistic view. He could just imagine some wastrel with a glib tongue and an eye on her newly-acquired connections giving her a line of patter about life in the country and plenty of children, and she’d fall right into his lap like a ripe plum. Her father would certainly not be able to protect her from such a man.
Still, it wasn’t any of his business what she chose for her life. “My apologies,” he muttered. “That was a boorish thing to say.”
“Yes,” she agreed, giving him no quarter. “It was.”
“You mustn’t mind the things I say, Clara. Anyone who knows me well knows I’m a terribly cynical fellow.”
Strangely, the stiffness eased out of her face, and she smiled a little. “I don’t know you well at all, and I’m already aware of that fact.”
He chuckled. “Fair enough. I just hope I haven’t ruined this friendship of ours before it’s even begun? Because if I have,” he added before she could answer, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the invitation, “you won’t accept this, and my great-aunt will shred me into spills, a painful experience I’d prefer to avoid.”
“And what is this?” she asked as she took the envelope from him.
“Petunia and several of her friends have arranged a picnic party in Hyde Park for Wednesday next. I called upon my aunt earlier today, and when I mentioned my next order of business was a call upon you, she asked me to deliver it. The duke’s family is included in the invitation, by the way.”
“Thank you. It was very kind of your aunt to invite me, and to include them. I can’t say if we are free that day until I ascertain their schedules.”
“Of course. The doings will be just across from Galbraith House, so come through the Stanhope Gate. They’re setting up a big marquee, I understand, so you’re sure to find us.”
She nodded and set the envelope on the tea tray beside her, then returned her attention to him. “About what you said a moment ago . . .”
“Yes?” he prompted when she paused.
“I don’t deny that I am hoping to trade the life I have known for one that I believe would make me happier. You think that is my attempt to run from my father’s drinking?”
“Isn’t it?”
She thought about it for a moment, then she shook her head. “No, I don’t. Because no matter how much I might wish to escape—as you put it—I would never make a marriage for any reason other than deep and mutual lov
e.”
“Love?” He sighed. “My dear girl, why would you ever marry for love? Don’t you want to be happy?”
“Says the man who tells me not to pay attention to anything he says.”
“In this case, you should, because I’m in dead earnest, Clara. If you are looking for happiness in marriage, love is hardly a reliable indicator.”
“Oh?” she countered, quirking a brow at him as she lifted her teacup. “And I suppose your experience as a single man has given you such extensive experience with matrimony?”
He stirred, suddenly on the defensive. “I’ve never been married, that is true. Nor even in love, actually, but—”
“What?” she interrupted, staring at him as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You’ve never been in love before?”
“No.”
“Never?” She straightened on the settee, glanced away, set aside her tea, and looked at him again, still seeming quite confounded by this news. “Not even once?”
“No.”
She shook her head, laughing a little. “And of the two of us, I thought I was the one with the lack of experience in matters of romance,” she murmured. “Heavens, even I have been in love before.”
He stared at her, too surprised to point out that one could have a great deal of romance without falling in love. “You have?”
“Of course. His name was Samuel Harlow, and he was the best-looking man I’d ever met—well, except for you, of course. He—”
“Wait,” he begged, holding up one hand to stop her, for he needed a moment to absorb what he’d just heard. “You think I’m good-looking?” He paused and laughed in disbelief. “You do?”
“Oh, stop fishing for compliments. You know you’re a handsome man, and you hardly need me to tell you so.”
Well, yes, he supposed he did know it, and yet, from her, it seemed something of a revelation. “On the contrary,” he murmured. “In this case, I think I am in need of a compliment or two. Besides, we’ve become friends now, and one ought to compliment one’s friends. But I can see you’ve no intention of buttering me up any more today,” he added with a sigh of mock regret when she made no reply, “so carry on. Who was this Harlow chap?”
“Mr. Harlow arrived in our parish the summer I turned seventeen, and I fell in love with him the moment I laid eyes on him. We saw each other quite often, for he lived just two blocks from here. I also saw him at church, of course, and sometimes we would invite him to luncheon or tea with us afterward—Papa wasn’t as bad then as he is now. In those days, he didn’t usually start drinking until well after tea time. Anyway, whenever Mr. Harlow came, I was always the one to whom he paid his attentions. Me,” she added as if in surprise, pressing a hand to her chest. “Not Irene.”
Rex felt a surge of frustration at this self-deprecating comparison to her sister. He thought of how she’d looked a few moments ago, with the sun revealing her lithe, slim silhouette to his gaze, and he was sorely tempted to haul her over to his end of the settee and show her a few of the reasons a man might pay her his attentions. With great effort, however, he managed to refrain. “And you found such attentions surprising, did you?”
“Well, it had never happened to me before. Men are usually too occupied with staring at my sister to notice I’m even in the room.” She paused and laughed. “But then, of course, Irene would say something about her goal to achieve the vote for women, and we’d never see the chap again.” Her laughter faded to a thoughtful frown. “I sometimes think she said things like that on purpose, to drive them away because they admired her instead of me, as if afraid my feelings would be hurt.”
He didn’t want to talk about her practically perfect sister. “So, you fell in love with this man,” he said. “What happened next?”
“One day, we were in the vestry alone together. It was after some parish meeting for a charity bazaar, and I stayed behind the others.”
He lifted a brow. “On purpose? Why, Clara, you naughty girl.”
Her tiny nose wrinkled up ruefully. “If I was trying to be naughty, it didn’t do me any good. There we were, alone together. A perfect opportunity, and he didn’t even kiss me.”
At once, Rex’s gaze moved to her pale pink lips. “He was probably just trying to behave himself,” he said, striving to think of all the reasons he needed to do the same. “Anything else would be conduct unworthy of a gentleman.”
Even as he spoke, arousal stirred inside him, making it clear his body didn’t care a jot about gentlemanly conduct.
“That’s what I thought, too, at first,” she said. “After all, we were inside the church.”
Rex studied her, thinking of all the shadowy corners in his own parish church back home that would be perfect for cornering Clara and stealing a kiss or two. “I’m not sure being in church would be much of a deterrent,” he said, his control slipping a notch. “To a determined man.”
“I rather think it is, at least if you’re the vicar.”
Those words were sufficiently astonishing to divert him from his rather irreverent fantasy. “You fell in love with a vicar?”
“I wasn’t the only one. Most of the girls in our parish were in love with him at one time or another. As I said, he was very good-looking. Church was never as full before he came. And you wouldn’t believe the number of knitted gloves and embroidered tea cloths he received at Christmas.”
Rex grinned, imagining the picture. She was a good storyteller. “No doubt.”
“Anyway, that afternoon in the vestry was rather a disappointment to me, but afterward, he continued to pay me a great deal of attention. He never showed any interest in the other young ladies in the parish, even the bolder ones who flung themselves at him. So, I thought . . . I hoped—”
She stopped, and shrugged. “It was foolish.”
“What happened?” he asked when she didn’t go on. “He proposed to someone else, I suppose?”
“Oh, no,” she replied at once. “He proposed to me. But I refused him.”
“What?” Rex straightened on the settee, staring at her as she turned matter-of-factly to reach for her tea. “But you were in love with him, you said.”
“I was. Madly. But when he proposed, I realized I couldn’t marry him. It was the way he put it. He said he had a warm regard for me.” She paused over her tea, making a face. “A warm regard. I ask you,” she added, sounding suddenly indignant, “is that the sort of feeling that’s going to set a girl’s pulses racing?”
“Probably not, but how do you know he wasn’t just being respectful and considerate of your maidenly sensibilities?”
“Oh, I’m sure he was. Too considerate. He told me that because I was so sweet, and so pure, I would be the perfect wife for a vicar. We would have, he said, a truly celestial marriage.”
Rex frowned, utterly at a loss. “What sort of marriage is that?”
She stirred, setting her cup and saucer aside again with a clatter. “That’s what I wanted to know! I was forced to ask him straight out if he was saying he didn’t want children. What?” she added, her cheeks going pink as he gave an astonished laugh. “I know the stork doesn’t bring them! Heavens, I’m not that innocent.”
She was every bit that innocent, even if she was aware of basic human biology. But there was no point in launching a discussion on the topic of lovemaking, for he’d just be tormenting himself. “The things you know and don’t know sometimes confound me, Clara,” he murmured instead. “But what was his answer?”
“He said children would not be a consideration for us. Our union, he said, would be above such base carnality.”
Rex’s gaze slid down, and he wondered how any man, even a repressed vicar, could think that living with her and not bedding her would be anything but a living hell.
“The man’s clearly touched,” he muttered. “And wound tighter than his own church clock. But there are some women who would see a marriage like that as quite appealing.”
“Well, I didn’t. I’m not a celestial
being, and I don’t want a celestial marriage. I want children, and I told him so.”
“And what did he say to that?”
The color in her cheeks deepened. “He said that if I was insistent upon it, he would agree, but the . . . the act w . . . would be distasteful to him.” She paused, swallowing hard. “That’s what he said. Distasteful. What man thinks that?”
Rex stirred in his seat. “Not this one,” he muttered, acutely aware of the fact at this moment.
“We’re not Shakers, for heaven’s sake,” she went on in bewilderment, not seeming to have heard his muttered words. “Why would he want such a marriage?”
Rex could see only two possible reasons—sexual repression or homosexuality, or possibly both. “Until he became better acquainted with you, he never paid much attention to any of the young women in the parish, you said?”
“No attention at all. He seemed to prefer the company of the young men.”
That, in Rex’s mind, rather settled the matter. “It’s only a guess, but I’d say he suggested this arrangement because he was about to be arrested.”
She frowned, looking surprised. “He did leave the parish afterward, but I thought it was because I refused him. Why would a vicar be in fear of arrest?”
Rex was in no frame of mind to explain some men’s desire for other men or that such desires were illegal or that becoming a vicar and getting married were possible ways for such a man to divert suspicion from his preferences and avoid prison. “Never mind,” he said before she could delve into what he meant. “Did you ask him what his reasons might be?”
“No. I was too busy asking myself why he thought I would accept such a marriage.” Her round face twisted suddenly, went a bit awry. “Did he think me so desperate to be married that I would be willing to forgo physical love? Or did he think me so undesirable that I could not realistically expect to ever receive it?”
The Trouble with True Love (Dear Lady Truelove #2) Page 16
