“It wasn’t an illicit proposal!” Maria cried, interrupting this flood of commentary and discussion. “It was a proposal of marriage.”
The room went silent. All her friends stared at her.
“Your shock is not very flattering,” she grumbled after a few moments. “I’m know I’m coming on for thirty, and utterly on the shelf, but is it all that surprising I would receive an honorable proposal of marriage?”
“Forgive us, darling,” Emma said, looking stricken. “It was only that we’d been discussing proposals of a dishonorable sort. And we didn’t know—” She broke off and glanced around. “I think I can speak for all of us when I say we didn’t know you had a suitor at present.”
Maria made a rueful face. “Neither did I.”
“Well?” Daisy prompted when she didn’t elaborate. “Who is he?”
“Perhaps it’s that Mr. Hawthorne?” Lucy guessed. “Didn’t he propose to you years ago? Pru told us he lives next door to the shop.”
“It can’t be Mr. Hawthorne,” Prudence said, shaking her head. “He’s engaged to Miss Cynthia Dutton.”
“He is?” Maria seized on that in an attempt to divert the conversation, hoping to avoid explanations. “I didn’t know that. Lawrence has been out of town for two months with the Dutton family.” She forced diffidence into her voice. “I’d heard they were at Kayne Hall with…umm…with the…umm…marquess.”
“They returned from the country yesterday,” Prudence told her, “and an announcement of Mr. Hawthorne’s engagement was in all the society papers today.”
“They’ve come back from the country? All of them?” She sat up straighter in her chair. “Phillip, too?” The moment she asked that question, she could have bitten her tongue off.
“Phillip?” It was Emma who spoke, making Maria wince, for only Emma could put such a wealth of implication into one little word.
“Oh là là!” Daisy cried, laughing. “Look at her blushing! She’s pink as a peony.”
“Oh, all right,” Maria said crossly, setting her cup back into its saucer with a clatter. “You might as well know, for I shall never be able to keep it a secret now. You’ll press me at every turn until I tell you.” She picked up the plate on her lap and set it on the tea table along with her cup and saucer. Then she took a deep breath. “Phillip asked me to marry him.”
The reaction was a moment of stunned silence. Maria couldn’t blame them. She’d been quite knocked off her trolley by it as well.
Her fellow girl-bachelors began exchanging bewildered glances and shrugs, but it was Miranda who spoke first. “But who is this Phillip?”
“Phillip is Mr. Hawthorne’s brother,” Emma told them, eyebrows lifting as she gazed at Maria. “The Marquess of Kayne.”
“Oooooh!” came a chorus of excitement from the girl-bachelors and matrons alike.
“And,” Prudence added, also looking at Maria in surprise, “Maria cannot stand him.”
“Ohhhhhhh.” This chorus was much more disappointed.
Everyone looked at her again, waiting in obvious expectation of more details. With reluctance she capitulated, conveying the entire infuriating proposal, emphasizing the marquess’s admission that love played no part in it. She also conveyed his toplofty sentiments about her inferior background and his admission that their marriage would be just as imprudent a match as the one proposed to her by his brother twelve years earlier. As she related the story, her temper began rising again, and by the time she had finished this recital of the facts, she was once again as resentful and hurt and confused as she had been upon his departure from her kitchen a month earlier. “So,” she summed up, “I told him what he could do with his arrogant manner, his ridiculous offer, and his snobbish opinions, and I turned him down flat. So, yes, Mrs. Morris, I sent him off with a flea in his ear!”
With that statement, she sat back in her seat and folded her arms, filled with righteous indignation, waiting for her friends to give their hearty endorsement of her decision and praise her wisdom.
But the other ladies did not seem eager to comment, and she could only conclude that they were too appalled to speak. “I know,” she said, nodding, “it’s amazing, isn’t it, that he could even think I’d marry him. After what he did, separating me from Lawrence, what on earth could make him assume I would agree to have him?”
Mrs. Morris cleared her throat and spoke first. “Yes, but dearest, you said yourself that business with Mr. Hawthorne was over and done with years ago.”
“And it was, but you see, Phillip—”
“You’re not still in love with Mr. Hawthorne?” asked Lucy.
“Lawrence? Heavens, no! But—”
“The marquess,” Mrs. Inkberry interrupted, “is surely a man of substantial wealth and property?”
“Yes, of course, but that hardly signifies—”
“Maria, he offered you marriage,” Miranda said, emphasizing the last word as if it were the holiest of holies. “You would be a peeress, a marchioness.”
“I know that, but—”
“Is he handsome?” asked Daisy.
“No,” Maria answered at once, but she was immediately contradicted.
“Very handsome,” Prudence said. “I met him at the May Day Ball, and I thought him quite well favored.”
Maria’s snort of derision was ignored.
“He’s tall,” Emma put in. “Wide shoulders, dark hair. Blue eyes, if I remember, and a lean, strong face.”
“A striking combination,” said Lucy. “Although it seems the woman whose opinion counts most doesn’t agree. You don’t think him handsome, Maria?”
All faces turned toward her again, and she tried to consider the question objectively, but it wasn’t possible. Phillip was…just Phillip. Tall, cool, and dignified, with those deep blue eyes that seemed to see everything and that proud way of notching up his chin. “I suppose he is handsome,” she conceded with reluctance, then sighed. “Oh, of course he is! But really, he oughtn’t to be! Men so unbearably stuffy shouldn’t be handsome. It’s wrong, somehow.”
“Oh, Maria!” Prudence cried as all the ladies began to laugh.
She knew it was absurd, but that didn’t mean she found it amusing. “I don’t see why all of you are laughing. I was right to turn him down. He doesn’t love me. He described his feelings as ‘a madness,’ something marriage to me will cure him of! I ask you, could any woman in her right mind accept such a ridiculous offer?”
“Ah!” Prudence nodded, studying her with a little smile Maria did not like in the least. “Now I understand. You’re afraid.”
“Afraid?” Maria stared at her in disbelief. “Of what, in heaven’s name? I’m not afraid of anything, least of all Phillip Hawthorne!”
Prudence ignored that. “Ladies, I think our Maria might be falling in love.”
“What?” She jumped to her feet. “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!”
“And,” Prudence went on, “she’s afraid that if she marries him, he’ll tire of her, and she’ll be brokenhearted.”
“For heaven’s sake, haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?” Maria shook her head violently. “I’m not in love with him. I don’t even like him. He’s a snob. And he’s arrogant. How dare he take my consent for granted? As if I should be grateful he deigned to offer for me? Of all the high-handed things to do!”
For some reason, that made Pru’s smile widen. “Yes, dearest, I think we all appreciate your opinion of his proposal. No need to ruffle up your feathers like an indignant pigeon.”
Maria sat back down. “I don’t know why you always have to be so romantic about everything, Pru,” she muttered. “In love? It’s absurd. No woman with an ounce of sense could be in love with Phillip.”
“Oh, I imagine there are quite a few women in love with him,” Emma put in.
“Nonsense!”
Emma ignored that and took a sip of her tea. “Why, I know for a fact the Duke of Richland’s eldest daughter has been head-over-ears in lov
e with him for years.”
Maria stiffened as an image of a woman in a ciel-blue silk dress came into her mind. “Does she have dark hair?” she asked, and at once felt the silliest fool. “Never mind,” she added. “Why she’d want to marry Phillip escapes me.”
“Well, he is a marquess, Maria,” Mrs. Inkberry reminded, “and though it’s clear that does not impress you, he is a man of no small consequence. There are many women who would be delighted to marry him, I should think.”
“And he’s handsome,” Miranda reminded. “We can trust Emma and Pru’s judgment on that. And, oh, Maria, he asked you to marry him!”
“I’m a fool, I daresay,” Maria said with sarcasm, “for refusing such a paragon of manly virtues, but there it is. I think he’s horrid and haughty, and I’m not the least bit in love with him.”
“Methinks she doth protest too much,” paraphrased Daisy, laughing.
“Oh, this is ridiculous!’ Maria cried, nettled beyond bearing. She again stood up and reached for her gloves. “If you’ll excuse me, everyone, I must be on my way,” she said as she put them on. “I’ve a big order of bread and pastries for the Marquess’s charity luncheon tomorrow, so there’s much to do.”
“Oh, dearie-dear.” Mrs. Morris’s voice, terribly arch and highbrow, followed her toward the door. “The Marquess’s charity luncheon, ladies, if you please.”
“Perhaps she’ll change her tune,” Daisy said, her voice loud enough to carry to Maria in the foyer, “when she sees the duke’s daughter flirting with the marquess over the sandwiches.”
A round of giggles followed that comment, but Maria ignored them as she collected her bonnet and her handbag. “Me in love with Phillip?” she muttered, casting an exasperated glance heavenward as she walked out the front door. Then she paused on the threshold. Leaning back in the doorway, she added, “This is the silliest tea I’ve ever attended in my life!” loud enough for the others to hear before she walked out the door. For added confirmation of her feelings, she slammed the door behind her.
She didn’t hail an omnibus or a hansom to return home. Instead, she walked, for she felt so stirred up that a walk seemed the only thing to do. She marched down Shaftsbury Avenue and onto Piccadilly as the words of her friends kept running through her mind. Prudence’s comment, especially, seemed to touch her already raw nerves.
“Afraid?” she muttered in disbelief, earning herself an odd look from a gentleman standing beside her as she waited to cross Dean Street. “I am not afraid of anything.”
By the time she had walked back to Mayfair, it was almost six o’clock, but to her surprise, she found someone waiting for her when she arrived at the shop. “Lawrence,” she greeted. “I heard you were back in town.”
He turned away from the display case by the cash register where he’d been talking to Miss Simms. “Yes, we arrived yesterday. Phillip came, too,” he added, as if she cared.
Maria glanced at Miss Simms, who was holding a ring of keys in her hand and looking at her in inquiry. “You may go, Miss Simms,” she said. “Leave the keys and I’ll lock up.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The shop assistant set the keys on the counter, gave them both a curtsy, and departed through the back of the shop.
As Maria crossed the room, she didn’t miss Lawrence’s mischievous grin. She suspected he was up to something, but she ignored that grin and walked past him, flipping up the hinged lid of the counter to stand on the other side.
“I thought you’d be interested to know he’s back in town,” Lawrence murmured, his grin widening at her exasperated snort.
“I don’t care a fig what that man does,” she answered, slamming down the counter again, aggravated with him, with her romantic friends, and most of all, with herself. “Why should I?”
He wiped the grin off his face at once. “No reason,” he said, but the very blandness of his voice only aggravated her more.
She gave him a withering glance, then bent down to set her handbag on the shelf beneath the cash register. “Did you want any pastries, Lawrence?” she asked as she straightened. “Or did you just come by to talk nonsense?”
“I’ve come to select some desserts.”
She glanced into the display case through the glass on her side. “There isn’t much left, I’m afraid. There never is at the end of the day.”
“That’s all right. I only need a dozen. We are having a small party of friends for dinner, and I wanted some of your cakes for dessert.”
She pulled a cream-colored paperboard box from beneath the counter and reached for a set of tongs. “Which ones would you like?”
“Need you ask? I see some treacle tarts, so of course, I must have those. Oh, and I see you have chocolate ones, too, I’ll need two of those as well. Phillip would never forgive me if he found out you had chocolate tarts and I didn’t bring any home for him.”
After everything that had happened, she doubted Phillip would eat her chocolate tarts—or anything else she made—but she didn’t say so. She slid the glass door open, and using the tongs, began placing tarts in the box on her hip.
“Sorry I missed our appointment,” he went on as she worked. “But Phillip asked me to stand in for him and show Colonel Dutton our shipyards, and I was so astonished that he was putting me in charge of something truly important for a change that I forgot all about our meeting. Not that seeing you wasn’t important,” he hastened to add. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“It’s quite all right. I understood what you meant. Would you like some of these éclairs, too?”
“Yes, thank you. I understand the ball went all right without me. You and Phillip rubbed along well, I take it?”
Maria paused, her hand tightening around the tongs in her hand as she remembered that extraordinary carriage ride. She ducked her head, pretending vast interest in the pastries in her display case. “Yes,” she managed. “Quite well.”
“Good, good. No arguments?”
No. We were too busy kissing.
She bit her lip, deciding it would be wise to veer the topic away from Lawrence’s brother. “I believe congratulations are in order,” she said as she continued putting pastries in the box. “I heard you are engaged to be married.”
“I am. You don’t hate me, Maria, do you?” he asked, and a frown of concern crossed his features. “You’d have the right,” he added before she could reply. “I mean, I left you hanging all those years ago, and I never wrote you, or explained, or…or anything. I left Phillip to do it. You mustn’t blame him, by the way. It was all my fault. I lost my nerve, and when he suggested offering you a…pension…”
He saw her wince at the term, and he hastened to say, “It seemed like the best thing to do. He said he’d make it generous enough that you’d be all right. Taken care of, and…and all that.” He let out a sigh. “I’m sorry, Maria. I should have said it straight off.”
“It was a long time ago, Lawrence. And I accept your apology.”
“But you do understand that I was the cad, not Phillip?” Lawrence persisted, seeming oddly anxious to emphasize that point. “He was only looking out for me. He’s wanted the best for me, always, and you weren’t…” He looked away with a sound of exasperation. “Hell.”
“I wasn’t what was best for you,” she finished. “Yes, I know.”
He studied her, looking unhappy. “You have every right to hate both of us.”
She considered that. “Yes,” she said, deciding not to sugarcoat it for him. “I do have that right, and there was a time when I did hate you, and Phillip as well.” She did not miss the pain in his face, and she relented. “But I understand why you did what you did. And I don’t hate you, Lawrence, not anymore.”
“And Phillip? You don’t still hate him, do you?”
She told herself she should. “No.”
“I’m glad.” His frown vanished, and he looked so relieved, it surprised her. Why her good opinion of Phillip should mean so much, she couldn’t fathom. Did he know Phillip had proposed?
No, she decided at once. Phillip was far too discreet to tell him.
Maria put the tongs aside, closed the display-case door, and stepped to the cash register. Setting the box on the counter, she started to reach below it for a lid, but a thought struck her, and she stopped. “Lawrence, Miss Dutton doesn’t know about what happened all those years ago, does she?”
“God, no! I’d never tell her about that crazy business.” The moment the words were out of his mouth, he grimaced, contrite. “Sorry. I didn’t mean marrying you would have been crazy. I meant—” He broke off with a rueful sigh. “Damn, I do seem to be blundering this entire conversation.”
“No, no, it was a crazy business. We were so young. We thought we were in love. It felt like love at the time. But it wasn’t, was it? Not really.”
“No,” he agreed. “It wasn’t. But why did you ask me if Cynthia knows what we did?” He shot her a glance of alarm. “You aren’t going to tell her about it, are you?”
“Of course not.”
His relief was palpable. “You’re a brick, Maria.”
“But,” she went on, “perhaps you should.”
He looked at her in obvious dismay. “Surely that’s not necessary. I mean, it was so long ago. Why rake it all up again?”
As she studied the man opposite her, Phillip’s words came back to her.
I love my brother, but I also recognize his flaws. Lawrence has never been good at facing up to unpleasant realities…He can’t bear to lose anyone’s good opinion.
As usual, Phillip had been right, but strangely enough, she didn’t resent the fact. “No purpose at all,” she assured Lawrence as she put the lid on the pastries and reached for a length of brown-and-gold ribbons to tie up the box. “Nothing happened, and no harm done. No need to bring it up at this late date.”
“Thank you. I knew I could trust you. The secret’s safe, then, for we both know Phillip won’t breathe a word. And besides, I suspect my brother has more important things on his mind these days than our ancient history.”
“Does he?” As she formed the ribbons into a bow, she couldn’t help wondering if she was the important thing in question, knowing it shouldn’t matter in the least if she were. She finished tying the bow and turned to the cash register. “What’s preoccupying him?” she asked, and then wanted to kick herself.
Secret Desires of a Gentleman Page 21
