The Earl's Practical Marriage

by Louise Allen

  On the other hand, keeping him at a suspicious distance was not going to teach her anything about Giles, or about herself. ‘I wonder if there are any lobster patties left? And champagne.’

  ‘I would be amazed if the Duchess would tolerate a shortage of either.’

  ‘Then I have a fancy to eat a patty and sip champagne on the terrace.’

  ‘That was not quite what I had in mind, but, of course, what a lady requests, a lady must have.’ From his smile she could tell he was not put out by her apparent refusal of his lovemaking.

  He was teasing me by being outrageous, she realised.

  ‘And while I am sipping and nibbling we can look to see if there are any pools of water for the lamplight to be reflected in. Simply to admire the effect, of course.’ Two could tease.

  ‘We might indeed.’ The smile became wicked. Giles gestured to a footman. ‘A plate of savouries—especially the lobster patties—and two glasses of champagne on the terrace, if you please.’

  The man bowed and hurried off and Laurel slipped her hand under the crook of Giles’s elbow. She felt a little self-conscious, people were looking at them and she wondered if she would be considered fast if she went outside with him. Or perhaps they were simply looking at him and wondering who the handsome stranger was.

  ‘You see, there was no need to clutch my arm quite so fiercely,’ he murmured as they stepped outside to find several tables had been placed on the well-lit terrace and a number of couples and a few small groups were strolling up and down, chatting in the cool evening air. ‘No one is going to be pointing a finger at the fast Lady Laurel Knighton going outside with that wicked rake Revesby.’

  ‘And I do not believe for a moment that you would have done any of those wicked things you were whispering about,’ Laurel said tartly, wondering if she was overreacting to the discovery that Giles did not intend to make an attempt on her virtue in the shrubbery.

  Would I have allowed him to?

  ‘Would you have let me?’ he asked, in an uncanny echo of her thought.

  ‘I do not think you would have risked my reputation like that,’ Laurel said, suddenly certain. ‘I realised that once I had stopped being flustered and thought about it, or if you had begun to...to take liberties, then I am sure you would have done nothing I was unhappy about.’

  Perhaps that was just a little too frank.

  ‘That is very trusting.’ Giles pushed a glass of champagne closer to her. ‘To assume I would stop if told to, I mean.’ When she looked at him, eyebrows raised, he shook his head. ‘I would have done, of course.’

  ‘Here is to trust, then.’ Laurel raised the wine glass in a toast. It felt like a momentous declaration. ‘We have lost too many years of our friendship to a lack of it.’

  ‘To trust.’ Was there something uncomfortable in the expression in those blue eyes that were not quite meeting hers?

  ‘Do you think that perhaps we have forgiven each other too quickly for there to be real trust between us yet?’ she probed.

  ‘No.’ Giles offered her the platter of savouries. ‘You see, I even trust you to leave me at least one lobster patty.’

  ‘Be serious.’ She thought about it, studying him. ‘If we had met the next day we would have straightened things out, talked it through, however upset we both were, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘We would,’ he agreed, arrested with a sliver of chicken halfway to his lips. ‘I had not thought about it like that, but you are quite right. Somehow, if only we had been able to talk to each other, we would have made it up. Do you realise that if we had, then we would be married by now?’

  Laurel dropped the patty she had absentmindedly picked up. Flakes of pastry scattered over the plate.

  My instinct had been right all along. He knew we were meant for each other.

  Then another reason for Giles’s acceptance presented itself—logical, likely, disappointing. ‘Did you know about those plans of our fathers’ all along? I did not, I had no idea. Would you have agreed to it?’

  ‘I knew they had some such idea in their heads, and I had accepted it, I suppose—it seemed very logical with the land marching together and so on. But it would have been several years in the future and you were too young to talk about such things.’

  ‘Yes, I was, I suppose.’ Far too young and very innocent. And romantic without realising it. ‘But all that time, you never gave me any idea that you knew.’ And all the time that she had felt, in her bones, that Giles was meant for her, it had never occurred to her that he did not feel the same way about a match, that he saw it as simply a logical, practical thing to do.

  The land marches together.

  But if all he had been doing was dutifully falling in with his father’s dynastic plans, then that blew away the rosy glow of her long-cherished picture of them as meant for each other at some deep, primal way, far more fundamental, far purer than agreements over joining bloodlines and estates. It had a sweet pain to it, speaking of what might have been.

  ‘You are not too young now,’ Giles said, almost conversationally.

  ‘I—Whatever can you mean?’

  He doesn’t mean that we should... Surely? Does he? No, of course not.

  ‘What is to stop us getting married now?’ Giles was watching her over the rim of his glass.

  He does mean marriage, not a dalliance, not friendship.

  For a moment the rosy glow flooded back and then she focused on what he had said, how he had said it.

  It hardly seems the most passionate of proposals, she thought with a sudden shiver. Where is the man who kissed me in the labyrinth, the man who suggested doing wicked things out here in the shadows?

  Laurel took a deep breath and found her smile, striving to look amused and sophisticated. ‘Why would you want to marry me?’ she responded, just as coolly as he had put the question. ‘Surely there are any number of younger women you could take to wife? It was you, after all, who reminded me how short a time a woman has to make a good match and bear a family.’

  ‘We know each other, we are old friends. You know Thorne Hall and its people and the neighbourhood. It is all familiar to you, whereas I have been away for years. It seems to me that you would be the perfect wife for me.’

  ‘We have been apart for nine years and are just beginning to repair the breach in our friendship. We knew each other as children, youngsters, not as...as lovers. The idea of asking me has just occurred to you and you cannot have thought it through. You certainly cannot pretend that you wish to marry me because you feel an emotional attachment to me.’

  She was not going to use the word love, she knew what that did to men—threw them into a panic, and in a male emotional panic they were prone to utter the kind of home truths she had no desire to hear. It was bad enough being told she was perfect because she knew the neighbours.

  ‘Can I not? You think I do not feel fond of you, Laurel? I was so angry over that misunderstanding because it was you, my friend, who overheard and misjudged me, you who thought me a libertine. And did you not enjoy the kisses we shared in Sydney Gardens?’

  Only then did Giles reach across the table, take her hand in his.

  He should have been holding it, warm and secure in his grasp, all the time he was proposing, she thought, resisting the temptation to pull away, to flounce off, all offended pride and hurt feelings.

  ‘Laurel, we could make a good marriage, my father would welcome you with open arms, you would be home again.’ His fingers curled into her palm, an insistent pressure through the taut silk of her glove. ‘I came to Bath without the slightest notion I would see you here, without any intention of marrying you. But now I find that it is essential to me that we wed.’

  Essential? What a very peculiar choice of word.

  Yet strangely she could believe it, despite the absence of any protestations of love, or even of affection beyond old friendsh
ip. It did have the ring of truth, Giles really did want to marry her. She had always been able to sense, not so much when he lied, but when he was being absolutely sincere, and that sincerity was in his voice now, in his expression, in the grip of his fingers on hers.

  Essential.

  ‘I have no idea what my dowry is,’ she protested, then realised just how far that comment took her past surprise, edging into acceptance.

  Giles shrugged. She supposed that for the heir to a marquessate money was hardly important. But the land would be. She realised that she had no idea how her father had left the unentailed land that had once been her dowry. Presumably it had all gone to Cousin Anthony now.

  ‘We will find out about a dowry and all those tiresome questions later,’ Giles said, carrying on calmly while she was lost in a haze of confused emotions. ‘I will have to speak to the new Earl, I imagine—is he your trustee?’

  If he is prepared to take me with no idea of my dowry that augurs well for his motives, Laurel supposed.

  ‘The old agreement between our fathers—’

  ‘My father wrote to me that the two of them burned it the next day—presumably in the absence of my sorry carcase to put on the bonfire. Father began to correspond with me, you know, after a few months when he realised I was not coming home. And I climbed down off my high horse and wrote back. I cannot say we are exactly close yet, but it is not as though there is a great breach between us. Our marriage would make him very happy, you need have no fear that you would be unwelcome because of our difficult past.’ He took her other hand and leaned towards her across the little table, the blue intensity of his gaze in the lantern light almost mesmerising. ‘Say yes, Laurel. Say you will marry me.’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘And you refused him? But, Laurel, why?’ Phoebe stared at Laurel in dismay. She was sitting up in bed, her hair in curl papers that escaped from under her nightcap, the cup of hot chocolate in her hands tilting dangerously. ‘I am appalled.’

  Laurel had tapped on her aunt’s door in her nightgown and robe to catch her at an hour when they could be sure of being alone, before the start of the household’s morning routine.

  Phoebe sounded both horrified and dismayed, as well as appalled. Laurel had expected astonishment that she had turned down such an eligible suitor, had been braced for a lecture on the foolishness of such a decision, but she had not expected quite such a strong reaction and it threw her off balance. After an almost sleepless night spent tossing and turning until her bedclothes were as tangled as her thoughts, she was not ready to explain herself clearly.

  ‘I did not exactly refuse him, it is more that I did not accept him,’ she said, gabbling a little in the face of Phoebe’s shock. ‘It took me by surprise, you see. I had never imagined that he would propose to me. I said I had to have time to consider.’ And one night was not enough, it seemed.

  ‘But, Laurel, how could you hesitate?’ Her aunt put down her chocolate cup, held up one hand dramatically and began to count off on her fingers. ‘Giles is an earl and will, one day, be a marquess. You have known him all your life and you would be living in, as near as makes no difference, your old home. He is an exceedingly handsome, intelligent young man, in good health, and he brings back a most excellent reputation from the Peninsula. Those are six very good points in his favour.’ She threw up her hands. ‘Do you want to wait until we can enumerate ten?’ She narrowed her eyes and studied Laurel’s face. ‘Has he done anything to his discredit since you became reacquainted?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He has not tried to take liberties with you?’

  ‘No.’ Laurel considered the truth of that statement. ‘Well, none that I did not welcome.’

  Phoebe’s cheeks turned pink. ‘Oh, dear. What have you done, Laurel?’

  ‘Nothing too naughty, Aunt, I promise you. Just that I know that we can add that he is very good at kissing to our list of positive attributes.’

  Phoebe went even pinker, but then she smiled. ‘I make that seven then.’

  Laurel found she was smiling back.

  ‘So why do you hesitate, dearest? I am sure we can find another three good points to convince you.’ Phoebe wriggled up against the pillows, the smile vanishing.

  ‘I do not say you should marry him if you do not want to, or have taken him in dislike, but you reached an understanding the other day, you made up your quarrel. I do not understand why you would not wish to accept Lord Revesby. Why any woman not in love with someone else would not wish to, come to that,’ she added.

  Perhaps I am in love with someone else, with the image of the young man I thought would be mine, the young man I told myself I hated for all those years. Can I love the real man?

  ‘Because I do not know why he wants to marry me,’ she said, producing the practical, sensible answer. ‘I am twenty-five, nearly twenty-six, and there are many much prettier, much younger, ladies in the Marriage Mart for him to choose from. We have spent nine years apart after a ghastly quarrel and neither of us knows the other as an adult. So, why me?’

  ‘He is in love with you?’ Phoebe looked hopeful.

  ‘He has not said so.’ Her aunt’s face dropped. ‘And you would think that if he does then he would say so when he was proposing, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Most certainly. Why would he not? Any young lady would be delighted with a declaration like that from such a man. Not that love is essential for a good marriage, of course,’ she added, apparently remembering her duty to see her niece well married. ‘And it is no excuse for a bad one. Do you love Lord Revesby, Laurel?’

  She almost denied it, but surely she could be honest with her aunt? ‘I...I did, long ago, before he left. Not as an adult, of course, but I was sure we were meant for each other. I suppose that was why it hurt so much when I thought that he and Portia were...involved. But that is different from what an adult woman should feel for a man.’ She found that her hands were tangled and knotted in the skirts of her robe and made herself relax her grip. ‘I really thought I would be happier unmarried, happier forgetting him.’

  ‘You were making the best of things bravely,’ Phoebe pronounced. ‘And now you are not sure how you feel.’

  Laurel did not like the idea that she had somehow talked herself into pretending opposition to marriage, just to make the best of things. ‘I am not at all certain. If I am honest with myself—and I suppose that if I am not there is really no hope for me—if Giles had said he loved me, then I would have accepted him.’

  ‘Men are not good at understanding their own feelings, which does make everything more complicated, of course,’ Phoebe said sagely. ‘My dear Cary would have sooner shot himself in the foot than admit that he loved me, but he showed it every day, bless him.’ Phoebe reached out and tugged the bell pull. ‘We need more chocolate.’ When her maid came in she sent her for another cup and a fresh jug and they talked of the reception until it came and they were alone again.

  ‘You think Giles might love me?’ The chocolate was soothing and invigorating at the same time.

  ‘It might be that he does and feels awkward about saying so, although I doubt that young man has a bashful bone in his body.’ Phoebe looked approving at the thought.

  She likes a rake, Laurel realised and bit her lip to hide the smile.

  ‘Or he loves you but simply does not recognise it,’ her aunt continued. ‘Or he is not in love, but feels the two of you would rub along very well together and he would rather that than take a risk on an unknown, probably immature, young lady.’

  ‘If it is the first, that he feels awkward, then he would soon get over his reticence if I encouraged him,’ Laurel pondered. ‘If the second, then surely that would emerge once we are married. And the third, I suppose, would not be the end of the world if it were not for the fact that I hate the idea of just rubbing along, as you put it.’ Giles had produced all those sensible, practical reason
s for their match and they had felt as though something joyous in her soul was being smothered. ‘I might—’

  ‘Love him as a grown woman should?’ Phoebe had turned pink again.

  ‘Yes. I just wish I knew what it is he is not telling me.’ Laurel slid off the end of the bed and began to pace around the room, the skirts of her robe swishing around her ankles, the cup clasped in her hands. ‘I believe Giles sincerely wants to marry me, but he is hiding something, I am sure of it.’

  ‘If he had acquired a disastrous gambling habit in Portugal, or drinks too much, I am sure we would have heard rumours of such things.’

  ‘More likely a mistress and a brood of handsome dark-eyed Portuguese children,’ Laurel said darkly. ‘I will ask him.’

  ‘Laurel!’

  ‘If I cannot talk to Giles frankly, then how can I marry him?’

  ‘All men have their secrets, dear. It does not do to insist on total frankness—one might hear things one does not wish to. Men are different from ladies and we have to learn to turn a blind eye sometimes. We must get up and get dressed.’ Phoebe threw back the covers and reached for the bell pull again. ‘Is Lord Revesby calling today to hear your decision?’

  ‘He is coming this afternoon and taking me to walk in Sydney Gardens where he says we may be assured of some privacy.’ Phoebe’s expression made her laugh, despite her worries. ‘To talk, Phoebe, not to do whatever it is that is making you frown so. I do not think that I can accept him, you know. I have this strong conviction that there is something I do not understand, something behind this proposal. It is so sudden. And yet he does seem quite genuine in his desire to marry me.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Phoebe hesitated, one foot out from between the covers. ‘Ah, well, we must get on with the day. I have just recalled some letters I must write this morning.’

  * * *

  ‘Yes, I must admit to appalling tactics,’ Giles said, not at all happy about having to discuss his failed attempt at a proposal with his father. ‘In fact, no tactics at all, but impulse. I had not thought through what I intended to say to Laurel, I simply took the opportunity of finding her at the Duchess’s affair last night and put the question because she seemed quite receptive. I could have sworn she was glad to see me, but I made a mull of it.’