Page 73 of Deceiving an Earl
“There’s nothing to tell. She’s marrying that twit, Needham.”
“And yet just days before you were at my house telling me you were going to marry her.”
“She says they suit.” His lips twisted, because he didn’t believe that Ellen and Needham suited, but he didn’t know if that was his head talking or his heart.
“Maybe they do.”
“I don’t see it.”
“Because you’re blind to everything but what you want.”
Oliver paused in his chewing. “Do you think so?”
“Sometimes you can be single-minded.”
Oliver shoveled more food in his mouth.
“What about the boy? Philip.”
“She says I’m not to see him anymore. That she will get him back in Eton.” Strangely, he was almost as upset about Philip as he was Ellen’s rejection. He’d come to like the boy.
Ashland’s brows rose. “But you gave the headmaster your word that you would guarantee the boy’s behavior and turn him around.”
“I know.”
“How was that working out?”
“Well. At least, I thought it was going well, but I also thought Ellen and I were destined for matrimony.”
They sat in silence for a bit while Oliver wallowed in his new wave of pity. “Maybe I should travel,” he said. “I’ve barely been out of the country in the last several years.”
“Thinking of finding a nice Parisian girl, eh?”
They both chuckled, but then Ashland became serious. “You had said that you and Ellen were close years ago.”
“We were young, and our lives went on different paths.” Oliver looked away. He was not embarrassed by what had happened before Ellen’s marriage, but he was not proud, either, that he had bedded a woman destined to become another man’s wife. “We were intimate.”
Ashland’s brows went up again. “Please tell me that the lady was unmarried. Although I fail to see how that is any better than being married.”
“She was unmarried.” He paused. “It was right before her wedding to Fieldhurst.”
Both of Ashland’s brows went up. “Well then. I don’t really know what to say to that.”
“I’m not proud of it, but I wouldn’t wish that moment away. I believe that ever since then I have measured every woman against Ellen, and they have all fallen short.”
“Sometimes it’s best to move on. Charlotte tells me that there are many eligible young ladies on the market right now who would suit you.”
But Oliver didn’t want any eligible young lady. He wanted Ellen.
“I don’t recall, as I wasn’t in Society back then, but the Fieldhursts wed, what? Eighteen years ago? That would have made you sixteen at the time?”
“Seventeen years ago, and both Ellen and I were seventeen at the time.”
“She married young.”
“It was an advantageous match. Her parents were keen for it.”
“And they weren’t keen for you?”
