Page 51 of Temptations of a Wallflower
He spread his hands. “Entirely. And you?”
“My maid is in the carriage.” She glanced toward the far bank of the river. “I had to bribe her silence with a pearl pendant.”
She still seemed tense and on edge, so he tried for a scrap of humor. “Secret messages hidden in books. I felt like the king’s spymaster. Perhaps being a vicar is an excellent disguise.”
She only smiled thinly. “The subterfuge was an unfortunate necessity.”
“Something’s wrong,” he deduced.
“Yes. No.” She shook her head. “Might we walk?”
He silently and readily offered her his arm. His already frenetic heartbeat kicked when she placed her hand on his sleeve and held him snug against her chest rather than a polite touch of her fingers on his arm. The soft roundness of her breast pressed against his biceps.
They sedately trod along the paths surrounding the Observatory. When she was ready to speak, she would. But until then, he’d give her what space she needed to collect her clearly disordered thoughts.
“Have you ever considered marrying?” she said suddenly, breaking the quiet.
The question caught him entirely off guard. He said slowly, “Ishould.Many vicars do. They stress that in seminary. That one of our responsibilities is the taking of a wife.”
“An odd thing to urge on you,” she murmured.
“They tell us it’s important for us to have wives to reach out to the community. Makes us models to those around us. Makes us approachable, too, I suppose. Shows that we’re human like everyone else.”
She mulled this over, her pace easily matching his. “But what doyouwant?” she asked after a moment.
“I always thought that I would take a wife,” he eventually replied. “Never really knew when. Or whom.” He hadn’t known himself well enough to offer his hand to anyone. His own carnal impulses were so intense that he felt he always needed to keep them tethered.
“So there’s no one in particular that you’d really want to marry,” she said.
He could prevaricate, if not outright tell an untruth. But he couldn’t. Not with her. They both deserved better. And he was tired, so tired, of fighting this war inside himself. He could let her know how he felt—and if she didn’t reciprocate, he’d find a way to go on. A man with a hole in his chest.
He stopped walking. “There wasn’t,” he said, gazing at her.
She stared up at him, her eyes wide and lovely. “Has that changed?”
Everything in the world went into one word. “Yes.”
He watched the pulse in her throat flutter, and a pink stain rise in her cheeks.
“What if . . .” she began. She swallowed. “What if we were to marry?”
He jolted with the immensity of what she suggested. For a moment, he could do nothing but gape at her, like someone seeing the stars for the first time.
“You and I?” he asked.
She spoke quickly, as though afraid he might object. “We like each other, don’t we? We share something . . . a bond. I’m not imagining things. I have a very good imagination, but I’d never concoct a man’s esteem for me. I couldn’t be so foolish. That’s—”
“I care for you,” he said, trying to assuage her fear. Fear that touched him, deeply. She was afraid of his answer. Afraid he might say no. “Very much.”
“Enough to take me as a wife?” she pressed.
He stared at her. She voiced the very thoughts he’d been afraid to speak. Dazed, he said, “It’s not possible. You . . . outrank me. And your parents. They’d be furious at the match.”
The color darkened in her cheeks. “I’m two years past my twenty-first birthday. I’ve reached my majority. Their approval isn’t necessary.”
“And what of the approval of the rest of Society?” he asked softly.
She made a scoffing sound, and her eyes were bright and hot. “What has Society ever done for me?”
