Page 86 of The Captive
“I should get back to my own bedchamber,” she said, shrugging into her black dressing gown, which sported more fantastical embroidery than Christian had seen on any one garment.
He picked up a sleeve and peered at the green, gold, and purple patterns chasing around the cuff. “Does this qualify as mourning attire?”
She belted it snugly. “It’s black, and who’s to see me?”
He put his hands on her shoulders, and she waited while he lifted her hair out of her nightclothes. “I’ve destroyed your braid, Countess.”
“And you’re proud of this,” she said, sounding proud too, as well she should.
“Sit you,” he said, guiding her by the shoulders to the chest at the foot of the bed. “We need to talk.”
Her expression went carefully blank, and he had to wonder what was going through her female brain.
“We’ll have the first of the banns cried this Sunday,” he said, hoping to allay any silly doubts she entertained.
She shot to her feet so fast she nearly knocked him on his arse. “Wewill do no such thing.”
She turned around to glare at him, her arms crossed over her chest, her hair streaming down her back like some Valkyrie of old, but diminutive, and all the more formidable because of it.
“What did you think I was asking you, not two hours ago under the covers, Gilly?”
“I thought you were asking to bed me, of course.” Her jaw snapped shut, and he saw he had blundered. She wasn’t angry, she washurt. He could not stand the thought he’d hurt her, not over something as important to a woman as this.
He got down on one knee and took her hand in both of his.
“Gillian, Lady Greendale, my countess and friend, will you do me the very great honor of becoming my duchess?”
Thatoughttodoit.He stayed genuflected before her in his dressing gown, feeling ridiculous as he waited for her soft, special smile.
She scowled, the sight of it enough to curse him with a brand of uncertainty he hadn’t felt since the last time Anduvoir had come sauntering into his cell, the stench of his cigar preceding him.
“What do you take me for, Mercia? Get up, and we’ll have a rational argument, which you will lose.”
He rose, careful not to let his bewilderment show, though referring to him as Mercia was a discouraging sign. “At least have a seat while we argue.”
She sat upon the carved chest with all the dignity of the aging queen, and swished the skirts of her night rail closed over her knees.
“You think to keep me safe by offering marriage. That is entirely unnecessary, though gallant of you.” Her weapon of choice was logic, which boded ill in a woman just come from her new lover’s bed.
“I can keep you safe more easily if we’re married. That isn’t why I offered.” A disconcerting realization, that.
“Guilty conscience then, or grief, or male urges. Thank you, but no. Marriage to me on that basis will not do.”
“Will not do for me?” He sought refuge by rummaging in the wardrobe, though he had an entire dressing room in which he might have hidden—except he didn’t want to give her a chance to bolt.
“Of course not. I was married to Greendale for eight years, Your Grace, and I could not bear him a child. You need heirs, and I cannot provide them, though I am sorry to have to bring up such a tender subject.”
This was a feint, a not quite convincing one. Christian discarded a pair of silk stockings necessary for court attire, searching instead for the wool variety he’d been happy to own in quantity in Spain.
“I’ve done some nosing about,” he said, when he’d laid hands on a clean pair of stockings. “Greendale had had four countesses, each of them coming to the marriage in the blush of young womanhood, and none of them conceived. I have no doubt where the blame lies for a lack of direct descendants.”
He knelt before her and brushed her night robe aside to reveal her bare, elegant feet.
“The present Lord Greendale is my heir,” Christian said. “And some second or third cousins in Dorset or Hampshire after that, jolly squires grown fat off their sheep. We correspond twice a year. I need not marry a broodmare out of duty.”
“But you ought,” she wailed softly. “You are Mercia, and the next duke should be raised by you. Where did you learn to do this?”
“Argue with you? Natural talent, I suppose.”
