Page 47 of Miss Dramatic
Oh God.“That particular folly is part of a university education. If the lady is kind, she settles for a cuddle and tells you it happens to everybody when they overindulge. The spirit is willing, the flesh is inebriated. If she’s not kind… there is no worse humiliation.”
“Dane was drunka lot. He wanted children—sons. It was… I was embarrassed for him, when I wasn’t furious on my own behalf. He eventually stopped trying… with me. And I was relieved. The ridiculousness of a man aspiring to passion when there’s no passion in him… The steps he expected me to take to overcome his indifference… Even my mother had no idea how bad it got. Timmens doubtless has her suspicions, but they are only suspicions.”
“Did you consider leaving him?”
“Yes, but if I’d left, Colforth Hall would have been a ruin mortgaged to the rafters in six months. I could not have that on my conscience—not that too. Besides, I had nowhere to go, and my mother would have been mortified. Your thigh is not an ideal pillow.”
Gavin snagged the genuine article from the corner of the bench. “Try this, and consider that Dane’s affliction might have been guilt as much as excesses of alcohol. He played you false apparently from early days, and not only with his London mistress. In his own mind, a lack of progeny might have been the price he paid for those pleasures. Rather than give up his pleasures, his conscience demanded that he not be allowed marital satisfaction.”
Rose half sat up, arranged her pillow, and subsided. “Men think like that?”
“To call it ‘thinking’ might be applying too orderly and sophisticated a term. Do you need a blanket?”
The rain had picked up, though it still didn’t qualify as a downpour. A summer shower that would leave an extra sparkle come morning. Gavin hadn’t exactly planned a tryst for this outing, though he’d certainly been open to the possibility.
But then, they’d trysted like a pair of minks in Derbyshire, and that had not ended well.
“I will need a blanket,” Rose said. “But, Gavin?”
He bent nearer, the better to enjoy the scent of her perfume blending with the aroma of the rain. “Hmm?”
“I need you too.”
ChapterEleven
Gavin’s fingers went still on Rose’s earlobe. “I beg your pardon?”
“I need you. I’ve tried not to, tried to forget you, to put aside the memories, but they won’t stay aside. They keep intruding, and then your sisters adore you, or Lord Phillip gets a certain fond look in his eye when you and Lady Tavistock are off in a corner trying to have a discreet argument. These people love you because youarelovable.”
“We weren’t arguing. We were discussing whether I should fetch Grandmama, who doesn’t want to be fetched and is perfectly capable of choosing her own entertainments.” His fingers resumed their slow, easy stroke on her ear. “Why Lissa can’t afford Grandmama the same freedoms Lissa herself insisted on from the age of seven, I do not know.”
Thunder cracked above, then trailed away. Gavin’s fingertips glossed over Rose’s lips. “I need you, too, but I can’t allow myself to… surrender as I did in the north. That wasn’t wise. You said no strings and no expectations, but, Rose, there are expectations upon me, and I intend to fulfill them.”
Just don’t stop touching me. “To marry?”
“We’ll save that discussion for later, but yes, marriage is expected of me, just as it was of Lissa and is of Di and Caro. I took you to enjoy a pint of cider in the village because that is what one does in Crosspatch when out on a hack with a guest. I endure my steward’s bleatings because, again, that’s what one does. My family is no longer connected to the shop as we were in my grandfather’s day, but we aren’t yet connected to the land. We ruralized as mere tenants on my father’s watch, and only by the grace of Tavistock is my grandmother the owner of Twidboro Hall now. My job is to connect the DeWitts to the land.”
Rose knew he wasn’t referring to mere acreage, which could be so many shackles on a person’s time, finances, and mind. “To connect your family to respectability?”
“Shopkeepers are generally respectable, but true esteem only attaches when a family has and tends to substantial agricultural holdings. Someday, that might change, but now, for the sake of my sisters, their progeny, my mother’s peace of mind, and my own self-respect, the DeWitts need to polish the art of profitably minding their acres.”
“It’s not as easy as it looks,” Rose said, sitting up. “But I like the challenge. I thought Dane would appreciate my efforts to learn estate management, but I simply made it easier for him to go larking about.”
Gavin took her hand. “You said no strings and no expectations, Rose, but I still have hopes. They are like your memories. They won’t stay in the wings, awaiting their proper cue. They intrude on every scene, and those hopes involve you.”
She wanted to put her hands over her ears, and she wanted… him. “Don’t propose to me, please.”
“Ever? Because if you simply want another glorious tumble, I cannot oblige. We’ve done that, and…”
“It did not end well. I agree with you there. Why did you bring me here?”
“For privacy, to advance my hopes. To talk, and perhaps a bit more.”
And Rose sensed he was being honest, drat him. He might have speculated about thata bit more, but he hadn’t fixed his mind on seduction.
“I haven’t considered remarriage,” Rose said, which was only half true. Up north, with Gavin in mind, she’d all but chosen new wallpaper for the Colforth library.
“Because you’ve been too busy recovering from your last bout of matrimony. I understand that, and I’m not proposing now.”
