Page 23 of Desperate Proposals
She had no choice.
Chapter Six
Miss Wolfenden waited nearlyten days before sending word, by way of an invitation to dinner at Methering Manor.
Marcus was impressed by her restraint; he’d begun to wonder if he’d misjudged her after one week had passed since the musicale and no response seemed forthcoming. But the fact that she didn’t take the entire two weeks informed him of two things: first, that her pride of station was not insurmountable, and second, that her desperation was all too real.
Excellent.
Marcus looked up at the mirror as his valet helped him shrug into his evening jacket. He had never been one to think much about his own appearance; he was tall and handsome enough that he hadn’t wanted for female attention back in his younger days, but since then he’d had no time for that sort of thing, having found himself far more interested in swaying minds than hearts. But now he gave a silent thanks to his mother for granting him her features. She’d been a beauty in her day, so he’d been told.
“Bray?”
“Yes, sir?” his valet responded as he brushed the front of the jacket with brief, firm strokes.
Bray, a middle-aged man with sad eyes and a pervasive silence about him, was the only servant Marcus had employed who’d been able to withstand Fennel’s strong personality. He supposed it was due to Bray’s own colorless nature. For how could one impose their will upon a stone?
“What do you think?” Marcus cleared his throat, uncomfortable with undertaking such vanities. “Might we… spruce it up a bit?” He waved his hand at the mirror. Suddenly Marcus cared very much that he presented himself fashionably to Miss Wolfenden and her relations.
Bray halted and stepped back, clothes brush still in hand, and stared blankly.
“It’s an occasion, after all,” Marcus added in a joking tone.
“Very well,” Bray said with a nod. He disappeared from the room.
Marcus nearly called him back to rescind his request. But then he recalled how Miss Wolfenden had looked that day in front of the guildhall, a pretty color to her cheeks as she stood stoically before him, absorbing his advances and his arguments for making them. Even when he’d so boldly brought up her age and her lack of worldliness, she’d stood proud, with her head held high.
Marcus couldn’t help but admire it. He ought to make some concessions to her, to shine up and put forth his best manners. That is, if he could recall them.
For she was granting him a tremendous boon to his political career: the hand of the daughter of the inexplicably adored local lord. What more could he ask for ahead of a potentially treacherous election? And anyway, were not most marriages just agreed-upon contracts providing mutual benefit of one sort or another?
He had never expected to wed like this, or he wouldn’t have had he ever given the idea much thought. And now that he was on the cusp of it? Marcus frowned at his reflection.Never mind all that, he told himself.The end result is what’s important, not the means.
Just then Bray returned, a blue flower in his hand.
Marcus frowned. “What is that?”
“Why, an aster, sir.” Bray stopped before him and slid the stem into his coat’s buttonhole.
“It’s blue,” Marcus said, staring at the bloom as if he couldn’t fathom where it had come from. “Are we in the habit of growing blue flowers in the garden?”
Not that he would know, spending all his damn time in London as he did, leading his Sisyphean political life.
“Some flowers are blue,” Bray said calmly, adjusting the boutonnière.
“Blue is a Tory color in Lancashire,” Marcus explained, not bothering to hide his distaste.
“Is it now?” Bray stepped back so Marcus might see.
He had to admit, it did lend a much-needed spot of color to his usually severe get-up. Marcus sighed. “Very well, then.”
At least his host would appreciate it. Or so he assumed. With one final look in the glass, he was ready.
Collier had left the week prior, uncomfortable with being away from London for so long. Marcus truly felt the loss as he spent his evenings walking the empty halls of Platt Lodge, friendless and alone.
It had been a deliberate rebellion, his purchase of the place. A relatively new house, constructed sometime in the last century and then sold off as it was surplus to the original family’s requirements. Marcus hadn’t been thinking so much of his political future back then; his aim had been only to remove himself far from the city and the memory of his father, andthe family they’d once been. In the throes of emotion unique to youth, he’d considered himself, as Dr. Johnson had so eloquently put it, tired of life. And Knockton had seemed as removed from London as a place could be.
So he’d gladly signed the deed and parted with a portion of the family fortune, courtesy of his mother and Sedley’s Satin Black Boot Polish. Which was why it amused him to no end that his mother wanted nothing to do with Platt Lodge, a neat and comfortable residence, or Knockton as a whole.
