Page 29 of Desperate Proposals
“No intention to marry?” Mr. Hartley’s eyes lit up at this enticing insight into her character, as if he’d spotted some precious mother-of-pearl glinting in the sand. “May I ask why not?”
How she wished to reply with a set-down and deny him this, which was a strange impulse that did not feel her own. Why didshe feel so needled? Rather than respond with haughtiness, she managed a distracted shrug.
“Why would I? I had everything I required in life, and did not desire to be anywhere else. I was content with the prospect of remaining at home to the end of my days.”
“What of companionship?”
“Cats are nice, I find. Perhaps a dog, if one wished to be set apart.”
“What of love? Romance?”
The image of the girl on the railway station platform came to mind: distraught at the prospect of leaving her beau, weeping openly, honking into Evelyn’s handkerchief.
“How to put it,” she began, smoothing out her skirts. “It seems quite humiliating, allowing oneself to be so vulnerable. I should not care for it.”
“Duly noted,” Mr. Hartley chuckled. He reached out, offering her his hand once more. This time she’d adequate preparation, so when she took it she felt nothing. Why, he might’ve been a groom handing her up into a carriage for all it affected her.
He set her hand upon his arm, holding himself with more poise than he’d heretofore exhibited. It was odd to think that this man would be, for all intents and purposes, alongside her like this for the rest of her days. She drew in a breath.
“Let’s get on with it then. Shall I meet your fellow Wolfendens?” He looked upward at the vaulted ceiling of the chapel, to the long gallery above. “Well, the living ones, at least.”
“Please keep in mind,” she said as they started toward the main doors of the chapel, the ones that led directly into the manor’s library, “that none of them enjoy ‘quips’ of any nature.”
“Humorless. Also noted.”
Evelyn pursed her lips together in exasperation.
“Don’t go and pull a face. It’s not like you.” He smiled, and reached up to pat her hand upon his arm. And then, in a more conciliatory tone, he added, “All will be well. You’ll see.”
That same phrase, kicking up a spark of hope in the cold ashes of her heart. Such optimism from him. Evelyn did not know what to say.
She silently prayed they would manage, somehow.
Chapter Eight
“That reform bill wasalways nonsense. Absolute bosh, allowing coal miners and bricklayers the vote.”
Baron Methering cut his beef with swift, precise movements, popping his fork into his mouth for only the briefest of moments.
A witty rejoinder perched on the tip of Marcus’s tongue. But as much as it pained him, he curbed his desperate need to voice his disagreement and looked back to the baron with as plain a face as he could manage. He focused instead on the delicious fare set before him—it seemed as though in some aspects of life, aristos really did have a leg up.
The baron paused to take a long drink from his wine goblet. And then, without so much as a glance at Marcus, he set back to work on his meal and the continuation of his screed.
“Knew it from the first as rubbish. Universal suffrage, bah! What’s next, then? Ladies voting? Dogs? Pigs? Why, my horse has more sense than some dulbert mill worker!”
Marcus set his fork down loudly, unwilling to let this go by unchallenged. But then he glanced over and caught sight of Miss Wolfenden’s drawn face as she sat, marooned along with hersister-in-law at the other end of the long table, and he thought better of it.
It mattered little, for the elder man continued his tirade without any acknowledgement of his dining companions. Baron Methering was a lean man of medium height, with what remained of his hair clipped short about his head, and his whiskers kept equally tidy. His dress was as severe as his tone; he seemed a man who denied himself any softness, and in turn, expected that the rest of the world ought to do without as well.
“And what did Disraeli get in the end?” Now he deigned to look up from his plate, fork and knife frozen in mid-air as he narrowed his eyes at Marcus. He held out the knife and shook it at him. “You and your lot, that’s what.”
Marcus blew out an exasperated sigh. “You’ll recall, I stood unopposed.”
“Yes,” Baron Methering conceded, not taking his eyes from Marcus as he cut another bite and muttered, “A pity, that.”
“A pity to some, a benefit to others,” Marcus said, in a far more charitable tone than he’d usually take. “Such is life.”
The baron grumbled unintelligibly as he chewed. After he swallowed, he looked at Marcus for longer than he had since they’d first begun eating in silence. When he appeared to have finally arrived at whatever conclusion he’d been working toward in his mind, he spoke again.
