Page 86 of Marry in Scarlet
She nodded. “Yes, but...” She bit her lip.
Hart closed his eyes briefly and tried to conceal his impatience.
“The thing is, when you touch me, the sensations are”—her blush deepened—“they affect me strongly, but I also think that you would behave much the same with any suitable woman.”
“I wouldn’t.” He’d chosen her out of all the women in London. Did she not understand that? Did she think that he’d compromised her by accident?
“But you know so little about me—it’s really my body, not me you’re making love to.” She glanced at him and added, “That might sound a little foolish, but it’s how I feel.”
It sounded a lot foolish to Hart, but if that’s what she felt, well, you couldn’t argue with a woman’s feelings, no matter how illogical they were.
“What do you expect me to do?” he asked in an expressionless voice.
“I wantusto get to know each other better.” She emphasized theus.
Hart stared unseeing out of the window. The carriage swayed and bounced along. The horses’ hooves sounded briskly, rhythmically on the hard surface of the turnpike road. Getting to know each other. The whole thing was ridiculous. In a short few days they’d be married. Nobody knew their spouse before marriage. And some not even afterward...
He heaved a sigh and turned back to her. “Very well, let us start, then. Earlier you said you would belong to your children—you said ‘them,’ plural. You intend to have more than one child, then?”
She nodded. “God willing.” She glanced out at the passing scenery for a moment, then added, “It is lonely being an only child. I would like my children to have brothers and sisters.”
He watched her watching the scenery—or pretending to. The thought crossed his mind that her apparent indifference was often a disguise, masking some deeper sentiment. “You were an only child.”
She nodded.
“Did you not have friends?”
She shook her head. “Mostly my friends were animals—my dog, my horse, wild creatures. We lived a good distance from the village, and the local children...” She sent him a straight glance. “It was believed by the villagers that I was some lord’s by-blow, and children raised by ignorant parents are not kind to unwanted bastards.”
He frowned. “But you weren’t a bastard.”
She hunched a shoulder, feigning indifference. “Truth or gossip—which do you think is tastier? People didn’t exactly ask to see my mother’s marriage lines. It’s easier—and more interesting—to believe the worst.”
Hart thought about the rumors about her that had circulated after their betrothal was announced. Was that why she’d handled the nastiness so well? She’d grown up with it.
“What about school? Surely you found some kindred spirits there.”
“I never went to school.”
“Never?” That was a surprise. He’d assumed she’d attended the same exclusive girls’ seminary that her sist—no, her aunts—had. He never remembered that Lady Rose and Lady Lily were her aunts—they behaved more like sisters.
She shook her head. “There was a small village school, but you can imagine how welcome I would have been there—and in any case the teacher was a drunkard and a bully and hardly anyone attended. And there was no money to send me to a better school.”
“So, a governess then?” He knew she was literate, and from various references and responses she’d made, she seemed quite well educated.
“A governess?” She gave an ironic huff. “Those creatures who have the strange desire to be paid for their efforts? No, there was no money for that either. Martha—my nursemaid, and later my cook and housekeeper—taught me my letters and to do basic sums. And I had the remnants of my grandfather’s library—his books weren’t entailed—as well as some poetry books and novels my grandmother left.”
“Entailed?” He frowned. “I thought your mother’s side of the family were yeomen farmers.”
“They were. Doesn’t mean my grandfather wanted anything left to a useless female.”
“Useless female?”
She made another one of those shrugs. “The whole time he was alive, my grandfather never let an opportunity pass to remind me that if I’d had the good sense to be born a boy I would not only have inherited the family farm but that my father would have acknowledged me and that I would have had the upbringing and all the benefits of being his heir.” She snorted. “But a girl? A girl was useless.”
She gave a humorless chuckle. “If he’d ever learned my father was the son and heir of an earl—he knew he was the son of a rich man, but not which rich man—and that I would have been an earl now, had I had the good sense to be born a boy, my grandfather would probably have, I don’t know, exploded.”
“Believe me, as a boy you would have been nothing extraordinary. As a girl now—”
