Page 10 of Under the Champagne Moon
“I confess,” he said, “I was surprised to find you unmarried.”
She made no reply.
Fair enough. This was Fleur, after all.
“You are accomplished and dare I say beautiful? Do the men of… Derbyshire… not have eyes in their heads?”
“Staffordshire,” she said. “Eyes? Yes. Brains? Not many. But those who do know that beauty won’t pay rent or buy food. At least not in the respectable way.”
That was more words than he’d ever heard out of Fleur at one time, and it told him much. She had no income, and the men of Staffordshire wanted her, but not for matrimony.
“I see. Yet you and Lady Ixworth plan to return there after your visit here?”
Fleur stopped, pivoted, and studied him. “You are impertinent, Ardleigh. But then you’ve always been thus, haven’t you?”
He supposed that was true. Yet he needed to know much more before he wrote Marceau. The Frenchman would have to know how to woo her, after all.
Good old Fleur. Ever honest—ifhe could get her to talk—and if that required frank questioning, so be it.
Perhaps he ought to apologize, but he wasn’t one to grovel. “I’ve offended you.”
“Much offends me.” She grimaced. “I suppose you’ll run back and share whatever I tell you with your circle of so-called gentlemen. Oh yes, I know that you men gossip as madly as any females.”
Unfortunately, that was true. He thought of the many drunken conversations in the officers’ mess. “Hand to heart.” He touched the rectangle under his coats. A book such as this had once shielded him from a stray piece of shrapnel. “Your secrets will be my secrets.”
“Hmm.” That grimace again. “We have lost our home in Staffordshire. Put out by the new heir. So, no, we will not be returning there.”
The last rays of the setting sun sparked diamonds in her hair and in the corners of her eyes. Incipient tears?
The notion of his Petal near tears tugged at his heart. Fleur had feelings. He’d always suspected that, but she’d always hid her hurt behind a steel cage.
By God, she was lovely, and so strong. Not at all like the Frenchwoman Marceau had been keeping. Marceau had made commitments to her that involved a two year old and another on the way, so Gareth supposed she’d been well within her rights in her weeping. What the Veuve thought of it all, Gareth didn’t know.
How unfair the match with Marceau would be to Fleur.
A promise was a promise though, and his debt to the Veuve had to be repaid. He must at least introduce Fleur to Marceau.
“It’s a marriage you need,” Gareth said. “It will secure your future.”
“Yes,” she said, astonishing him. “And that of Lady Ixworth.”
“Lady Ixworth?” He laughed, shocked at her agreeableness to marriage and appalled that she would attach such an unlikely requirement. “Surely she has family who?—”
“She hasme. And a small—very small—income. It’s no secret that the late viscount gambled away almost everything. We will stay with Mrs. Bicton-Morledge and make ourselves useful until…” She shrugged. “Shemighthave a son.”
The Bicton-Morledge females’ predicament was common knowledge. Those gossiping males again.
“And she might not, and then what?”
One of Fleur’s long silences ensued, and she stepped out again.
He kept pace with her. “You are here husband-hunting, I take it? Don’t count on Laurence. I believe he intends to sow his wild oats for a few more years. In fact, now that his father is much improved, he’s returning to London perhaps tomorrow or the day after to see to business there.”
Her pace slowed. “You don’t offer your own hand, Captain Ardleigh?”
CHAPTERFOUR
From any other woman, that would have been flirting, but there was a cynicism to Fleur’s tone that irritated, reminding him of his own financial circumstances.
