Page 22 of A Merry Christmas
He spoke well. His tone held the exact balance of apology and charm that reduced many offences to air. Merry felt the old habit rise in her, the one that sought to excuse for the sake of peace. She pressed it down.
He leaned forward, hands outspread. “I am guilty of making a trifle look worse than it was. I cannot deny that—but indeed I meant no slight to you. If I had known you were there, I would have turned on the instant and introduced you. You must not put a weight upon it that it cannot bear.”
She wished she did not hear, behind those words, the exact same phrase he had used about the bracelet. A trifle. Nothing more. She felt the box in her drawer as if it had been upon her wrist.
“And at the Crown?” she asked, before she could stop herself. “Penelope says her husband saw you at cards.”
He laughed, a little too quickly. “Men always see one another atcards. It is their duty. There was nothing in it. We amused ourselves. Someone put a girl on my knee for a jest. The Crown is not Almack’s, Miss Roxton. I cannot be held responsible for the way villagers choose to show their spirits.”
Merry did not speak. He hurried on.
“You know how people talk. If a man wins he is a sharp. If he loses he is a rum-touch. I left before midnight and paid my markers. That is more than most can say in any room with a deck of cards. Pray think better of me.”
He was good at sounding wounded by the very suspicion he had called upon himself. Merry looked at him across the narrow space and wished she had not seen what she had seen. It would be easier to be pleased if one were blind.
“Very well,” she said at last, because she could not bear to quarrel. “I will think better of you today.”
He exhaled as if the air had been fetched back into his chest. “You are an angel.”
He changed subjects with the grace of a dancer. “I brought the bracelet yesterday in stupidity. I ought to have begged your father’s leave first. I see that now. If you would entrust it to me, I will ask at once and return it properly. Or, if you prefer, I will take it back and bring something modest instead.”
Merry had hidden the case as if it had been a sin. The thought of returning it to him now, in this room, made her heart bump. Yet keeping it felt worse. She shook her head.
“It is done now,” she said. “We can do what is proper next time.”
He looked baffled, then alarmed, then contrite. “You are right. I have handled the matter badly. I came today to put everything to rights. Miss Roxton—Merry—” He caught himself, as though the word had leaped up of its own accord. “Forgive me. I have rehearsed fine speeches and now cannot find one that does not sound foolish. Will you walk with me for two minutes where the door is in sight? I will not steal you past a chaperon. I wish only to say one thing without every servant listening.”
She hesitated. The green room was safe and bright. The corridorbeyond was empty. The great door stood at the far end with its holly wreath brave in the grey light. She inclined her head.
They walked only as far as the niche where a marble shepherdess watched a marble lamb with devotion. He stopped there and faced her. The change in his manner was quick. The polish did not vanish, but something inside it gave way to urgency.
“Merry,” he said, his voice very low. “You must know I admire you above every lady I have ever met. Your sense, your spirit, your beauty. I have been clumsy and the village has eyes that enlarge everything. I will not pretend to be better than I am, but I can promise to try to be worthy of you. Will you do me the honour of accepting my hand?”
The words fell into the quiet with the exact weight she had thought to hear once upon a time. For an instant the world before her blurred at the edges. Was this what she had wanted?
He went on, soft and earnest. “I speak here because I would not put you to the pain of a public refusal should you not be ready. I would keep the engagement quiet for a very few days. I must have my father’s blessing. I know how to approach him, and I would not have you see the business side of what ought to be wholly tender. Give me leave to tell him in my own fashion. I will then speak to your father with all respect. We shall be announced before Twelfth Night. I will not ask you to wait longer than that.”
Her heart beat an odd beat, as if uncertain whether to rush or hold. He had said the words. He had asked. He had even pleaded a little. Her mind reached for the list of doubts she had written upon the air only this morning. The kiss that had felt like nothing. The bracelet called a trifle. The sight of a girl huddled up to him in the sleigh. The loss at cards. The way he made excuses and then took offence and then begged. Yet he was here now, and he was handsome and plausible and certain that the world would bend to arrange itself around them both. He had called her sense and spirit beautiful, which was not nothing.
“Why keep it secret?” she asked, although he had given her a reason. She wanted to hear it again to test its validity.
“Because I know my father,” he said, with a little grimace that sat well on him. “He is a man who will ask to see your portion first. I willnot have him insulting you with figures when I can oblige him to remember he has a heart. Give me three days to manage him and then I will stand you before him and make him thank me for the honour.”
The words were artful, yet they struck true. She knew enough of fathers to believe he might be right. However, she did not wish to stand to be valued like sugar. If three days could remove such ugliness, did that not recommend them?
“And you do me the honour,” he said again, his voice lower still, “of believing that nothing would make me prouder than to see you mistress of my house.”
A weakness ran through her. To be the mistress of a lord’s residence was a cherished dream, she thought. For long enough had she wished to step from this narrow village into a wider world in which she might do good, in which she might be seen, in which she might become a wife and mother.
She lifted her eyes and met his. They were bright with a triumph held carefully back, as one dams a stream for a ceremony and then lets it run. She heard herself say, very quietly, “Yes.”
He caught her hands. He did not kiss her again. “You make me the happiest man in Gloucestershire,” he said.
“Three days,” she said, because she must be seen to command something.
“Three,” he agreed. “I shall go to my father at once, then I will request an interview with Mr. Roxton. Until then we must keep our good fortune a secret between ourselves.”
“Of course.”
