Page 135 of The Ladies Least Likely
“Yes. Well.” Grey was blushing; she discerned the ruddy glow to his face even in the candlelight. “I flatter myself that I would be able to—er, meet your considerations. Once I know what they are.”
Oh, the nerve of him. The absolute brass! Arrogant, overweening, dominating man, to assume that she would throw herself gratefully into his arms at the merest suggestion that he required a wife, and?—
He looked glumly at the table, seating himself with a deliberate slowness. He was as embarrassed as she was, Amaranthe realized. And in no way confident that she would say yes. His guardedness, that resignation she’d seen him in before, thumped her in the chest. He expected to be denied what he wanted, purely because he was a bastard, not through any other fault.
“I told you this wasn’t the way to go about it, Grey,” young Hunsdon said, examining Amaranthe’s expression.
“I said all along you need to court her.” Ned lifted the lid off the dish nearest him, and his eyes closed in rapture as the steam rose to his nostrils.
“But you can’t stay here unless you’re married, can you, Miss Amaranthe?” Camilla asked. Amaranthe managed a smile, recognizing the logic of a child, that marriage was the only possible relationship between a man and a woman.
The only respectable relationship, true.
If they married, she would see him every day. They would ride about together on their errands and stroll together through parks, her hand tucked under his arm. There would be meals with the children and evenings with wine and conversation.
There would be the marriage bed, of which she knew next to nothing.
He would belong to her. And she would belong to him.
Amaranthe gazed at her plate, helpless against the surge of raw longing that roared through her with that thought.
She looked up to find everyone watching her. Joseph was curious, the children pleading and anxious, and Grey?—
He was wary, and a touch desperate, and embarrassed, but there was that smolder in his eyes yet, and it flared as his eyes moved to her chest, then back up.
He wants you to say yes.
The thought forced breath from her body. He was not thinking this through. He saw her as a means to an end, his end. No one had asked her what she wanted.
“You must give me time to consider,” she said. She couldn’t bear to crush the children’s hopes. Not here, on what was possibly her last night with them.
“Yes, of course.” Grey exhaled. He was relieved she hadn’t rebuffed him before everyone. “As long as you wish.”
“Perhaps you ought to go with Miss Illingworth to visit her cousin the baronet,” Hugh suggested. He handed his plate over as Grey carved the joint of roast beef. “Then it could all be done properly, with his permission.”
“She hasn’t decided yet if she’s going,” Ned huffed.
Joseph looked up. “I’m the one he should ask for permission!”
“I am of age,” Amaranthe said sharply. “I shall decide for myself, thank you.” She took a long draught of wine, longer than what was prudent. It tasted delicious.
“I imagine the news would delight the baronet,” Hugh said. “That his family is to be allied with the Delavals.”
“And the Greys,” Grey said calmly, making a long, clean cut in the haunch before him.
“Of course.” Hugh flushed.
“I wonder that you didn’t live with your cousin, if he was a baronet,” Camilla piped up. “His house must be grander than the one you have now.”
“I did live at Penwellen for a while, after our parents were carried off by the fever.” The wine seeped through her, making Amaranthe’s blood warm and her limbs feel fluid. The dish beside her held prawns in butter, a delicacy she loved nearly above oysters. Mrs. Blackthorn had outdone herself tonight. She must take care the wine and the fare did not loosen her tongue unduly.
“Typhus,” Joseph said, helping himself to a mushroom ragout. “So here I am, starting my third year at Oxford, when all of a sudden who knocks up my door but my sister dragging along a maid with a belly—” He caught Camilla’s wide eyes. “That is to say, er, in the family way. And what does she tell me but she is no longer welcome at Penwellen, and has come to Oxford because her old schoolmistress has a connection who might employ her as a copyist. How am I to lodge them, when I’ve nothing but student chambers? But she’s never told me why she left in such a harum-scarum fashion, and we’ve not had a word from Penwellen before Favella writes to ask her back.”
Once again Amaranthe was the cynosure of all eyes. Cool air wafted across the exposed skin of her chest. Grey seemed conscious of her bared skin also.
“Reuben stole a book from me,” she blurted.
The wine was making the top of her float away, and the thoughts she normally kept in order spilled out with it.
