Page 41 of Unmasked by the Marquess
“Robin.” His expression was almost comically grim. Surely one day she would see the humor in having been proposed to in such a manner. He reached for her but she stepped away. “I’ve... we’ve been together twice. I can’t not offer for you.”
Did he think that would help the matter? He was an idiot, then. She was in love with an absolute fool. “How dare you? How dare you fuck me against the wall and then treat me like a damsel in need of respectability?” She felt her anger gathering speed, like a cart rolling downhill. “Do you think I ought to be grateful that you condescended to offer for me at all? I’m not a lady. I’m not the sort of person who requires marriage after a tupping.”
“What rot. Besides, Iamthe type who requires marriage.”
“Oh, to hell with you and your requirements.” She tried to set her clothing right, tucking in her shirt and straightening her lapels, more to give her something to do with her hands than out of any concern for what she looked like at the moment. “Do you even realize how insulting that is? You don’t want to be like your father—who, by the way, doesn’t seem to have been half so bad a fellow as you think. But you need to keep your honor intact, so you throw around offers of marriage like you might toss coins to a harlot after having your way with her.”
He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I’ve never asked anyone to marry me before in my life, I’ll have you know.” Now he was angry too. Good. It was so unsatisfying to be the only one fixing for a fight.
“Perhaps that’s because you generally prefer men.” A low blow, but so was a marriage proposal.
“Unfair, Charity. I don’t have any preference on that score, and well you know it. And if you’re under the impression that I find lying with men to be less problematic than lying with women who are not my wife, then you’re even more confused about propriety than I thought.”
Excellent. Now they were openly insulting one another and this was a proper fight. “Your offer presumes that you somehow damaged me and that I need marriage to undo the harm. That I’d be better off as your wife than I am on my own.”
That must have hit home because his nostrils flared with anger. “I should very well think you’d be a good deal better off as Lady Pembroke than as....” He gestured at her, evidently unable to explain in words who or what she was.
“Have you given this any thought at all?” Oh, he was lost to all reason, the poor bastard. She tried to hide her mounting anger and frustration behind a facade of calm, and kept her voice steady, as if she were trying to persuade a frightened child to come down from a tree. “If you marry me—if you marry Charity Church, that is—then what happens to Robert Selby?”
“It would have to be carefully managed, of course, but with a little money put into the right hands we could see our way through. I was thinking a boating accident, perhaps.”
She felt sick. “You mean for Robert Selby to die.” It was no more or less than what she already knew had to happen, but hearing Alistair suggest it in his commanding, lordly manner made it so much worse. She felt that he was suggesting an act of violence, an actual murder or suicide, or as if he were asking her to cut off her own leg.
“I gather that he must, in order to let the estate pass to the rightful heir.”
“So Robert Selby dies,” she repeated, her mouth dry. “And what happens to me?”
“You leave town for a time, then come back—properly attired, and so forth—as Charity Church. That is your legal name, is it not? Otherwise I’ll have my solicitors draw up a list of foundlings born in Northumberland and you can avail yourself of one of those names.”
She would be completely erased. It was to be as if she had never been born, as if the last twenty-four years had never happened. She had hoped that even in killing off Robert Selby, she could still be herself, but Alistair wanted to take that from her.
He didn’t understand any of that, though. He was rich, and a man, and an arrogant bastard, and he couldn’t possibly know what it was like to have nothing but a name, and a false one at that. She took a deep breath and forced her voice steady. “I have spent over five years as Robert Selby. I haven’t worn a gown since Robbie died andI don’t want to. I don’t know how to be a woman, let alone a lady, and certainly not a fucking marchioness. And Alistair, I don’t want to even try.” For Louisa, she would have killed off Robert Selby and suffered the cost of that sacrifice. But not under any circumstance would she live as a woman.
He was silent for a moment. “Men have more freedom. I understand that. But I assure you that as Lady Pembroke you’d have as much freedom as any woman in the nation.”
She shook her head. He still didn’t understand. “It’s not about freedom.” She didn’t think she could explain the utter impossibility of her living as a woman. She could hardly articulate it to herself. So she tried a different approach. “Besides, you’d be so ashamed of me. I’d be aware of that every day. You ought to have married someone a decade ago, Alistair. Someone perfect and pretty.”
“I want to marry you. I wantyou.” He looked perfectly earnest. The insufferable shite didn’t hear an insult when it came from his own mouth. She would have laughed if she didn’t want to throw a chair at him.
“How long would it take for your first flush of righteous satisfaction to pass? How long before you realized you had contracted a marriage that had made you a laughingstock? And I assure you, you would be. I have no idea how to behave as a lady and no intention of acquiring that knowledge.” No matter how much she loved him, there were limits to what she would do for him, and she was only now realizing what they were. “You’d be ashamed. Here me now, Alistair, I do not want anything to do with your shame.” Goddammit, she had enough of her own problems without borrowing anyone else’s.
He turned away from her to face the room’s single window. He smoothed his hair as if he could see his reflection. “I don’t want this to end,” he said without turning around.
“I don’t want it to end either.” Certainly not like this, she didn’t.
But what they wanted didn’t matter.
Chapter Thirteen
What did other men do after suffering such a setback? What was the received course of action after being dealt such a crushing blow? Alistair was fairly certain most men found their solace at the bottom of a bottle. Ordinarily he sneered at drunkenness, but today he didn’t feel equal to questioning the wisdom of the ages.
At White’s he set to work at draining an entire bottle of brandy. When the bottle was three quarters empty—he had no idea how many hours had passed, and didn’t care in the slightest, because if time could be measured in brandy bottles then so be it—Hugh Furnival lowered himself into a nearby chair.
“Ah, I fear it didn’t go as you planned, did it, Pembroke?”
Now, what could Furnival know of the matter? More importantly, why was the man pouring himself a glass of Alistair’s brandy? Alistair snatched the bottle away. “No, it most certainly did not.” The words were hard to form, his tongue curiously heavy. But his mind, ah, his mind was light.
“It makes no sense, I tell you. When I saw you leave that house, I said, poor Pembroke, pity the blighter. If he can’t make it work, who can?” Furnival shook his head sympathetically. “You’d think a girl would be glad to marry a marquess.”
