Page 54 of Unmasked by the Marquess
“I was,” she whispered. She hadn’t felt entitled to grieve. Who was she but a servant who had the bad sense to land in her master’s bed? The fact that Robbie insisted on marrying her surely said more about his sense of honor than it did about her fitness to be his wife.
And so she had taken all that grief and turned it into action. She turned off any servants who couldn’t be trusted to keep a secret. She did what needed to be done to save as much as she could from Fenshawe’s income. All to keep Louisa safe.
“How did you guess?” Only when she spoke did she realize she was crying.
“Come here.” He hauled her onto his lap, despite her protests. “I don’t care if anyone comes in.” His voice was fierce.Nowhe was angry? “Do you understand that? It doesn’t matter.”
Like hell it didn’t, but she had her face buried in his neck and he was stroking her back, and it all felt too good to be sensible about.
“To answer your question,” he said, “I didn’t guess. I had my solicitor look for any evidence of a marriage between you and Selby. You had mentioned being near Scotland, where it wouldn’t have mattered if you were underage.”
“I was eighteen and he was nineteen.” Young and rash, but of course they hadn’t thought so at the time. “We had been in and out of one another’s beds for years by that point, you know.” She said that just in case he thought she had ever been a respectable miss. “But he took the notion into his head that if I were his wife, there would be no dishonesty in my going to Cambridge in his stead. No, I know it’s bollocks, but that was his condition. So we rode into Scotland, were married over the anvil, and returned to Fenshawe in time for me to roast a joint for supper.” She found that she was braced for his disapproval, but it never came. “We didn’t tell anyone,” she continued, “because I was to leave Fenshawe on the pretense of going to York as a lady’s maid, but of course I was really going to Cambridge.”
She had condensed so many misdeeds into a few sentences, but his hand never faltered in the steady rhythm he stroked on her back.
“Is that why you won’t marry me? Because you had already been married once and didn’t want to settle for anything less than—”
“No!” She couldn’t let him think that. “I did love Robbie.” She leaned back so they could see one another’s faces. “But he’s been dead over two years.” She didn’t want to talk about this, didn’t want to put her thoughts into words, to make them any more real than they were. But he had been honest about his feelings and she wanted to give him the same. “I love you.” His eyes flared with satisfaction, which only meant that he hadn’t yet understood. “I wish like hell that I didn’t, though.”
“Marry me.”
She was going to have to spell it out for him. “You see, if Robbie had lived, it would have been awkward enough for me to be mistress of Fenshawe. Imagine how much more awkward it would be for me to be Lady Pembroke.”
“You sell yourself short. You also have an appalling notion of what I require in a wife. Do you think I intend to force you to wait on the queen or preside over tea parties?”
She ignored this, because of course he’d want a wife to do all those things and more. “And there’s the small matter of my not having a death certificate for my husband. Charity Selby is a married woman, as far as the law is concerned.”
“Charity Selby,” he repeated, and it sounded strange to her ears as well. He was silent for too long, his hands still on her hips. She knew that he finally understood. “There has to be a way to have Selby declared dead.”
“Not without exposing Louisa’s participation in a fraud. And I won’t have that.”
“You’ve already given up your name and a thousand pounds for Louisa’s comfort. Have you asked her whether she wants you to continue sacrificing for her? It’s not clear to me that you owe her a damned thing at this point.”
She almost pitied him. “It’s not about owing her anything. She’s eighteen. I’ve known her since she was two. We’re family to one another.” She refrained from pointing out his own treatment of his flesh-and-blood family, but let the implication hang in the air.
He was silent for several moments, long enough that she thought he’d let the subject drop. “That’s right, sheisyour sister,” he said musingly. “That much was true.”
“Sister-in-law.”
He cradled her face in his hands. “Imagine if everyone did by their siblings as well as you’ve done for yours.”
She wasn’t expecting that, and the kindness and admiration in his voice undid her. Her throat went tight. “Now you think I’m some sort of martyr.”
“I think nothing of the sort. I think you’re one of the finest people I’ve ever met.”
That set her off into a fresh round of tears, while Alistair stroked her hair and whispered nonsense to her about how everything would come out all right. Charity wished she could believe it.
Alistair drove his curricle with painstaking care lest he jostle Gilbert’s healing arm. His brother had only that morning received permission from the doctor to venture forth from the inn, and had promptly and predictably requested to be conveyed to Louisa’s bedside.
“Your betrothed has taken a great deal of interest in poultry, Miss Church has told me,” Alistair said, trying to casually indicate his acceptance of the marriage.
“That’s Louisa!” Gilbert said happily, as if interest in barnyard fowl was precisely the thing to be proud of in a future wife. And why shouldn’t it be? Alistair had found stranger things to admire in the woman he wished to marry.
“I had Nivins draw up some papers to give you the use of the Kent property.” He didn’t turn his head to look at his brother, in case Gilbert thought this an outrageous gift, embarrassingly grand. But with Robin as his example, how could Alistair not be generous? He wanted things to be right between them. He wanted to pledge his support for however Gilbert chose to live his life.
The next thing he knew, Gilbert was hugging him enthusiastically with his unbroken arm. “Thank you! This is wonderful!”
“Careful, or we’ll overturn this carriage too.” But he couldn’t help but smile at his brother’s happiness.
