“Hold on—I didn’t say that,” Neil pushed back.“I just think we need to consider all the possible—”
“No.”Constance took up his place pacing across the pavilion floor.“Don’t you see?Even if we made it clear that it was a love match, and not that you had seduced me to get your hands on my fortune—”
“That Iwhat?” Neil burst out with a lurch of mortification.
“Don’t worry about it.I’m sure we could have convinced them,” Constance assured him with a dismissive wave of her hand.
Her words sparked a wicked curiosity.“How would we have done that, exactly?”
“But it doesn’t matter,” Constance pressed on, ignoring his question.“I’ll have to find another stratagem for escaping Aai’s marital machinations.I won’t be responsible for branding you a rascal and ruining your future marriage prospects.”
“Mymarriage prospects?”Neil stared at her, his mind struggling to keep up.“I am an unemployed archaeologist from a family nobody has ever heard of.”
Constance set her hands on her hips.“Don’t be silly.You have a great deal to offer a potential wife.”
“Like what, exactly?”Neil asked, bewildered.
“All sorts of things!”Constance studied him with frank curiosity.“Haven’t you any interest in being married?”
Neil adjusted his collar.It suddenly felt a bit tight, even though he had left his bow tie back in his room.“I suppose I’ve always assumed that I would marry, once I met the right person.”
“What would the right person look like?”Constance pressed with a note of avid interest.
Neil’s mind blanked of everything but hair like polished ebony, enormous brown eyes, and a gorgeously curved body with knives strapped to it.
“No idea,” he blurted out.
Constance was clearly dissatisfied with his response.“But what’s in your ‘wife space?’”
“My ‘wife space?’”
“You know.”Constance waved an impatient hand.“The place in your life that a wife would fit into.What do you imagine she would do all day while you’re off being scholarly?Make you dinner?Paint watercolors?Manage your household?”
“What household?In Canonbury, there’s just Sylvia who does the cooking and a girl who comes in three times a week to clean.But neither of them requires much managing.Sylvia knows what she’s doing better than Mum does.”
Constance gave an exasperated huff.“Then what do you expect your wife to do all day?”
“Whatever she wants to?”Neil returned uncertainly.
Constance considered him thoughtfully.“You have really given no thought at all to what role a woman might play in your life?”
Neil’s mind was abruptly flooded with thoughts of one role he had most certainly imagined a woman playing in his life.
Veryvividlyimagined.
Not that anyone had played that role for him as of yet.
Of course, he knew perfectly well what would be involved.One could hardly study Greek pottery for two semesters without learning a thing or two about the arts of love.
A few less scholarly reference volumes had fallen into his hands as they circulated around Cambridge.The fervor with which Neil had devoured them had been far from strictly academic.
At Constance’s inquiry, he remembered those illicit readings once again… only it was Constance’s face he saw hovering above him as she pinned his hands to the headboard.
Constance who was staring at him right now, puzzled by Neil’s conspicuously ongoing silence.
He jolted with panic.“Obviously,” he burst out.
Neil realized that might not have been an appropriate answer.
