“No,” she said. “You intend to glower at the gentry and refuse every introduction until someone sends a matchmaker with a broadsword.”
“Iintend,” he said evenly, “to spend the next five years learning how to manage what my father left me. To honor it. Not to flirt my way into acceptable company.”
She stared at him for a moment.
Then, suddenly, she smiled.
He did not like it.
“What?” he asked.
“I have a solution.”
“No, you do not.”
“Marryme.”
He nearly choked on a piece of cheese.“What?”
“Notnow,” she said, as if speaking to a child. “But in five years. If you have not married by then, and I have not married by then, we marry each other.”
He stared. “You are serious!”
“Of course. Mama will die of apoplexy if I have failed to secure a husband by the age of two and twenty. I care nothing for you and your wealth, and you clearly find me vexing, but at least we can be honest with one another and are fairly good at sparring. That is something. And we are both hopelessly independent. So, it should be dreadful, which, I think, might appeal to your rather self-loathing character.”
“Miss Bennet—”
She held up a finger. “You will have five years to find someone else. I recommend a lovely lady with a fondness for brooding. And I will have five years to charm a man who does not wear mourning to a picnic. But if we both fail, well—why not?”
He could not think of a single reason.
He tried.
“Your father,” he said at last. “Surely your estate is—”
“Entailed,” she said breezily. “And I have but a thousand pounds, currently invested in the four percents.”
He shook his head in perfect awe. “Insupportable.”
“Oh, completely. Our future is already a tragic ballad. But you would have five years to find a better option. If I were you, I would.”
He narrowed his eyes. “And why offer me such a reprieve?”
“Because,” she said, tossing him the last of the strawberries, “you are very hard to ignore. And I would rather spend my timearguing with someone clever than listening to simpering flattery from men who think poetry is romantic.”
He caught the strawberry and stared at her. “Poetryisromantic.”
“Only the satirical kind, and even then, not very.”
He shook his head. “Now Iknowyou are not entirely serious.”
“Of course I am.”
“You would truly bind yourself to this notion, should both of us remain—”
“Unmarried? Hardlybindingmyself, as we would both heartily encourage the other to seek better options before then.”
He looked down at the fruit in his hand.
