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‘You believe I am unable to meet your requirements?’
‘Not all of them.’
‘Will you tell me where I lack?’ Alex asked after a tense quiet.
Elise met his gaze levelly. ‘I have always found you respectful.’ She glimpsed the beginnings of his sultry smile and her eyelids fluttered low at the memory of his passionate assault at Vauxhall. ‘Following an initial lapse, that is,’ she qualified her praise, pink cheeked. ‘I understand why you at first thought me a...disreputable character.’ She twisted away from him to shield her confusion. ‘I don’t blame you. You weren’t alone in judging me unfavourably that night.’
‘Oh?’ The single word sounded perilous. ‘Who else did, apart from Whittiker’s doxy?’
‘Every person I rushed past,’ Elise admitted with a forlorn giggle. ‘I got many hateful looks.’
‘Unfortunately it’s too late to remedy that, but I would if it were within my power.’ He shifted so he could again observe her expression. ‘So I now meet your approval as a respectful husband,’ Alex noted. ‘And as for the rest?’
Elise frowned, seeking a way to inoffensively convey she knew he’d be unfaithful. And why should he not spend his nights with a mistress he’d chosen rather than a wife foisted on to him by cruel fate? And as for love—did he love Celia Chase and had he intended to marry her before this calamity put paid to his hopes for the future? Aware he was awaiting her reply, she murmured, ‘I’m sure you can guess at that.’
‘I’d sooner you said what you mean,’ Alex harshly demanded.
‘I think, sir, you know very well what I mean!’ Elise quietly exploded, exasperated at his persistence in playing this cat and mouse game. ‘If a man has a mistress and little objection to committing adultery, pray tell me how his marriage might flourish in those circumstances.’
‘I assure you many do.’
‘But mine would not,’ Elise snapped. From his muted amusement she deduced he found her attitude deplorably gauche.
Of course, she was aware that in the rarefied echelons of polite society many marriages endured despite the mercenary method behind the pairing. For such people assets and pedigree were priorities, not a vulgar prerequisite for love and affection between bride and groom. Elise knew she would never have the sophistication to live that way; neither would she want to.
‘You live in a separate world to me and have been reared with different ideas,’ she stated, striving to control her temper. ‘I would not expect you to understand my silly sentimentality any more than I understand your lack of it.’ Elise tore her eyes away from a dark glittering gaze.
‘My parents were devoted to one another and I was glad to have been raised in a harmonious household.’ Alex crossed his arms over his chest and lowered his face to study his dusty Hessian boots. ‘I’m unsure why you imagine you know better than I what I expect from a wife and a marriage.’
It was a subdued set down, nevertheless Elise felt her face burning with mortification. He couldn’t have made it plainer he thought her unfit to pontificate, given her background. Her mother had run off with her lover—his bachelor uncle—then when that liaison was over had transferred her affection elsewhere. Her father had been caught embezzling, so enslaved was he by his fickle wife. In contrast to her own, his parents seemed paragons of virtue, his childhood, blissful. She knew he’d not concocted for her benefit the story about his upbringing. It was the simple truth and she humbly regretted having spoken out of turn.
‘Don’t condemn me as a hypocrite because of my parents’ failings.’ Her words, though strongly spoken, held a hint of plea. ‘It is precisely because they were so miserable that I crave something else for myself.’ She sank small pearly teeth into her quivering lower lip to still it. ‘Thank you for your proposal, but I cannot accept.’ She twisted away from him and nervously plunged a hand into her pocket, wishing he would say something conciliatory, too, so they might at least part on civil terms. All she heard was a low muttered oath and whether directed at himself or her she was uncertain.
Suddenly her fingers fluttered against the letter in her pocket and she pulled it out, pivoting to face him. ‘I have today received a note from my friend Verity. My father also got one from his sister Dolly.’ Her eyes widened on Alex as she realised she might hold in her hand the awful proof that Whittiker had already set the rumour mill grinding. Because of their heated exchange she’d omitted to mention it immediately. ‘The doctor turned up before we had time to read our letters. My father left his on his desk...but if both bear bad tidings...’ Her shaking fingers broke the seal and she forced herself to read her friend’s few neat paragraphs.
