Page 28

“I cannot have children.” She raised her head and looked at him. Her eyes were a navy blue color and perfectly set apart. She was like the most gorgeous mathematical theorem he had ever seen: devastatingly simple on the outside and fascinatingly complicated on the inside. He hadn’t really listened to what she said. “You can’t—

what?”

“Have children,” she said painstakingly, just as if this was the kind of conversation that one often had with a person one has just met.

What the devil was he supposed to say to that? He had never heard a gentlewoman discuss her plumbing in company. Her eyes were still on his face, and they had that slightly mocking edge in them again. She drew her hand away. “I apologize if I horrified you by my bluntness, Mr. Darby. I’m afraid that everyone is aware that you have to marry an heiress in order to support those lovely sisters of yours. As it happens, I am an heiress but, under the circumstances, I am not active in the marketplace.”

He literally had no idea what she meant.

She finished her champagne and put it down with a little click. Her smile was kind. “I would not wish you to labor under the misapprehension that I might join the fray and purchase you myself.”

He didn’t even laugh until some time after she walked away.

< 10 =

Henrietta At Home,

After Leaving Esme’s At-Home

It was unusual for Henrietta to feel restless once she retired to her bedchamber. Usually she tossed her braid over her shoulder, said her prayers, and went peacefully to sleep. Oh, there were nights when her hip hurt. And occasional nights when the idea of a childless, husbandless life seemed too much to bear, and she wept into her pillow. But she had friends, and she felt valued, and most of the time she liked her life tremendously. Over the years, Henrietta had quietly taken over many of her stepmother’s duties, to their mutual satisfaction. She spent her days visiting the ill and making certain that new families were adequately housed, meeting with the vicar when needed, and planning the various celebrations that marked a country year. Except for the moments when some foolish person got their back up because she, Henrietta, had spoken rather more frankly than was advisable, she was quite happy. It didn’t bother her tremendously that she had never had a season. What would have been the point?

But tonight she couldn’t seem to relax. She drifted about Fool for Love

75

her room picking up this or that book of poetry and putting it down again.

She’d seen etchings of Greek statues in The Ladies Jour-nal, and he resembled a god only in profile. From the front he was far too intelligent. His cheekbones were purely English, as were his eyes.

It was a shame that she had to tell him about her hip, although if he kept paying her so much attention, someone undoubtedly would have dropped a hint in his ear. She could see as well as anyone that there was a speculative light in his eye when she offered to help him find a nursemaid, and he could easily have discovered that she was an heiress. How nice for him: an heiress and a mother, all in one package. Of course she was right to disabuse him. She didn’t want to start gossip. His attentions were quite marked. She couldn’t help grinning at the delicious memory of how he turned and walked straight to her table. And the way he returned with Lucy Aiken in tow. The way he brought her a plate of pheasant. The way he held her hand.

She had watched women and men flirt for years. But she had never realized how pleasurable it was to meet a man’s eyes across the room and know that he desired you. Especially when he was the first London gentleman to appear in Wiltshire for over a year, since Lord Fastlebinder stayed for a month and seduced Mrs. Pidcock’s downstairs maid. Fastlebinder was overly plump and not attractive, to her mind. But Darby cast all the local men into the shade. Mrs. Pidcock herself had bustled over to her last night and asked in a piercing whisper, “What was Mr. Darby talking to you about, Lady Henrietta? I should not like you to have your expectations raised by a London fortune hunter. Because he is.” Which was a slightly oblique way of reminding Henrietta that Darby didn’t know about her inability to have children or he wouldn’t waste his time wooing her.

76 Eloisa

James

OceanofPDF.com

Henrietta had patted her on the arm and told her, in the strictest confidence, that she rather fancied Mr. Darby had his eye on Lucy Aiken.

But Henrietta herself couldn’t stop smiling over the fact that Darby had actually considered her as a potential wife. Otherwise, why the compliments? Why dally at her table?

Why talk of her hair, and her symmetry, and hold her hand?

Why look at her with that slow and easy grin, as if he was thinking—

For a moment she felt the pulsing wash of despair that used to attack her when she was younger, a numbing longing to be normal. To be a girl like any other girl, free to marry and have children without making her life the payment. But she was skilled at pushing away thoughts of that nature, and she did so now. That was not the point. The point was that she had met a truly attractive man who didn’t know about her disability—and he contemplated wooing her. Since she had spent her entire life in Limpley Stoke, where everyone knew her to be unmarriageable, it was a new experience. And new experiences, Henrietta told herself primly, are always advantageous. She wandered over to the window, but the manicured lawns of Holkham House were hidden in the night. If Darby truly wooed someone, what a lucky woman she would be. He had lovely eyes. They even tried to tell her things, except she didn’t believe any of that nonsense. If he were really wooing her . . .

Over the years various of her friends had received love letters, usually the precursor to a formal request for her hand in marriage. A letter written by Mr. Darby would be far smoother and more sophisticated than the bumbling missives of a Wiltshire gentleman. He’d write a letter that would be sweet, and eager, and—

No. He was too beautiful, and he was clearly used to hav-Fool for Love 77

ing women fall all over themselves begging for attention. He’d write a love letter that would be arrogant and assertive, and expectant.

Except he hadn’t really looked at her that way: as if he expected her to be his wife. It was more as if he thought there was something so delicious about her, about her lips or her nose or—she couldn’t even say. It was a sort of look that made a woman feel a squirming sort of warmth. Not the sort of feeling that she, Lady Henrietta Maclellan, ever felt. Ever.

Feelings aside, Darby would write a letter that would make a woman feel desired. Beautiful, even though she was lame. Desirable, even though she couldn’t have children. Wanted. He had that lazy, calculating grin that told a woman she was beautiful. Even thinking of it gave Henrietta the oddest little shiver down her back. She drifted over to her writing desk and sat down. She could almost see the letter in her head.