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“That’s absurd!”
He nodded. “I was hurt. Oh, not by you, but by your mother’s contempt.”
“Why didn’t you propose to me?”
“Because I thought I deserved her disparagement.” His lips quirked into a wry smile. “We share that feeling. Didn’t you say that you deserved my disdain? But you felt ashamed for the weighty crime of trying to save your adorable little sister. I deserved your scorn—and your mother’s—because I did consort with Russian dancers. I am older than you, though only by seven years and not twenty.”
“I don’t care about that,” Daisy said promptly.
“Good, because I’m a reformed man. Married. Faithful. Loyal to my dying day. In love with my wife.”
The last words fell, heavy in the quiet room.
She opened her mouth, but he put a finger on her lips, a touch as soft as a snowflake. “Like any man in love, I mean to court the woman of my heart.” The steady light in his eyes made Daisy’s anxiety ease.
She’d never seen that expression on his face. In fact, she had the impression that no woman had seen it. All the same, fear rattled around in her gut. After all, in the past Miles had looked at her with passion … and then the next evening with disinterest.
“As far as courting goes, it would be difficult to return to my mother’s house and wait for invitations to drive in Hyde Park,” she pointed out.
“We will take Belle to my country house, where I shall do my best to lure you into falling back in love with me. You shall sleep in your bedchamber and I in mine.”
“You’re going to woo me?” she asked shakily. “Even though we’re already married?”
“Not legally,” he reminded her.
“Do you mean with poetry?” She eyed him dubiously. “Flowers?”
Miles realized with a jolt that he had never actually courted a woman and wasn’t certain how to do it. “Poetry might be a stretch,” he confessed. “Perhaps I could find some verse in the library in the country. There are hundreds of volumes, so surely a sonnet or two can be found amongst them.”
Her eyes widened. “Are there any novels?”
“I doubt it. The shelves are crammed full of books in Latin and Greek, thanks to scholarly ancestors.”
Daisy’s face fell. “I only read novels written in English.”
Miles made a mental note to subscribe to every publishing house that sold novels. “The gardens are full of roses that I can toss at your feet.”
“I prefer violets,” she said, a smile growing in her eyes. “Roses are gaudy.”
He nodded. “What else could I give you? Jewelry?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not Lady Regina. She carries off diamonds with an air.”
Miles had the idea that Regina draped herself with sparkling rocks in the hopes that men would overlook her sharp tongue. So far, it hadn’t worked. “A kitten?” he asked, wracking his memory for appropriate gestures.
“No! You needn’t give me anything. Truly.”
Likely her father’s disinterest, even contempt, had sunk into his wife’s bones, so she needed to be wooed with the truth, not with diamonds or flowers. Miles cupped her face, cataloguing her lush features, her wide eyes, her shimmering hair. “You are beautiful, Daisy—but even more beautiful inside.”
“I have heard that Lord Devin is remarkably eloquent in the House of Lords,” she said, dimpling at him. “I am beginning to believe it.”
“You’re insightful, adventuresome, and intelligent. You have integrity and kindness. The generosity in your heart puts me to shame. You never considered allowing Belle to go to an orphanage, did you?”
She shook her head.
“Why wouldn’t all of the bachelors in London fall in love with you? I had to marry you overnight, in case I lost you to one of them. They saw a woman gentle to the bone, with whom they could share a life full of laughter and love. Who was delightfully sensual but deeply loyal. Who would love them. That’s one thing I learned from my position in the House of Lords. Most men in the peerage are unloved. Not to blame their wives: the fellows I encountered were fairly unlovable.”
Daisy looked astonished. “You think all those things of me?”
