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Taken aback, he said, ‘Why not? I haven’t a title, but I have a large and well-connected family. My uncle’s an earl; in fact, I seem to recall that Viscount Hazlett is part of my uncle’s coalition in the Lords. I can guarantee to raise Charles as befits a gentleman and assure him entry into whatever career he wants.’
‘No, no, it isn’t that! Your background is perfect, and I know you care for the children.’ She looked up at him, a few more tears dripping down, distress on her face. ‘You’re—you’re too nice, and I like you too much!’
He stared back at her. ‘I’ve heard of union s between parties who cordially detest each other, but I’d never heard of liking being a barrier to marriage.’
‘It’s not that. Oh, I’m making a muddle of this.’ She took a deep breath, obviously trying to recover her composure. ‘When you like someone, you want the best for them. So I couldn’t allow you to be dragged into a marriage, just because I’m caught in a predicament of my own making.’
Relieved, he smiled at her. Dear Theo, trying to ‘protect’ him as she did her orphans. ‘Don’t you think I have presence of mind enough to make that decision myself?’
‘I think you are brave, and compassionate, and wonderfully generous! But you’ve only recently ended an engagement—too recently to be pressed into making another. And you yourself admit you haven’t yet figured out what you mean to do with your life. How could I let you tie yourself to something and someone who will be of no help to you in whatever endeavour you finally decide to pursue?’
‘Just because you will be running the school doesn’t mean I can’t pursue other options,’ he argued. ‘In fact, if the breeding operation I’m envisioning comes to fruition, the focus of my business will be in Suffolk, headquartered at Bildenstone Hall. Besides, don’t you always quote your father, something about nothing being certain and having to make the best choice as the battle rages? Adapt to conquer?’
She looked at him reprovingly. ‘It’s not fair to use my father against me.’
He’d not been anticipating resistance—swift and grateful acceptance, really. At the shock of realising she might actually refuse him, feelings of protest and dismay welled up, along with a desire to make her his wife that was much stronger than he’d expected.
‘Besides,’ she was continuing, ‘what if you fall in love? I have loved someone completely, utterly, madly. It’s wonderful and magical and I wouldn’t want you to miss that.’ She grimaced. ‘Nor would I want to be your wife when you fell in love with someone else.’
‘How long did it take you to recover from losing your fiancé?’
A shadow crossed her eyes. ‘One never completely gets over it.’
‘Just so.’ He nodded. ‘My cousin Alastair was completely, utterly, madly in love with a woman who jilted him practically at the altar. Devastated, he joined the army, determined to die gloriously in battle, or some such rot. He survived the war, but he’s never truly got over her. So if that’s what being madly in love is, I’d just as soon not experience it. Why can we not be sanely in love? Isn’t friendship and shared interests and compatibility of mind a much sounder basis for a union meant to be happy over a lifetime? And what of this?’
Stepping forward, he drew her to him and feathered kisses from her ear down her throat to the neckline of her gown. ‘This,’ he murmured as she sagged against him, ‘is also unique, this connection between us.’
‘C-can’t base a marriage on that,’ she whispered disjointedly.
‘I think it an excellent basis,’ he said, gratified that he had to steady her on her feet. ‘We’ve tried to ignore the attraction—but it burns between us whenever we’re together. You feel it, too, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted.
‘I’ve never experienced anything stronger. I think it will last a long, long time, binding us together. Making us one.’
He kissed her then, a soft, glancing brush of his lips against hers. Then exulted, desire coursing through him, when she immediately opened her mouth, sought his tongue, and wrapped her arms around his neck. Kissing him back with passion and also, he thought, anxiety and fear and relief.
After a few moments, breathing hard, he broke the kiss. ‘So marry me, Theo.’
She shook her head dazedly. ‘I can’t think when you kiss me like that.’
‘Thinking is highly overrated.’
‘But marriage would be for ever! There’d be no trial period, like I proposed for the school, during which you could reconsider and toss me and the children out. You shouldn’t make such an important decision so hastily.’
‘I’ve had time to consider it.’
‘How could you? I’ve only just explained the situation!’
‘Jemmie found me at Holkham. In fact,’ he added with a smile, ‘he practically ordered me to come to London and sort this out.’
‘Jemmie ordered you!’ she gasped, her cheeks flaming red. ‘Oh, the...the rascal! I’ll strangle him for this!’
‘It was enlightened self-interest. He knows I like the children and the school, and if you married, a new husband might not.’
‘I’m still going to strangle him.’
‘He also said he knew I liked you—and that after we’d been together, you seemed happier than he’d seen you since your father died. I’d like to go on making you happy. Won’t you let me? Not to mention, we don’t want to let Jemmie and the others down.’
The struggle played out over her expressive face. Attraction, affection, and the strong connection that went beyond the physical pulling them together; opposing that, her fierce sense of honour insisting she not allow him to make such an important decision so precipitously, badly as she needed his help.
Had he ever met a woman so brave—or so stubborn? Then a niggle of doubt crept in.
‘Am I pressing you too hard? Would you truly prefer to marry one of the prospects your aunt lines up?’
‘There’s no one I’d rather marry,’ she blurted, sending another flurry of relief through him. ‘But,’ she added, biting her lip, ‘my wishes are not important.’
‘Why?’ He looked at her curiously. A disquieting notion occurred, and he frowned. ‘You don’t really think you should marry a man you don’t love or even like and be miserable for the rest of life as some sort of penance for the mistake of conceiving a child out of wedlock?’ At the slight alteration of her expression, he said, ‘Great Heaven, I’m afraid you might! Not that I can speak for the Almighty, but surely God forgave you for that sin long ago. You need to forgive yourself, and think seriously about what would make you, not just stoically endure, not just be content, but happy.’ He drew her back against him. ‘Delirious, even.’
He kissed her again, harder, deeper this time, until they were both dizzy and gasping for breath.
‘Marry me, Theo,’ he urged, brushing his mouth over hers.
She nuzzled into him, whimpering.
‘Was that a “yes”?’
‘I—I don’t know! My senses are swimming and my mind doesn’t know up from down. C-come back tomorrow, and I’ll answer you then.’
He set her on her feet. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow. And ask you again. And kiss you again. Count on it.’ With that, he bowed and walked away, his heart pounding, desire pulsing through his veins.
That he wanted her more than ever was no surprise. That he wanted so badly for her to marry him was.
After that last kiss, however, he was feeling pretty confident that he was going to be satisfied on both counts.
Chapter Eighteen
Theo watched her erstwhile fiancé stride down the garden path until he was lost from sight. Her senses still tingling from his kisses, she tottered to a bench and sat down hard.
She ought to pinch herself. Dominic Ransleigh—‘Dandy Dom’, formerly society’s darling who had snagged a duke’s daughter for a bride—couldn’t have just asked her to marry him.
Could he?
She took long, slow breaths, trying to settle her agitated body and calm her disordered mind. What, exactly, had he told her?
That Jemmie had tracked him down to inform him about her abrupt departure from Thornfield. She really should strangle the boy when she got back, she thought with a sigh.
That Jemmie knew she liked Dom, and Dom liked her. She felt a flush of embarrassment heat her cheeks.
Obviously they hadn’t masked their mutual attraction as well as she’d thought.
After the acute discomfort of Lady Staunton’s dinner, and with the prospect of a series of equally uncomfortable evenings to come, she’d had to resist the urge to throw herself on Dom and accept him immediately. But she’d paid a high price once for making a decision of enormous consequence without careful reflection, and she’d not do so again.
