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“Yes, but how was she?” he tried again. “Freddie?”
“Who?”
Guy gritted his teeth. “Arabella.”
“Same as usual. She kept asking questions. But she was… You know.”
Freddie jumped over a stone and skipped on.
“No, Freddie, I don’t know. She was what?”
“In bed.”
Bloody hell. Getting information out of Freddie was like getting a dragonfly to play chess, and no one else would say anything at all.
A courteous inquiry of Lady Belinda had resulted in “How thoughtful of you to ask, my lord. She has simply overtired herself, with the ball.”
And Lady Belinda kept loyal servants, every one of whom had given the same bland response of “Miss Arabella is merely tired.”
And Mrs. DeWitt and Miss Bell, the neighbors who’d arrived to take over Arabella’s duties, had brightly said, “She’s worn herself out. She does so much. Look, it took two of us to replace her!”
Vibrant, demanding Arabella? Tired? Not a chance.
Half the night he’d lain awake debating whether to sneak into her room, to make sure she was all right, wondering whether he should offer to marry her after all, if he was the cause of the rift. Only to punch the pillow and remind himself that he owed her nothing.
“So she is ill,” he said, as they arrived at the stables and waited for the groom to finish saddling Freddie’s horse.
“When Matilda was ill, men sent her flowers,” Freddie volunteered. “Of course, they send her flowers when she’s not ill, too.”
“I can’t give Arabella flowers.”
Everyone would talk, and she would mock him horribly. Tempting, actually. He would present her with a bouquet and she would deliver some sharp set-down that would make him laugh. Perhaps he would even compose a poem for her. It would be terrible, naturally, and he would tease lines out of her so outrageously arrogant that even she would have to laugh.
She had not laughed in London, when he slid that flower behind her ear and likened her beauty to starry skies. Even that feigned intimacy and tenderness had unsettled her. She was not as invincible as she wanted to appear.
How disconcerting, to think of Arabella that way.
“But at least you can marry her now,” Freddie said abruptly.
You must get engaged to me,she had said in London.I was a virgin and now I am not.
“I’m not marrying Arabella.”
“Father wanted you to.”
“I will choose my own spouse. As will you.”
“What if I never get married?”
“Of course you’ll get married. But you choose to whom.” He shifted Ursula to his other arm, as the groom finished his task and stood back. “I want a home, a proper home and family, such as we never had. My wife will be someone pleasant and amiable, who—”
Freddie snorted, derisively, and her mare gave an answering huff. Pointing one chubby finger, Ursula launched into a lengthy discourse on the nature of horses.
“What’s wrong with wanting that?” Guy asked over her chatter.
“Nothing, for most men. Just not for you,” Freddie went on, suddenly as chatty as a bloody magpie, as she went to greet her horse. “Consider Father. No one ever dared to disagree with him and look how he turned out.”
“I am not like Father.”
