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“Son of a bitch,” Rotherby said. “You slept with her. Denial is impossible,” he went on when Seb didn’t respond. “You’ve got the look of a man who’s calculating the next time he can get beneath a lady’s skirts.”
Seb could do nothing but drop his head into his hands. His whole body felt like rusted metal. “I’m in a bad way.”
“An understatement.” The chair beneath Rotherby creaked as he leaned forward. “On the morrow, you’ll go to her family and make an offer.”
“What?” Seb straightened. “An offer of marriage?”
“No, an offer to buy five acres of pastureland. Of course, an offer of marriage.” Rotherby’s drink spilled as he stood. “My God, Holloway. You can’t just tup an earl’s daughter without there being consequences. I thought you two might have snuck off to the library for some illicit reading, or whatever it is that scholars do. I didn’t think you’d plow her.”
It felt like so much more than plowing. “We were careful.” Seb swallowed. An icy cascade pulsed through him.
“Whether or not there’s a babe is irrelevant. She’s a damned unmarried lady.”
Seb tipped his head back to stare at the shadows flickering on the ceiling. “But she said nothing about marriage. Not before, and certainly not after.”
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter what the woman in question wants.” Rotherby paced over to Seb and stared down with an expression that was both angry and sympathetic. “Women don’t have an easy go of it. It falls to us”—he knocked his knuckles into Seb’s chest—“to protect them. Even when the woman outranks us, we’re still men, and that makes us more significant in the eyes of the world. A damned shame, and unfair, but that’s the way of it.”
God above, they’d been too mad with desire to think logically. He felt like the veriest bumbler.
“Don’t you want to marry her?” Rotherby asked softly.
“Of course I do,” Seb answered automatically. And then, “Christ. I do.” He shot to his feet.
Become Grace’s husband . . .
The moment the thought entered his mind, all the jangling pieces of himself fell into place. He was both deeply calm and wildly excited. To wake beside her every morning and hold her in his arms every night, each day to hear her fascinating thoughts, to share her joys, and to help her weather sorrows . . .
That was exactly what he wanted. All this time, the hours and days he spent with Grace were simply for the pleasure of her company. Because every part of him came alive whenever he was with her. Because he craved nothing more than her happiness.
Yet . . .
“If I went to her father,” he said, pacing, “asked for her hand, and he accepted, but she didn’t want to marry me, wouldn’t she feel trapped? She wants Fredericks, after all.”
Anguish sat heavily on his shoulders, because she hadn’t corrected Seb when he’d said she continue to seek Fredericks. She’d been eager to put their lovemaking behind them and progress toward her goal.
Rotherby crossed his arms over his chest. “Damn.”
“Precisely.” Seb raked his hands through his hair. “I like her too much to force her into something she doesn’t desire. I won’t do it, Rotherby.”
His friend looked at him for a long moment, the expression on his face faintly wondering.
“What’s it like?” Rotherby asked lowly. “To feel that way about someone? Knowing that they want nothing from you? It’s so . . .” He shook his head. “. . . impossible.”
The bleakness in Rotherby’s eyes was a vise around Seb’s chest. He’d known that his friend was a man much in demand, a person that other people sought because they believed he could do something for them. But at that moment, Seb finally saw how impossibly isolating that could be, and how lonely Rotherby truly was.
Seb began to speak, but Rotherby cut through the air with his hand. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. Bloody foolish question.” He cleared his throat. “I suppose then that the next step is to go to Grace and offer to make her your wife. If she agrees, then you’ll have my felicitations. And if she doesn’t . . .”
