respecters of what is fair and unfair, Louisa. None of you deserved to die or to bear blame for deaths that happened because the poor live in little better than open sewers at the heart of this fair city. Blame the aldermen and government ministers who allow such abject poverty to thrive in what’s supposed to be the most advanced nation in the world, but don’t be arrogant enough to take the blame yourself. And don’t you think your mother would hate to hear you now? It sounds to me as if she loved her children very much, so she’d certainly not want to hear you talk like a fool and refuse to bear children yourself, just because she’s not here any more and your little brother couldn’t fight a desperate and dangerous illness that can just as easily take strong men in the prime of their lives.’
‘I still shouldn’t have gone.’
‘No, but all the other times you climbed out of your window and ran wild through the streets you probably should have been sewing samplers or minding your books. It sounds like the natural reaction of a spirited girl, denied the pleasures and luxuries of the life you should have had, if your father wasn’t selfish and shallow and self-obsessed. Taking the burden of guilt for what happened when it clearly belongs elsewhere is arrogant, Louisa. All you were guilty of was a childish rebellion that you would have grown out of, once your brother was able to provide you and your family with the sort of life you should have lived from the outset.’
‘He was so sad, Hugh,’ she confided with a sniff to hold back her tears that he somehow found deeply touching. ‘At night when he thought Maria and I were in bed and asleep I would hear him weep for them. Then Papa came home one night, drunk as usual, and they argued and raged at each other until Papa stormed off into the night and swore not to come home again until Kit was back at sea. They found his body floating in the Thames two days later and only my sister was ever soft-hearted enough to think he’d drowned himself out of grief for my mother, when he was so drunk he probably couldn’t tell the difference between high water and dry land. Yet it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t argued with Kit and I hadn’t done what I did.’
‘And no doubt Kit feels guilty about that as well, being made in the same stubborn, ridiculous mould as you and the rest of the Earl of Carnwood’s rackety family. There’s no need for you to take on his regrets as well as your own, since I never met a man more able to own his sins and omissions than Christopher Alstone.’
‘I suppose you could be right.’
‘Of course I am. Now, kindly inform me what you were planning to do to me once you had me guyed up in that ridiculous disguise and let’s have done with your imagined sins.’
‘That’s it? I am to consider myself absolved? You should have been a priest.’
‘Maybe not,’ he said with a laugh that would have been self-mocking if he wasn’t so busy mocking her. ‘But nothing you did or didn’t do in the past has made you unfit to be a mother, Louisa. Probably just as well, since we’re going to be wed and will doubtless bed each other at regular intervals, very likely before we get to the altar as well if you keep glaring at me like that,’ he threatened half-seriously.
‘How do you know I’m glaring at you?’ she asked haughtily.
‘Instinct,’ he told her succinctly. ‘I can’t promise you much, but I will promise not to treat you as shabbily as your father did your mother,’ he added gruffly.
‘That would be nice of you, if I had the least intention of marrying you.’
‘You will have to, my girl, since I refuse to spend the next three months or so not meeting your brother’s eyes or hiding from Ben Shaw’s mighty wrath while we wait for you to decide if I’ve just got you pregnant or not. Consider it the wages of sin and take that guilt on your shoulders if you must, but at least let’s have no more Cheltenham tragedies while you wait it out as my wife instead.’
‘So far I hear only what you want and nothing about me, but the answer to your question about the disguise is that I don’t really know. I can’t go back to Kit’s house because my enemies will be looking for me by now, and I wanted to get you away from the man who’s trying to trap you until we could defeat him somehow, which was all very stupid of me, I suppose.’
‘Undoubtedly it was,’ he agreed gruffly.
‘You could probably go back there safely yourself,’ she encouraged him and felt his suspicion on the heavy air as clearly as if she could actually see his frown.
‘While you do what in the meantime?’
‘I have plenty of plans for my future. It’s you I don’t know what to do with.’
‘I think we just demonstrated that you know exactly what to do with me,’ he said, sounding as silkily lethal as he must when examining any of his crew brought in front of him to explain their sins.
‘And you dislike being thought fit for only one purpose as much as I do?’
‘When did I imply any such thing, woman?’
‘With every word you drawl at me as if you’re right and everything I say proves how bird-witted I am.’
‘Only when you’re talking rubbish,’ he muttered impatiently, as if driven to the edge of reason by addle-pated arguments, when she ought to accept his words as proven fact, then do as she was bid.
‘It’s hardly rubbish to say we’re both unsuited to marriage and even more so to marrying one another.’
‘Yes, it is. We’ll do very well in our marriage bed, something we just proved to each other beyond all reasonable doubt.’
‘So my doubts are unreasonable and that’s all there is to marriage?’ she asked with a theatrical wave at the coffee stacks she was quite glad he couldn’t see. The very thought of them made her blush now they were discussing seduction and his peculiar idea that it automatically led to marriage.
‘Ah, now I can see why you were truly so unsuited to the tonnish ideals of marriage à la mode. You, Miss Alstone, destined as you are not to be a miss for very much longer, are a romantic.’
Stung by the accusation, when she’d always thought herself such a cynic, Louisa was about to loudly dispute such a slur when she made the mistake of wondering if he could be right.
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