not hesitate to express your feelings. My own, I do assure you, are immune to anything you might say.’
It had nothing to do with his feelings. She just could not confide in a man who she’d only met a matter of days ago. And his arrogant assumption that he was the cause of her dilemma made her see red. ‘Very well,’ she said, flinging up her chin. ‘For one thing, I find it extremely hard to believe you can seriously be considering me as...as...well, as your wife, when we hardly know each other.’
‘That is the whole point of inviting you to Theakstone Court. So we may get to know each other better.’
Oh. That was a fair point, actually. ‘Yes, but what can you hope to discover in a week? Or I about you? I mean, in a week, you could easily conceal all sorts of vices from me.’ After all, Jack had successfully done so for years and years and years. If she hadn’t been swimming in the lower lake and if Snowball hadn’t barked a warning so that she’d just had time to duck under the jetty and hide, and Jack hadn’t chosen to dismount and water his horses at that particular spot, she might never have learned the truth about him.
‘Vices?’ His voice turned extremely chilly. ‘You suspect me of concealing vices from you?’
‘Well, that’s just it. I don’t know, do I?’
‘I should think you might be able to judge me by my actions. As I did you. We were the only people at the Peace celebrations, barring Lord Gilray, who ran to help Mrs Pagett. Everyone else fled the scene to protect themselves.’
Which was another good point. She’d even admired him for having the presence of mind to collect the ice bucket on the way.
‘Yes, that’s true. But even so...’
‘Ah, here we are,’ he said, reining the curricle to a halt. ‘Your lodgings.’
Sofia blinked up at the façade of Number Six. How on earth had they fetched up here so soon?
Because, she realised on her second blink, he hadn’t taken her all the way to the seafront. He’d turned the curricle up a side street the minute she’d started expressing reservations about his character. And brought her straight back here.
Oh, dear, she really did owe him an apology. He did seem to be a decent man, who’d done nothing to deserve her harsh remarks.
But while she was searching for the words to explain herself, without going as far as confiding in him about the way Jack had deceived her, which would have been too humiliating, he’d climbed down, reached up to seize her by the waist and deposited her on the pavement.
‘I... I...’
He turned his back, plucked Snowball from the seat, thrust the dog into her arms and climbed back into his curricle.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said miserably as he put his horses into motion. Even though he could not possibly have heard.
She trudged up the front steps, feeling even more of a failure, and even lonelier than she’d felt since the day she’d heard Jack describe her to his London friend.
She buried her face in Snowball’s soft fur as she made her way up to her room, where she draped herself along the window seat.
Oh, well, she reflected as she gazed down over the rooftops sloping down to the seafront. It wasn’t as if she’d wrecked her chances with him. He’d never have proposed marriage. For she was not the kind of girl a duke would choose. She was dull as ditch water. Tainted by birth. And the only thing that might have tempted him—her money—he could know nothing about, because as sure as eggs were eggs Uncle Ned would have kept that juicy titbit from him. Because he wanted her to marry Jack.
‘Oh, Snowball, what am I going to do?’
Snowball licked her chin in a sympathetic manner, but did not provide Sofia with any inspiration. But then, Sofia had already spent hours, and days, and weeks, trying to come up with a plan she could present to her uncles to which they would agree. So how likely was it a dog could do any better? And anyway, time after time, when she started to form a plan that she thought might content her, she would run up against the strictures imposed upon women. She couldn’t just set up house somewhere, on her own, not without causing the kind of talk that all her family would hate. But neither could she bear the thought of staying with Aunt Agnes and Uncle Ned once they’d learned she had no intention of falling in with their plans for her and Jack.
Going to live with Uncle Barty and his new wife would be acceptable in the eyes of society, but although he was always criticising Uncle Ned, it had never crossed his mind to invite her to go to him instead. Because, basically, he didn’t want her. Had never wanted her. But especially not now, when he was so keen to fill his nursery. She flushed as she recalled the times she’d caught him pinching his rosy-cheeked wife on the bottom.
No, she couldn’t go to live with Uncle Barty. She would just be swapping one awkward situation for another.
She’d briefly toyed with the idea of seeking out her mother’s family, but they weren’t likely to welcome her with open arms, either. Especially since they were all Catholic and she’d been raised Church of England. They’d want to convert her, she expected. And she’d no wish to waste any more of her life trying to turn herself into somebody her family would approve of. If she wasn’t good enough just as she was, then...then...
She sighed again and buried her face in Snowball’s side. Even when she came of age, Uncle Barty and Uncle Ned would still try to oversee her business affairs.
Which meant they would oppose every single thing she ever wanted to do with her inheritance, no doubt.
‘Do you know,’ she informed Snowball, ‘I’m beginning to think I would be better off if I didn’t have any money. At least then people would accept it if I went off to seek employment as a governess, or a companion, or something like that. At least then I might acquire some self-respect.’
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