my sister, call me Ben,” he added reluctantly. “I don’t encourage it. I believe nicknames are a form of degradation.”
“It’s a form of affection,” she argued, laughing. “Ben. I like it.”
Rather to his own surprise, he made no objection to this form of degradation.
She leaned toward him. “Did you know that, in the Italian language, ‘ben’ is an endearment?” she asked him.
He shook his head. To his astonishment, she began to sing to him softly in Italian.
“Caro mio ben,
credimi almen,
senza di te
languisce il cor.”
He had not been sung to by a woman since his nursery days. Her voice was light and pleasing, though by no means perfect. As she sang, she moved her fingers along her knee as if she were playing the melody on a pianoforte. The simple, plaintive melody tugged at him, body and soul. Without understanding a word of Italian, he was seduced.
She translated. “My dear beloved, believe me at least. In want of you, my heart languishes.” She laughed at his amazement. “Sure, I’m Italian in my heart.”
“You should have lessons.”
“Is it as bad as that?”
“I didn’t mean—” he began quickly, but she waved him off.
“It’s true, I’m no singer. All the lessons in the world won’t change that.”
“But you’ve had some education,” he said cautiously.
“Now that would be grievously overstating the matter! I’ll say this for my father: if ever any of his children wanted to learn something, he made it possible. Fortunately, hooligans like ourselves never do want to learn much.”
He frowned. “Why do you say ‘fortunately’?”
“We never had much money,” she explained without hesitation. “What we had, my father, in his wisdom, gambled away. He’d have been overwhelmed, poor man, if the five of us had been scholars! I remember, once it was so bad, we had to sell everything in the house, except for my pianoforte, and we ate our dinners off it because we had no table.”
“Oh?” he said. “You play the pianoforte?”
“At least as well as I sing,” she said. “My father won the pianoforte at cards when I was five. There was money then. I had lessons. It was the only thing he ever gave me that didn’t end up under the auctioneer’s hammer. Do you like music?”
“Very much,” he said, but with the air of one closing a subject. “Miss Cosy, shall we speak plainly?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Are we not speaking plainly now, Ben?”
“I have enjoyed our conversation very much,” he began, looking at her directly. “You know, of course, that I’m an amputee. Tell me now if it disgusts you. I will not be offended.”
For a moment she was too startled to answer, but her gaze did not falter. She said firmly, in a voice that rang true, “It does not disgust me, Ben. Why would you think so?”
“Some females do find it rather off-putting. I don’t blame them.”
“Then they don’t deserve the pleasure of your company,” she said indignantly.
“I’m a single man,” he went on, encouraged, “and, like all single men of property, I must marry. I’ve come to Bath to find a wife, in fact.”
“Then it’s London you want, not Bath,” she said knowledgeably. “From what I hear, all the English girls go to London on purpose to find husbands. So they’re halfway to the altar already, right? And you, with your good looks, and your fine, dry wit, you’d slay them.”
“I’ve tried London,” he said, a little disconcerted by this advice. “My plan in coming to Bath was to find some plain, dull, respectable woman to be my wife. She needn’t even be pretty. She could have a hump for all I care. All I ask is that she be young enough to give me a son, and sensible enough to leave me alone after that.”
Cosy burst out laughing. “Plain, dull, respectable, with a hump! Where exactly do you plan on finding this dream girl?”
“It is no laughing matter,” he said coldly, which only made her laugh more. “For myself, I wouldn’t marry at all, but there’s the baronetcy to consider, and the electorate. They will expect me to marry an unexceptional woman. The moment I saw you, Miss Cosy, I knew that all my carefully laid plans were in jeopardy. To put it bluntly, you are too beautiful.”
“Ben!” she said, hitting him on the knee. “Are you flirting with me?”
“I never flirt,” he said curtly. “I am perfectly serious. Your presence here can only mean trouble for me—trouble I can ill afford. How am I supposed to pursue a marriage with some dreary, good woman when you’re here? You look like bloody Venus!” he accused.
She laughed. “You’ve met Venus? What was she like? Was she as tall as me?”
“The point is,” he said sternly, “any woman I court would suspect me of harboring some secret, passionate regard for you. There would be gossip. I’m a respectable man, Miss Cosy. The last thing I need is gossip. That being the case, I have no choice but to make you an offer. I don’t like it; it is not the way I hoped to start things off here in Bath. But I have considered the matter very carefully, and it is the only logical thing to do.”
Her eyes were round. Hastily, she held up both hands. “I’m going to have to stop you right there, Ben, before this becomes awkward.”
He scarcely paused. “Obviously, you are a very desirable female. I am prepared to offer you generous terms. You would want for nothing for the rest of your life.”
He realized that he sounded rather like a corporation attorney but he couldn’t help that. To fly off into romantic rhapsodies would have been so out of character for him that it would have amounted to a form of deception, and, if she was to share his bed, Miss Cosy deserved to know his true character. He was neither passionate nor romantic.
“If it is the thought of intimacy that repels you, let me reassure you on that score. I would not presume to enjoy relations with you more than, say, twice a week. Twice a week is not unreasonable, surely, for a woman of your age.”
“No,” she was obliged to admit. She had already remarked the sad lack of children in the city of Bath; now she understood why it should be so. Where the adults came from remained a mystery to her. “Do you think you might be a wee bit drunk, Ben?” she asked him gently.
“I am not drunk,” he said, annoyed. “Consider this: if you accept me, it will be in my power to present you to a better class of gentlemen than you are likely to meet with in Bath. Nothing would be beyond your reach in London. I certainly wouldn’t stand in your way if you got a better offer and decided to leave me.”
Cosy was on her feet. “I’m afraid, sir,” she said indignantly, “that in Ireland we
