a stroll, remember?”
Sadie looked at the closed door in horror as another thought struck her with the force of a slap to the face. “You followed me upstairs. They all saw you. The duke saw you. We’ve been gone for a long time. What are they thinking? Oh, Lord, Clarice will giggle, and the duchess will probably ask me outrageous questions. Or worse, wink at me.”
“I applaud you on your belated ability to see too late what you should have realized sooner. But I’m afraid it’s worse than that. It was one thing for me to have a private talk with the widow Boxer, my ward’s aunt. Not precisely proper, considering this is your bedchamber, but rules are meant to be bent. Some of them, but not all.”
Sadie felt a figurative pit opening beneath her feet.
“But that’s ridiculous. You can’t possibly mean—”
“No, actually, I don’t. Knowing these particular ladies as I do, I imagine they’d all think it simply deliciously naughty. Lord knows the duchess doesn’t care a snap for convention. Coop’s mother believes conventions were invented by men simply to annoy women, and Clarice, bless her, has no real idea as to what they are.”
Sadie sagged back into the chair. “Thank God. For a moment I thought—”
“You thought I’d say convention dictates that we marry. Yes, I know. However, the idea has merit. Speaking practically.”
Sadie believed her eyes just might pop out of her head.
“I beg your—what?” To look any more smug he’d have to push out his chest like a pouter pigeon, drat him.
“Speaking practically,” he repeated, retaking his own seat. “Marley is now mine. You? You’re rather just floating about, aren’t you? Neither here nor there, neither fish nor fowl, as it were. The aunt. The spinster aunt, well past her first blush of youth.”
“I beg your pardon!”
“You cut your wisdoms years ago, Sadie Grace, even if you are not yet at your last prayers. I can’t hire you as governess and pretend you are no more than a paid employee, not when you’re the aunt. I can’t allow you to wander about my household in the aforementioned neither fish nor fowl category until Marley is grown and gone—or until you molt. If I were to marry, how on earth would I explain you to my bride? Oh, and one thing more—I’ll be damned if I’ll give you a Season. So what does that leave us, Sadie Grace, hmm?”
“You can’t mean this.”
“I can’t do myriad things. I can’t fly. I can’t swim across an ocean. I can’t pat my head and rub my stomach at one and the same time—but you might want to apply to Rigby on that one, as he believes the feat extraordinary when he does it. I can, however, see the merit in a marriage of convenience between us. Purely a business arrangement. And think how pleased Marley will be, to know for certain that you’re not going to leave her. Consider the child, Sadie Grace.”
“I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Oh, come now, am I that terrible? I’m fairly attractive, even with the patch. My teeth are good, I bathe on a regular basis and am complimented on my abilities on the dance floor. Oh, yes, I’m also so very wealthy I could grow old just counting my money. In short, I’m quite the coup.”
“And so modest with it all, although I suppose I do appreciate the bathe regularly part of your self-serving description. You did, however, neglect to mention that you can be exceedingly annoying, entirely too enthralled by your own wit, not to exclude the fact that you don’t really do anything, do you, my lord?”
“Do anything? I’m a viscount. That’s what I do.”
Why couldn’t she stop talking? Was she trying to get herself booted out the door?
“That was an accident of birth. But what have you done that you can point to and say, ‘I did this thing. I made this difference’?”
He pushed at his left temple. “Are we having our first fight, Sadie Grace?”
“Do you feel useful, my lord?”
“At the moment? No. Shall we make it a part of our business arrangement that you save me from my feckless ways and point my toes in the direction of good works?”
“There could be worse fates,” Sadie said, suddenly feeling more in control of her own future, which she hadn’t done for a long, long time. “I do not wish for Marley to grow up believing she is nothing more than a fashionable ornament.”
“So you’re accepting my proposal?”
She looked at him curiously. Why so suddenly formal? “I thought I had no real choice.”
“There are always choices, Sadie Grace. I need to hear you tell me that we will marry.”
“Perhaps you’d like me to write it down?” she asked, yes, facetiously.
“I’ve already seen one example of your letter-writing skills. A simple yes will do.”
“Very well, then,” she said, getting to her feet once more. “Yes. Yes, my lord, I agree to our arrangement.”
“Not my lord, but Darby,” he said as he rose, as well. “And I like to think of our marriage more as a bargain, with benefits on both sides.”
“That only seems fair. A bargain, with benefits on both sides, I imagine, although I’m not quite certain what you believe to be your benefits. But we really must rejoin the ladies now.”
He followed behind her, down the hallway, down the stairs, and only said as they stepped into the drawing room: “About my benefits, Sadie Grace. Did I perhaps fail to mention that I’ll want an heir?”
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