The Debutante's Daring Proposal

‘Did you have something in particular to ask me,’ he asked in a bored tone, ‘or should I take my dog and return to Fontenay Court?’

‘You know very well I have something of great importance to ask you,’ she retorted, finally reaching the end of her tether as she straightened up, ‘or I wouldn’t have sent you that note.’

‘And are you going to tell me what it is any time soon?’ He pulled his watch from his waistcoat pocket and looked down at it. ‘Only, I have a great many pressing matters to attend to.’

She sucked in a deep breath. ‘I do beg your pardon, my lord,’ she said, dipping into the best curtsy she could manage with a dog squirming round her ankles and her riding habit still looped over one arm. ‘Thank you so much for sparing me a few minutes of your valuable time,’ she added, through gritted teeth.

‘Not at all.’ He made one of those graceful, languid gestures with his hand that indicated noblesse oblige. ‘Though I should, of course, appreciate it if you would make it quick.’

Make it quick? Make it quick! Four days she’d been waiting for him to show up, four days he’d kept her in an agony of suspense, and now he was here, he was making it clear he wanted the meeting to be as brief as possible so he could get back to where he belonged. In his stuffy house, with his stuffy servants and his stuffy lifestyle.

Just once, she’d like to shake him out of that horrid, contemptuous, self-satisfied attitude of his towards the rest of the world. And make him experience a genuine, human emotion. No matter what.

‘Very well.’ She’d say what she’d come to say, without preamble. Which would at least give her the pleasure of shocking him almost as much as if she really were to throw her boot at him.

‘If you must know, I want you to marry me.’

Chapter Two (#u7f4fbd2a-d790-5494-89f1-5776abf9a2c8)

The Earl of Ashenden took a silk handkerchief from his pocket, removed his spectacles and began to polish the lenses.

The way he’d always done when he was trying to think about exactly what to say before saying it. If she wasn’t trying so hard to convince him she could act the part of a grand lady, she would have done a little victory dance. Because she’d succeeded into shocking him into silence. Edmund Fontenay. The man who was never at a loss for a clever remark.

‘While I am flattered by your proposal,’ he said, replacing his spectacles on his nose, ‘I must confess to being a touch surprised.’

Hah! He didn’t need to confess any such thing. Not to her. Not when she knew exactly what the whole spectacles removing and wiping and replacing routine was all about. She’d stumped him. ‘Would you mind very much explaining why you have suddenly developed this interest in becoming...’ he paused, his gaze growing even colder than it normally did whenever it turned in her direction these days ‘...the Countess of Ashenden?’

She sucked in a sharp breath at the low blow. ‘I have no interest in becoming the Countess of Ashenden. It isn’t like that!’

‘No?’ He raised one eyebrow as if to say he didn’t believe her, but would very graciously give her the chance to explain.

‘No. Because I know full well I’m the very last person qualified to hold such a position.’ At least, that’s what his mother would say. And what Stepmama had said. Countless times. That it would be useless to set her cap at him—even if she’d been the kind of girl to indulge in that sort of behaviour—since the next Countess of Ashenden would have a position in the county, and the country, for which Georgiana simply didn’t have the training. Let alone the disposition.

‘In fact, I would much rather you weren’t an earl at all, but just...my neighbour.’ But unfortunately he was an earl. And he hadn’t been her neighbour for some years. He came back to Bartlesham as rarely as possible. His interests lay in London, with the new, clever friends he’d made. Her real neighbours had begun to wonder if he was going to turn out just like his father, who’d only ever returned to his ancestral seat to turn his nose up at it. ‘Oh, what’s the use? I might have known this was a waste of time.’

‘You might,’ he said.

‘Well, we cannot all be as clever as you,’ she retorted. ‘Some of us still do stupid things, hoping that people won’t let them down. You might as well say it—some of us never learn, do we?’

‘Some of us,’ he replied, slowly advancing, ‘would be more inclined to assist a...neighbour in distress if that neighbour would explain themselves clearly, without flinging emotional accusations left, right and centre. If, for example, you have no interest in becoming a countess, why have you asked me to consider marrying you?’

He was standing closer to her now than he’d done since they’d both been children. Close enough for her to see those blue flecks in his eyes, which prevented them from looking as though they were chiselled from ice. This close, she’d swear she could see a spark of interest, rather than cold indifference. This close, she could even, almost, imagine she could feel warmth emanating from his body.

She got the most inappropriate urge to reach out and tap him on the shoulder, to tag him and then run off into the trees. Only of course, he wouldn’t set off in pursuit nowadays. He’d just frown in a puzzled manner, or look down his aristocratic nose at her antics, and shake his head in reproof. The way Papa had started to do whenever she did anything that Stepmama declared was unladylike.

Just then Lion yawned, making her look down. Which shattered the wistful longing for them to be able to return to the carefree days when they’d been playmates. Smashing the illusion that he’d just looked at her the way he’d looked at her then. As though she mattered.

When the painful truth was she’d never mattered to him at all. Well, she’d never mattered to anybody.

Still, it did look as though she’d succeeded in rousing his curiosity.

She peeped up at him warily from beneath her lashes. He was studying her, his head tilted slightly to one side, the way he so often used to look at a puzzle of some sort. Her heart sped up. And filled with...not hope, exactly. But a lightening of her despair. And she wondered whether it would be worth explaining why she’d considered making the outrageous proposal, after all.

‘Look, you know my father died last year—’ she began.

He flinched. ‘Yes. I did mean to offer my condolences, but—’

She made a slashing motion with her hand. It was far too late for that now. And she couldn’t bear to talk of it. It was bad enough that she’d turned out to be such a disappointment to the bluff, genial man she’d adored. That his final words to her had been an admonition to try and be more like Sukey, her stepsister.

‘I don’t wish to go over old ground,’ she said, proud that a slight hitch in her voice was the only thing betraying how very much Edmund’s absence, his silence, last year, had added to her grief. Which had been foolish of her, considering they hadn’t spoken to each other for several years. Why had she thought a bereavement would have made a difference to the way he dealt with her?

‘The point is,’ she continued, ‘that now we are out of mourning, Stepmama has decreed we go up to London, so that Sukey and I can find husbands.’

‘And?’

The impatience bordering on irritation he managed to inject into the single word cut her like a rapier thrust.

‘And I don’t want to go! I don’t want to have to parade around before a lot of men who will eye me up like some prize heifer at market.’ She bit back the painful admission that she could just imagine what they’d say of her, all those smart London beaux. They’d sneer at her, no doubt, and scoff and turn their noses up at her. She couldn’t imagine any decent man actually liking her enough to propose marriage. Not when she’d been such a disappointment to her family that they’d spent years trying to turn her into something she wasn’t.

‘I don’t want to have to accept an offer from some horrible man—’ who’d probably be deranged; well, he’d have to be to want to marry someone who struggled so hard to behave the way a lady should ‘—who will probably take me heaven knows where...’

The Hebridean Isles, like as not. Where there would be nobody to talk to. Because nobody lived there. Which was why the wild and hairy Scot would have gone to London to find a bride. Because there simply weren’t any women in those far-flung isles. And that would be the only reason she’d look like a good choice—because he wouldn’t know any better.

‘You may meet some man who is not horrible,’ he replied in a flat voice that cut right through her deepest, wildest imaginings. ‘That is the whole purpose of the Season, I believe? To meet someone congenial?’

She took a deep breath. Counted to five. ‘Whoever they are, they will take me somewhere...’ Somewhere remote, so that nobody could criticise him for his poor choice. Or populated with odd people who wouldn’t notice her own failings because they were practically savages themselves.

But because her fears about her future would sound pathetic when voiced aloud, she finished limply, ‘Somewhere else.’

‘Then all you have to do is refuse all offers,’ he said in a condescending tone, ‘return to Bartlesham and live out your days as a spinster.’

Spinster! Ooh, how she hated that word. She much preferred the word virgin. A virgin was pure. Unsullied. A spinster was...a sort of dried-up husk of a person.

‘If you had spent any time at all down here since Papa died,’ she spat out, ‘you could not have just said anything so fatuous. Six Chimneys is entailed. And my prig of a cousin who inherited only gave us leave to stay on here for the year of mourning. Once we leave and go up to London, there will be no coming back. It’s marry some stranger, or...or...’

Oh, no. Her eyes were prickling. She’d sworn she wouldn’t cry. Not in front of Edmund. She turned away. Slashed at the reeds with her riding crop a few times to relieve her feelings. Turned back, her spine stiff.

‘Look, I know I’m not much of a catch,’ she said in a voice that only quivered just a little bit. ‘I’m not an heiress and I don’t have a title or anything, but I wouldn’t interfere with your life, like some wives would. You could leave me down here once we’re married and go back to London. I wouldn’t even put your mother’s nose out of joint by trying to take over running the house, or trying to outshine her at county affairs, or anything like that.’ Well, she couldn’t. She wouldn’t know how. But neither would she embarrass him by gallivanting all over the countryside like the hoyden she’d used to be. At least she knew better than that, now. ‘I’d keep out of everyone’s way, I swear!’

He looked her full in the face for the space of what felt like an eternity, though it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. Apart from the fact that it wasn’t anything good, since he’d got that flinty look again.

‘It is of no use looking up at me,’ he said eventually, ‘with those big brown eyes of yours, the way Lion does when he’s begging for scraps. I am not soft.’

‘I know that. Nobody,’ she said bitterly, ‘knows that better than I.’

‘Which only confirms your unsuitability to become my wife. You wouldn’t come to London with me, you wouldn’t even run the house if I left you down here alone. Just what, exactly, are you offering? What will I get out of this ridiculous marriage you claim to wish to make?’

‘Well...I don’t...I mean...’ She swallowed. Lifted her chin. Forced herself to say it. ‘That is, I don’t know if you remember, but you promised me, you did, that when you grew up, you’d do anything to help me if I needed a friend. And I’ve never needed one more than I do now...’