The Debutante's Daring Proposal

‘When I made that promise I was a boy,’ he bit out, his mouth twisted with distaste. ‘A callow youth. And I never imagined that you’d expect repayment this way. By demanding I make you my Countess!’

Georgiana sucked in a deep, agonised breath. The...the...brute. Didn’t he know what it had cost her to break through all the years of estrangement and write to him, begging him to meet her? Couldn’t he see how desperate she must have been to have broken all the rules by proposing to him?

‘I’m not demanding anything,’ she protested. ‘I was just hoping...’ She shook her head. That was the trouble with hope. It might raise your spirits for a while, but when someone tore it away, it left a ragged, gaping wound in its place. ‘I can see it was foolish to expect you to keep your promise. I might have known you’d find some way to wriggle off the hook.’

His nostrils flared as he sucked in a furious breath.

‘Don’t you dare accuse me of breaking my promises Georgie. Or trying to wriggle out of anything—’

‘But you just said you wouldn’t marry me. That you wouldn’t do anything to help me at all.’

He darted forward as she made to turn and leave, seizing her by the upper arm.

‘I never said anything of the sort,’ he growled. ‘It’s just that you didn’t offer me the one thing that might make me consider your...offer.’

Her heart kicked at the inside of her chest. There was something about the way he was looking at her that made her feel...weak. And sort of...trembly inside.

‘W-what might that be?’

‘Heirs,’ he said. ‘The only reason I will ever marry, any woman, is to fulfil my duty to provide heirs to take over my responsibilities when I’m gone.’

‘But that would mean...’ A vision flashed into her brain of how babies were made. It still made her feel ill to think about that day she’d gone into the stables and seen Wilkins lying face down in what had looked like a bundle of rags, with his breeches round his ankles, pounding that bundle of rags into the straw. There had been a pair of female legs spread grotesquely on either side of his hairy bottom, legs, she had discovered a few months later, which had belonged to one of their housemaids. The whole episode left a bad taste in her mouth, especially since, no matter how hard Liza had wept, Stepmama had insisted on turning her off, for being a bad influence on the daughters of the house.

And, by the way Edmund thrust her from him angrily, her disgust over the whole affair showed plainly on her face.

‘What, did you think I’d accept a marriage in name only?’

Once again, her face must have given her thoughts away, because he flinched.

‘My God, you did, didn’t you?’ He whirled away from her, his coat fanning out like the wings of a storm behind him. ‘What kind of man do you think I am?’ He paced back, his eyes glittering angrily. ‘You believe all those stupid things your idiot of a father said about me, don’t you? That I’m not a real man at all, because I prefer observing living creatures to galloping about the countryside in pursuit of them? That I have ink running through my veins, not hot, red blood?’

‘Papa was not an idiot,’ she said, since she couldn’t deny she had hoped he might have been willing to accept her terms. Which made her an idiot, too.

‘And that is the kind of man you wish to marry, is it? A man you don’t think is a real man at all?’

‘Yes,’ she cried. ‘That’s the only kind of man I could imagine being able to tolerate marrying. A man who’d let me have a marriage in name only.’

He stepped smartly up to her and took her by both shoulders.

‘When I marry it won’t be in name only. I want heirs. Several, in fact. I am damn well not going to have only one son, then carry on with my life as though he doesn’t exist.’

Her heart went out to him. Because she could see exactly why he was saying that. He’d been such a lonely child, of course he wouldn’t want to inflict the same fate on his own offspring.

‘And my wife will not be willing to let my mother carry on reigning over the county. She’ll have to take up the position herself, not try to stay out of everyone’s way. She’ll have to be strong enough to stand at my side, her sword metaphorically drawn, not cower in the background lest she put anyone’s nose out of joint.’

And then he flung her from him as though touching her had contaminated his hands.

‘Y-yes, I see,’ she stammered. And what she saw was that, yet again, she didn’t measure up. Not as a daughter, not as a possible wife, and not as a woman. ‘Oh, God,’ she whimpered, seeing her last hope slipping through her fingers. ‘You are going to make me go through with it, aren’t you? I’m going to have to go to London and face the humiliation of—’ she broke off before voicing her fears that no man with any sense would want her as a wife.

‘I am not making you do anything. This has nothing whatsoever to do with me,’ he said, making a slashing motion with his hand.

It was as though he’d landed a blow to her very heart. It was the final proof that he’d changed beyond all recognition. Either that, or her memory of him had been very deeply tinged by wishful thinking.

‘I might have known you’d take that attitude. Out of sight is out of mind with you, isn’t it? You don’t care about anything but what is right under your nose.’

A muscle twitched in his jaw. ‘You are deliberately twisting my words.’

‘No, I’m not. I’m just forcing you to see what you are doing to me! You. Yourself. Because you refuse to help me, some strange man is going to gain rights over my body. He will paw at me and...mount me...and...I will have to...endure it.’ Her stomach lurched in revulsion. ‘God, how I hate being a woman,’ she said, pressing her hand down hard on the centre of the nausea.

‘Georgie,’ he gasped, clearly shocked by her explicit description of what marriage meant to her. Her outrageous admission that she hated everything about being female. ‘Listen to me...’

‘No. I don’t want to hear any more stupid platitudes. The only thing you could possibly say that I want to hear is that you are going to marry me. Will you? Will you marry me?’

The look on his face said it all. It was a mixture of shock and distaste, and withdrawal.

‘No, you won’t, will you? Well then, I will stop wasting your precious time,’ she said, dashing her hand across her face to swipe away the one tear she hadn’t been able to blink back, and bent to pat Lion one last time. Then she turned and stumbled from the riverbank.

He didn’t reach out a hand to try and stop her. He didn’t call out her name. He just stood there, coldly watching her flee the scene of her humiliation. At least, she assumed the look on his face was cold. She wasn’t going to betray any weakness by looking over her shoulder to find out.

* * *

‘Well, Lion, what do you make of that?’

The exhausted spaniel flopped down on the hearthrug with a sigh and closed his eyes. Even when Edmund nudged him with the toe of his boot, the dog did not react.

‘You are not being any help,’ said Edmund, gazing down at the almost-comatose dog. ‘You are the one person—I mean creature—who knows her as well as I, since you were there for many of our escapades. Have you no useful advice to give me?’

Of course Lion didn’t have any advice to give. He was a dog. By heaven, he was actually talking to a dog, instead of sitting down and going over the encounter with Georgiana in a rational fashion.

But how on earth could he possibly go over the encounter in a rational fashion, when it felt as if he’d been beaten about the body all day by a series of highly irrational explosions?

First, the letter had infuriated him, dredging up as it had a whole host of insecurities and hurts he’d deliberately buried beneath years of strenuous denial.

And then there had been his visceral reaction to seeing her again, standing in the place that represented a sort of oasis during his childhood, wearing that figure-hugging, vibrant pink gown that stood out like a beacon against the background of all those dead reeds. His entire body had leaped in response. That was what it had felt like. Almost the same as the feeling he’d had when taking part in those experiments with galvanism. An involuntary reaction in his muscles that had nothing to do with his brain, his intellect.

And then she’d shocked his mind too, with that completely unexpected proposal. But what had been most shocking about it was the fact that, for a moment, he’d actually considered it. Even though he’d assumed she’d only proposed out of ambition to become a countess.

Which had made him twice as angry as he might have been when she’d explained that the reason she wanted him was because, primarily, she didn’t think he’d be interested in bedding her. She might as well have spat in his face. Which had, in turn, provoked him into telling her exactly what he wanted from marriage. The words had come pouring out of his mouth like a dam bursting, in spite of never having actually sat down and thought it through.

He strode to the sideboard and wrested the top from the decanter.

He couldn’t believe, now, that he’d become angry enough to grab her. Grab her! Which meant that he’d been so close to her that when he’d drawn breath, he’d unwittingly filled his nostrils with the scent of her. And had, at the same time, become aware of the warm contours of her shoulders, rising and falling under his palms.

He shook his head as he poured himself a large brandy. If he didn’t habitually keep such firm control over himself, he’d have flung her to the ground right there and shown her exactly how normal and healthy his appetites could be.

What man wouldn’t react that way to having such a slur cast on his masculinity?

He downed half the drink and slammed the glass back down on the sideboard.