LITMIR.BIZ

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she’d had the satisfaction of shaking him out of his cool, superior attitude. He’d blustered instead of making his point in a clear, concise fashion.

      Her lips curled up, just a touch, as she recalled the moment when he’d halted mid-sentence and then gone off on a completely different tack. It was a small victory, but a victory none the less. And all the more valuable since not many people ever managed to shake his utter certainty in himself, these days.

      But then Edmund was so very often right. Even she could concede that it was a good idea to think seriously about what would make a husband tolerable and discovering if any man in London possessed those qualities, before settling for the likes of Major Gowan.

      If only he wasn’t expecting her to apply reasoning to a problem that stemmed from her emotions. Whenever she bent her mind to the act of getting married, it was her body and her heart that shied away from it. The prospect of letting any man do what she’d seen Wilkins doing to Liza made her feel physically ill.

      She hugged her knees, trying to imagine Major Gowan...

      Ugh! No. She couldn’t bear that.

      Edmund was right. She couldn’t marry a man who would expect that of her. Who would be disappointed, and probably hurt, too, when she responded to his embraces by... She pressed her hand to her stomach.

      So what was she to do?

      Think—that was what. About what sort of man she might be able to stomach.

      Funny, before coming to London, she’d thought only some sort of savage would deign to consider her, but in fact, several perfectly respectable and well-mannered men appeared to find her attractive. Not Edmund, though. She knew, thanks to Bartlesham’s gossip mill, that every time he’d taken a mistress, they had been blonde, dainty little creatures.

      Not that she cared. She sniffed and lifted her chin. She’d always known she couldn’t compete with all those fairy-like beauties he so admired. She had never intended to try. She had just hoped he might have taken pity on her, for the sake of their shared past, and given her a home.

      But she hadn’t taken into account his need for heirs. His need for legitimate children to carry on his line. And more than that, his need to see them flourish.

      Edmund would be a good father. She could see him with two or three sons, and a couple of daughters as well. She could see him taking the whole tribe down to the trout stream, where the boys would sit with their sketch pads, drawing the insects they’d watch running up and down the rushes. While his little girls would wade into the shallow with jars to collect tadpoles.

      She’d never felt even the slightest yearning to become a mother, no matter what Stepmama said about it being a natural urge. She still couldn’t imagine herself holding a baby. But those children of Edmund’s—she sighed. She could all too easily grow fond of them. Partly Edmund and partly... She sucked in a juddering breath and dashed the back of her hand across her somewhat watery nose. They would be like their mother. A woman who was willing and able to give him children. A woman who would be as nobly born and arrogant as his own mother, like as not.

      Whereas she...all she wanted...was...

      She raised her head and looked blankly round the room. All she’d asked of Edmund was that he give her a roof over her head. That was all she wanted of any man, really. She didn’t even care how small that roof might be, as long as she could feel secure in it. But then her eyes came to rest on her narrow single bed and she amended that proviso. She wanted to have a room of her own. Even if it was as small and cramped as this one. Even though there was only room for a bed, with a nightstand on one side and a chair on the other, and a washstand next to the window which had a sill just wide enough for her to sit on, it was her own space. And having her own space into which she could retreat had been the only thing making this visit to London bearable. It would probably be the same in her marriage. Particularly if she ended up with a man whose opinions she couldn’t respect.

      Or who was too stupid to hold up his end of a conversation.

      She didn’t want to marry a man with whom she couldn’t converse, she promptly decided. She would end up very lonely.

      On the other hand, if she liked and respected her husband too much, it would be harder to bear his disappointment in her when she proved far from enthusiastic in his arms.

      Oh, this was impossible! She couldn’t face marrying a man she didn’t like. She couldn’t face marrying a man she liked too well either. There was no way through the dilemma that she could see.

      So what was the point of even trying to write a stupid list?

      There was only one man she’d ever seriously wanted to marry. And marriage to him was out of the question.

      * * *

      ‘Have you completely lost your mind?’

      Edmund looked up from the pile of correspondence on his desk, currently awaiting his attention, and regarded his mother with resignation.

      ‘Good morning, Mother,’ he said with heavy irony. ‘I take it your question is rhetorical, since it must be obvious that I am in complete control of all my faculties?’

      ‘Not to me it isn’t,’ she said, surging forward in a cloud of Brussels lace and indignation.

      Beyond her, he could see his secretary wringing his hands as he hopped from one foot to the other. Poppleton had standing instructions not to admit anyone, especially not his mother, to his study while he was working. But nobody could stand in his mother’s way when she really got the bit between her teeth.

      ‘Actually, I do have some business I wish to discuss with Lady Ashenden,’ he said to Poppleton. ‘You may leave us.’ Ever since his last visit to Fontenay Court he had known some sort of confrontation was inevitable. It was unlikely she’d come to discuss the issues uppermost in his mind. Nevertheless, now that she was here and clearly spoiling for a fight, he might as well get it all out in the open.

      She turned and shut the door in Poppleton’s face with a triumphant flourish, then whirled on him.

      ‘Is it true? That you attended Miss Twining’s debut and set tongues wagging by showing marked attention to one female only?’

      ‘Ah.’ That aspect of it had never occurred to him.

      ‘So it is true! You...you...imbecile! You cannot dance only once, drag your partner into the supper room without consulting her chaperon, engage her in intense conversation in a secluded corner and then leave without so much as paying your respects to the girl in whose honour the ball was being held, without it giving rise to the kind of speculation that simply will not do. Not in relation to that...’ She pulled herself up with visible effort. ‘With Miss Wickford.’ She ejected the name from between her teeth as though spitting out a lump of gristle.

      ‘You could easily nip any gossip in the bud,’ he pointed out, ‘by reminding people how eccentric I am. You are always complaining of it. Of my lack of...how have you termed it? Social address. Why not put it about that last night was simply another example of it?’

      ‘I have already done so,’ she said, sweeping her demi-train impatiently aside as she took the chair facing his desk. ‘But while I have always deplored your lack of social address, it has never given me such cause for alarm. Don’t you realise that singling out a scheming trollop like that Wickford girl is just asking for trouble?’

      ‘Trollop?’ He sat back, eyeing his mother coldly. ‘Take care, my lady, what you say.’

      Her eyes met his. They were equally as cold. And just as determined. ‘Or what?’

      So, it was going to be like that, was it? This was where he was going to have to draw the battle lines?

      So be it.

      ‘Or you are going to find,’ he said firmly, ‘that I am nowhere near as complaisant as my father. So far I have placed no curb upon your behaviour, irksome though it has often been.’

      Her hand curled into her

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