“It is ridiculous, especially your method of avoiding the institution. Climbing about on verandas and throwing tirades, Miss Fullbright?”
“You have another suggestion?”
“No, merely a question: Why don’t you want to marry?”
“I have a better question,” she said, finally allowing the handkerchief to drop from her mouth. She sat forward as though intensely interested in her subject now. “Why do you want to marry?”
“A variety of reasons,” he answered, uncertain why his cravat felt as though it had shrunk. “Many reasons,” he finished weakly.
“Name three.” She pounced, and he was back on the defensive.
“I approve of the institution of marriage, for one,” he began. “It’s good for the moral code of the country, and—”
She waved a hand. “That’s meaningless rhetoric. Give me a good reason. A personal reason.”
He felt like telling her his personal reasons were none of her business, but he was trying to make a point here. It was probably his duty as a man and a member of Parliament to convince her to marry. What would England come to with hordes of unmarried women running about, all with ideas and such about why they should not marry?
He had read Lysistrata, by God, and he wouldn’t have his country run by a gaggle of clucking, misguided women.
“I suppose I also want to marry because I need an heir. One day I will become a marquess, and I need a son to follow after me.”
She seemed to consider, then nodded. “Yes, I suppose children are a good reason to marry. I will miss children. What is your third reason?”
Quint thought for a moment. What the devil was his third reason? He’d never considered why he would marry; he only knew that he must. And then it came to him.
“For my career. The right wife can be an asset for a man like me.”
Immediately, he knew he’d given her the wrong answer. He’d forgotten she was the romantic sort. Her face clouded, and she shook her head. She began to speak, then shut her mouth and stood. “Men. You are all the same. It disgusts me.”
She made to leave the drawing room, but he called after her, “Then I have not caused you to reconsider?”
“Reconsider?” She rounded on him. “Reconsider what? Reconsider joining an institution devised by men to benefit men at the detriment of women? An institution that has nothing whatsoever to do with love or esteem or even affection but relies wholly upon political stratagems formulated by men? Now you tell me, Lord Valentine, why should I marry?”
She stood and stared at him, waiting for an answer that he seemed unable to give. Surely he should be able to think of something. The Times had called him one of the greatest orators of his time, by God.
And yet the girl, this unkempt and uncivilized girl, had left him speechless. It was not to be borne. She stared at him a moment later, and then without the least trace of victory in her eyes, said, “That’s what I thought.”
And she strode from the room, her ugly brown skirts swirling as though she were the queen.
“HAVE YOU GONE COMPLETELY mad?” Ashley said when Catherine opened the door to the attic. She’d been banished there for a week.
Their maidservant slept there as well, but at present Catherine was alone in the attic and the house. Elizabeth and her mother had gone to stroll in Hyde Park, as it was the fashionable hour. It would have been more fashionable to ride, but the family had neither a horse nor carriage.
“Come in.” Catherine opened the door wider, but Ashley just stood in the doorway and stared at her.
Ashley had changed little in the eighteen years Catherine had known her. She’d grown up to be precisely the beauty everyone had said she would. Her hair was the shade of ripe wheat, her skin so white and flawless that it shamed milk and honey, and her eyes were the most startling shade of pale sea green. She was of medium height with a perfect figure, and she had an amazing flair for fashion.
Not that she concerned herself with matters of fashion very often. Ashley was neither vain nor conceited. She would have made a better man than woman, for she was courageous, willful, and never dissembled, even when one wanted her to.
“That’s what you have to say for yourself?” Ashley remarked. “ ‘Come in’?”
“Sit down?”
“Have you gone absolutely daft? You are sleeping in the servants’ quarters now?”
Catherine sighed. “As you see.”
“Oh, never mind that.” Ashley stomped inside and bent under the low ceiling. “More importantly, Devlin told me he heard that you took a shot at a gentleman caller this morning, tried to set the house on fire, and tackled Lizzy.”
