“I’m not going to ask you anything untoward about yourself, don’t worry.”
“There is nothing untoward about me,” he replied dryly, but his lips twitched in that amused way she was already familiar with.
Elizabeth nervously ran her tongue over her teeth.
“When we spoke the first time, the real first time… What you said about my brother having a mistress, was it true?”
“Miss Elizabeth… why are you asking me this now?”
Elizabeth looked away from his stern eyes, suddenly caught off guard by the sound of her name in his voice.
“I’ve wanted to ask you ever since we were introduced, but I felt embarrassed, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know.” She took a deep breath to stop rambling. “Now, I feel like I can ask. We’re friends.”
“We’re friends,” he echoed, but it sounded a little like a question, so Lizzie nodded.
“Very well then,” Talbot straightened up. “To my knowledge, your brotherdidhave a mistressbeforehis marriage, and the house you now live in did, indeed, at one point, belong to her. As far as I know, he has no mistress now.”
Elizabeth’s whole body relaxed and sagged, and Talbot tightened his hold on it.
“You are aware that many men do, though,” he said gently.
“I think no one knows that better than I do, Your Grace,” she said ruefully, and he inclined his head in acknowledgement.
“It’s the way of the world.”
“For unmarried men, I can perhaps understand it,” she conceded reluctantly, but Talbot frowned.
“It is a gentleman’s prerogative, married or not.”
“But a gentleman is supposed to be honourable and honest, is he not?”
“There’s nothing dishonest about a social custom. If one has society’s permission to behave a certain way, then I see no problem with it.”
“Aren’t there things that are right and things that are wrong, despite what society may think?”
“I haven’t found that to be the case,” Talbot said nonchalantly.
“When my friend Mary got married, I was in attendance,” Elizabeth said, “and during the ceremony, the parson was reading something about marriage and asking them questions and -”
“It’s called the Solemnization of Matrimony, Miss Hawkins,” Talbot corrected, unhelpfully.
“Well, since you know the name, do you remember what they each promise?”
Talbot briefly closed his eyes and then recited, “The man vows to love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her, in sickness andin health; and, forsaking all other, keep himself only unto her, so long as they both shall live.”
“So he promises to forsake other women and keep himself only unto her? He gives his word as a gentleman?”
Talbot’s face showed how much he disliked her reasoning, so she decided not to bring up the part about the man endowing his wife with all his worldly goods, for the time being.
“I don’t understand why you are vexingmewith this particular issue,” he said, taking great care to appear extremely irritated. “I have no wife to lie to, and my…friendsare always widowed, so there is no problem on that end either.”
“Unless your arrangement produces any by-blows,” Elizabeth protested, any and all sense of propriety that Lady Burnham had tried to impart to her long forgotten.
“Well, it seems that we have found one thing we can agree on,” Talbot replied solemnly, and they both sank into silence. Elizabeth wondered how he could speak so confidently about not fathering children.
“Miss Hawkins,” he said after a while, smugly, as if certain he’d found a flaw in her argument, “at a wedding, the wife promises to obey and serve her husband for as long as they both shall live. Can you honestly claim you intend to fulfil such a promise to your future husband, with that temper of yours?”
Elizabeth lifted her chin in defiance, perhaps contradicting her next statement with that gesture, “Yes; if he fulfils his part of the vows, why not?”
