He had no idea what she was talking about, but he nodded manfully and tried not to think about what all that hair wouldlook like loose and cascading over his chest. “Certainly the children do need… a mother?”
She looked rather startled at that. “Why, yes, I suppose so. But I meant for the purposes of securing their guardianship, of course.”
“Oh,” he said, but as he thought about it, it did make a kind of sense. “I suppose I’m rather less objectionable if I’m married.”
“Yes!” she said eagerly. “That’s exactly what I said to Lydia.”
She’d said he waslessobjectionable? As though his current state of objectionability needed to be remedied?
Perhaps they weren’t betrothed.
The bizarre twinge of disappointment in his chest did not bear thinking about.
“What’s more,” she was saying, “I think Lord Eldon must secretly be a romantic, what with the story of how he eloped with Lady Eldon. I think if you marry by special license in the next handful of weeks, he might find your appeal more compelling. And I’m hopeful that we might get Lady Eldon on your side as well.”
All right, theydefinitelyweren’t betrothed. It was a scheme, then. A scheme in which he identified some unknown woman willing to become the Duchess of Stanhope and then tied himself to her for life for the purpose of getting what he wanted from the Court of Chancery.
The whole thing felt a trifle cold-blooded.
“You think I should find a woman to marry in the next six weeks so that I might be more popular with a capricious old baron who dislikes me because I have had the temerity to be born in Louisiana and to say outright that slavery is an abomination?”
“Um,” said Selina, and she looked somewhat agonized. “That’s… it… It sounds much worse when you put it like that.”
“How would you put it?”
She lifted her chin a bit, and he liked the way she didn’t back down. “I would say that you should devote a considerable part of the next six weeks to the project of matrimony. If you discover a woman with whom you think you might make a suitable match, then you should make it. And if that action leads Lord Eldon to approve your petition for guardianship of Freddie and Lu, then you’ve achieved your goals and gotten a wife in the bargain.”
Freddie and Lu. Yes. Damn it, that’s what this was about. He wanted to be better for his brother and sister. More cautious and prudent and bleeding parental.
But Selina was still talking. “And of course there’s nothing wrong with being born in Louisiana, and there’s nothing wrong with speaking the truth about slavery. I think you should continue to speak against slavery. You must. I believe in doing what’s right even if it isn’t in one’s own best interests.” She pressed her lips together. “And your wife should understand that.”
The woman was as persuasive a talker as her brother.
“All right,” he said. “I see the wisdom of this plan. And in truth Iamopen to matrimony. And I am willing to do whatever it takes to secure Freddie and Lu’s future. Anything.”
Her wide mouth curled up at the ends. “Perhaps it won’t be as bad as all that.”
The prospect of hurling himself into the sea of marriageable daughters of theton, along with their ambitious mothers and condescending fathers, didn’t exactly strike him as pleasant. For the last two years, he’d discovered precisely what kind of prospect he was: highly desirable as the heir to a wealthy dukedom, yet indubitably suspect because of his French mother, and an accent that marked him as not-quite-English-enough. Watching the members of thebeau mondetry to work out the contradictionhad been gratifyingly amusing, so long as he maintained his detachment.
Less amusing, he supposed, if he had to take it all seriously.
He had never been one of those men who regarded marriage as the parson’s noose. Marriage seemed perfectly fine as a social institution. Better than fine, if one actually liked the woman to whom one attached oneself. He’d always meant to marry eventually. The timetable was simply accelerating. At a rapid pace.
Hopefully he could find a woman he liked in the next six weeks, because Freddie and Lu needed him to do whatever the situation damn well required.
His mind helpfully suggested one woman whom he liked quite a lot, and who happened to be sitting within arm’s reach. He gave his mind a very firm squelching.
“I’d like to help you,” Selina said, and to his surprise, she reached out and cupped a hand over his own. Her long, tapered fingers touched the back of his hand lightly, and then withdrew.
He wanted to flex his fingers, but he made himself be still.
“I’ve made up a short list,” she said, “of women I’d like to introduce you to. Women I think you should get to know better. Each, I think, would make a superb duchess.”
Good God, “superb duchess” wasn’t exactly the primary characteristic he’d imagined using to select a future wife. Not that he’d imagined many characteristics beyondlikes my jokesandgrabbable rump.
“Er,” he said. “All right. I appreciate your assistance.”
“Excellent,” she said, and then she plucked a folded sheet of paper from the table beside her and handed it to him.
