“I don’t mean to press—”
“Then don’t. Please take me back. Lucy will be back by now.”
“Very well. I haven’t made this offer lightly, but I acknowledge that I’ve sprung it on you and that I could have chosen a more appropriate time and place. But wewilltalk about it again,” he said with gentle emphasis.
“It will make no difference. My mind is made up.” And if he wasn’t mistaken, that sounded like flat despair.
The carriage turned around, and they headed back toward the busier part of the park, where the fashionable people were parading. An awkward silence hung between them.
***
Alice breathed slowly, trying hard to appear calm. Her hands were cold, her fingers trembling. She smoothed the fabric of her gloves over them and recalled the touch of Lord Tarrant’s hand over hers just a few moments earlier.
She darted a sideways glance at him and found him watching her. The look in the eyes told her he was recalling it, too. And was puzzled by her abrupt rejection of him.
She tried desperately to think of something ordinary to say. And remembered the card in her reticule. She pulled it out. “Oh, by the way, I spoke to Lady Beatrice—Lady Davenham, I mean; the lady with the cats—and she said she’d be delighted to give Debo a kitten. She gave me this card to give to you. It has her direction. There’s a note on the back.” She handed him the card.
He examined it and chuckled. “I gather I’m to present this to her butler.” He read the writing on the back. “Admit Lord Tarrant and daughters on important kitten business.”
“She said to call on her as soon as you liked.”
“We’ll go today.”
They reached Lucy, who was standing talking to ayoung man, with Lord Tarrant’s daughters and their nanny standing close by. The nanny was chaperoning Lucy, too, by the look of it. “Nanny McCubbin takes her duties seriously,” he commented. “She’s enjoying caring for the girls. My brother and I weren’t nearly such fun, I suspect.”
Alice would have liked to learn more about Lord Tarrant and his brother, but the time for such confidences was gone, destroyed by his wretched intention to offer her marriage. Oh, why had he done it? They could never go back to their easy friendship now.
“I’ll call on you tomorrow,” he told Alice. “At eleven?”
She made an indifferent gesture. “If you must.” She climbed down, and the girls scrambled into the carriage, talking nineteen to the dozen. A passionate argument was in progress between Judy and the plump, motherly-looking nanny about some of the hats they’d seen ladies wearing and whether they were elegant or horrid with so many birds cruelly deprived of their feathers. The whole question hung on whether the poor birds would have survived their plucking or not. Nanny McCubbin was unable to state categorically that they did. What did Papa say?
Lord Tarrant glanced at Alice with a humorously resigned expression, but she turned away, pretending not to see it. They couldn’t share such intimate glances any longer. But oh, it hurt.
They waved the carriage and the girls off. “Are you all right, Alice?” Lucy said as it disappeared from sight. “You’re looking rather pale.”
“A slight touch of the headache, nothing to worry about.”
“Do you want to go home?”
“No, a stroll in the fresh air will revive me. I’m fine.”
But she wasn’t.Marriage!How could he deceive her like that when he’d offered her friendship? She’d been so enjoying their friendship, too—she’d never experienced anything like it. But it was all spoiled now. They couldnever go back to how it had been. She’d have to sever the connection.
They strolled on. Ladies and gentlemen greeted them, bowed, made small talk. Alice went through the motions,
Marriage.The whole idea appalled her. Under a man’s thumb again, subject to his whims and fancies, her own desires ignored, her opinions trampled underfoot. Belonging to a man, her body his to use as he willed, whenever and however he wanted.
The marriage bed.She shuddered.
“Are you cold?” Lucy asked.
She shook her head and forced herself to pay attention. “Did you enjoy your drive with my nephew?”
“Him? Hah!” They walked on, brooding in silence, stopping from time to time to exchange a brief greeting with an acquaintance.
Alice responded absently, her mind wholly taken up with Lord Tarrant’s proposal. He wasn’t at all like Thaddeus, she told herself. But when she’d first met Thaddeus, he’d seemed charming—until after the marriage had taken place.
Lucy suddenly said, “Lord Thornton didn’t invite me for a pleasant drive in the sunshine—it was to question me about my father. He’s been investigating me, did you know?”
