Chapter Nine #2
She looked at him as if he were a simpleton. ‘It is that bad. You don’t want to marry me and I don’t want to marry you.’
‘We’re certainly not going to be the first couple who have found themselves in this predicament and I suspect we won’t be the last. Perhaps we should just make the best of it.’
She continued staring at him as if he was proving himself to be a greater disappointment with every word he uttered.
‘Nothing much will change,’ he continued. ‘We can both continue living our lives as we do presently.’
That had been the case for many of his friends.
They’d married out of a sense of duty, to increase their family’s fortune or to advance their place in Society, and then continued living lives not much different from the ones they’d lived when they’d been single.
He and Miss Whitmore could surely do the same.
‘In fact, your life might even improve,’ he continued, warming to the idea.
‘I have a townhouse in London which will be at your disposal whenever you wish.’ He waved his hand to encompass the three-storey home reputed to be one of the finest in Mayfair.
‘I have a vast estate in Northumberland, along with another estate in Yorkshire and a smaller one down in Devon.’
She still did not look convinced.
‘You can convert rooms in any or all of my homes into a studio should you wish.’
This caused her expression to soften. Slightly.
‘As a married woman, you will be able to visit art galleries without a chaperone, and you’ll be able to have those proper art lessons you want so much. No tutor would turn down a request from a duchess. You’ll be able to work with oils and whatnot and paint things other than pretty-pretty flowers.’
The expression softened slightly more. Jacob could hardly believe the absurd situation in which he had found himself, listing the reasons why she should marry him when marriage was the last thing he wanted.
‘But what about you?’ she asked.
‘What about me?’
‘What will you get out of this marriage?’
That was a good question. He sipped his coffee and gave it some consideration.
‘Exactly,’ she said, before he could formulate an answer. ‘Nothing.’
That was probably what he would say as well, but he doubted it was what she wanted to hear, so he continued drinking his coffee.
‘And you don’t want to get married, do you? You are being forced into an arrangement you do not want.’
Again, that required no answer as she was simply stating a fact.
‘Well, I won’t do it. I will not marry a man who does not want to marry me.’
‘I’m afraid, like many other debutantes, that is exactly what you are going to have to do.’
‘No, I am not,’ she said, standing up, her expression defiant, her hands planted on her hips. ‘I can see you are going to be of no help whatsoever, so I’m going to have to put an end to this nonsense all by myself.’
With that she turned and stomped out of the room.
He raised his coffee cup to her retreating back and wished her good luck, but suspected the next time he saw Miss Whitmore it would be as she walked up the aisle towards the wedding altar.
The man was absolutely hopeless. Margaret would have slammed the front door behind her if the butler had not been standing politely at the open door, waiting for her to leave.
As she stormed past him, she could only wonder how many other young women he had held the door open for in the same manner.
Women who were departing in the early hours after having spent the night in the Duke’s bed.
Her fury increasing, she climbed back into the waiting hansom cab and gave the driver another Mayfair address. She still hadn’t visited her friend Alice to discuss the fake engagement. Now she would visit her and discuss how to get out of this unwanted marriage.
Alice had recently arrived in town, accompanied by her husband, the Earl of Thornwood, so she could visit the publisher of her children’s books. She was a sensible woman and Margaret was sure that between the two of them they would come up with a solution to this dilemma.
She knocked on the townhouse door and the footman ushered her into the drawing room. Alice soon appeared and, like the Duke, was dressed in her robe, her long brown hair falling around her shoulders.
‘Maggie, dear, what is it? What’s wrong?’ she asked, rushing towards her friend, her arms outstretched.
‘I’m to marry.’
Alice stopped in her tracks, her expression making it obvious that she did not yet realise what a disaster this was.
‘But your letter said it was not a real engagement, merely a convenience to get out of attending another Season. Am I to assume from your expression that this has changed?’
‘You assume correctly.’
Her friend called for a maid, then took her hands and led her to the settee. ‘Tell me all about it over a nice cup of tea.’
So Margaret did. She told Alice everything, from their first meeting at the Earl of Northwood’s weekend party to arriving at his house this morning to confront him.
Although she did not mention that the Duke was still in his robe and she had momentarily allowed herself to be diverted by speculation as to whether or not he was naked underneath that thin garment.
And had even, for one humiliating moment, wondered what the caressing silk fabric felt like against his skin.
‘So you kissed him?’ Alice asked, as if that was the most important part of her story.
‘Yes, and my, have I come to regret that one impulsive action.’
But was that entirely true? She definitely regretted the consequences of her actions, but she could never really regret that kiss.
It had been heavenly. No, that was not correct.
It had been devilishly wonderful. The Duke had caused her body to feel things she had not thought possible, and if her parents hadn’t interrupted, she no doubt would have urged him to continue giving her such wicked pleasure.
She looked at Alice, expecting her wise counsel, but she was staring at her in a peculiar manner.
‘Maggie, I think I know you well enough to be certain you would not kiss a man lightly.’
‘No, it wasn’t lightly,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Well, it was to start with, when I first kissed him. Then it became much more…’ She saw Alice’s bemused expression. ‘Oh, you mean it’s an action I would not take lightly. Well, perhaps…maybe… I don’t know.’
Alice waited for her to explain and she knew they would not get around to formulating an escape plan from this marriage until she got the matter of the kiss out of the way.
‘All right, yes, I wanted to kiss the Duke. And yes, I find him extremely attractive, but I’m hardly the first woman to be bedazzled by him. The man is so damn handsome it should be illegal. He’s a menace to all women.’
Alice looked unconvinced that none of this was her fault.
‘I mean, didn’t you hear what I said about why we were pretending to be engaged in the first place? Because he has a lover. A married lover.’
‘Had a married lover,’ Alice said, being unnecessarily pedantic. ‘So that was the only reason you kissed him, because you were bedazzled by his good looks?’
‘Yes. Well, that and because he is charming and funny and he was being so lovely last night when we were sitting together in his carriage, making me feel, well…um…different, as if I wasn’t my usual self.’
Her body seemingly remembering how it had felt before she’d kissed him, her skin warmed and a soft sigh caught in her throat.
‘And then there was The Garvagh Madonna,’ she said, her voice little more than a whisper.
‘The what?’
‘It’s a painting we saw at the National Gallery.
The way he looked when he was staring at that painting…
’ She closed her eyes, recalling the expression on his face.
‘It was as if he was mesmerised. He looked like a different man, not the rake I had met at the Earl’s party, but a man who could be touched deeply by beauty.
A man who had depth to his character. A man who—’
‘A man who you could love?’
Margaret’s eyes sprang open. ‘No one is talking about love,’ she gasped out.
‘Aren’t we?’
‘No, definitely not. I admit I rather fell under his spell last night. And yes, I’ll also admit I was a fool to kiss him, but I would never be so much of a fool to fall in love with him. Please, credit me with some intelligence.’
‘Well, if you’re not prepared to admit to loving him, do you think he might just be in love with you?’
Margaret could hardly believe the words coming out of her friend’s mouth. She had always considered Alice to be a sensible, rational woman. It would seem she’d been wrong.
‘Alice. He is a rake,’ she said, enunciating each word carefully and slowly so her friend would finally understand what she was talking about. ‘Men like him do not fall in love, and certainly not with women like me.’ That surely was so obvious it did not need to be stated.
‘Maybe. But you gave him the option to get out of the fake engagement. He didn’t take it.
You’ve now given him the option to get out of this marriage.
He is a duke and no one, not even your formidable father, can make a duke do anything he doesn’t want to.
Do you think there is a possibility he wants to marry you? ’
‘None whatsoever. He will go through this marriage because he has to and because he knows it will make no real difference to him. He knows he can continue to live exactly as he always has. That is what he said to me, that this marriage will change nothing. For him, that will mean he can take as many lovers as he wants, and there will be nothing I can do about it.’
Tears pricked at her eyes. ‘Alice, last night, when I watched those high-kicking dancers I got so jealous at just the thought of him with another woman. When I met the Baroness I was so consumed by rage it was as if it was possessing me. Once we’re married, if he takes a lover I’m not certain I will be able to bear it. ’
Her friend held her close and those tears she had been fighting back began to roll down her cheeks.
‘Maybe you should tell him how you feel,’ she said quietly.
Margaret pulled back from her friend’s embrace and furiously brushed away her tears with the back of her hand.
‘No, never. It’s bad enough that my reckless kiss got us into this situation.
If I tell him how much I’m attracted to him he’s likely to think this is all deliberate on my behalf. He’ll assume I wanted to marry him.’
‘But maybe honesty is the best approach.’
Margaret shook her head, as disappointed with her friend as she had been with the Duke. ‘No, it is not.’
Alice looked at her with compassion, but compassion was not what she needed.
She needed ideas, suggestions, plans, before she found herself trapped in an unwanted marriage with a man who did not love her, who was not attracted to her, and had only kissed her because she’d all but thrown herself at him.
What those plans, suggestions and ideas could be she did not know, but one thing she did know for certain—she would not be marrying the Duke of Rosedale.