Chapter Eight #2
He took his gaze off whatever he was seeing down the avenue and looked at her. “Too far with what?”
“Stop talking like this marriage is real,” she said. “I will pretend with you, but I am not going to act as if this is truly going to happen, so please stop speaking that way.”
He cocked his head. “Don’t you like me?”
“I like you very much.”
“Enough to marry me?”
“I told you to stop it.”
He grinned and shook his head. “Stop what?” he said. “I am serious, Mira. You need a husband and, as my mother has pointed out many times, I need a wife. What is wrong with me that you should not wish to marry me?”
She looked at him in shock. Shock that was quickly turning to frustration. “You’re serious.”
“I am.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I told you that I am not a viable marriage prospect,” she said. “Why on earth would you want to marry someone like me?”
His grin widened. “Because I like you,” he said.
“I liked you the moment I first saw you. I like your beautiful hair, your beautiful eyes. You are a small, fragile-looking woman but you are anything but fragile. I think you are stronger than I am in many ways. You are a rare bird, Lady Misery Isabella Rosalie d’Avignon.
Pretending we are in love has made me want to be in love. Why not be in love with you?”
Her eyes widened. “Oh… Douglas,” she breathed. “You cannot be serious.”
“Why not?”
“Are you telling me that you’ve fallen for your own deception?”
He shook his head. “The only thing I’ve fallen for is you.”
“What are you saying?”
He shrugged those big shoulders. “I suppose I should explain myself,” he said.
“I’m trying to make this seem like a normal and natural thing that we’ve both been expecting when the truth is that I cannot explain it at all.
My father has always called me the wise one.
He says I have an old soul. I do not act on whims and I do not make decisions that I will regret later.
Every decision I make, no matter how small, is sound.
The idea of marrying you… It has just come to me, that is true, but the more I think about it, the more I like the idea.
I was attracted to you the moment I first met you and that feeling has only grown stronger. ”
Mira was sitting back against the carriage seat, looking at him in astonishment.
In fact, she was rather leaning away from him as if afraid she was going to catch whatever madness had infected him.
But she was also jolted by the possibility that he might actually be serious.
He said he was. He was acting as if he was.
She was absolutely speechless.
“I do not know what to say to that,” she finally said.
He was struggling not to feel embarrassed by a declaration of his intentions that seemed to come out of nowhere. As he’d told her, he hadn’t planned it. He’d also told her that he didn’t act on whims, but this certainly seemed like one. A reasonable whim. But one that felt right.
He endeavored not to feel vulnerable about it.
“You could start by telling me if there is any interest on your part,” he said. “If being married to me, if being the mother to my sons, is of no interest to you, then you only need tell me once and I’ll not ask again.”
She just looked at him. Nothing seemed to be coming forth. She simply stared at him with those green eyes that were pale and bright, an unearthly color that seemed to burrow down deep into him. He hadn’t even realized that until now.
Now, something was changing between them.
Something was happening.
When the wait became excessive, Douglas turned around and began to walk away.
He couldn’t stand there with her staring at him and not have the answer he wanted.
He would have to accept the fact that her silence was the answer.
All of this was happening too fast. It was too sudden.
He’d made a fool out of himself and he was embarrassed.
But he couldn’t leave her alone in that carriage, so he was heading over to tell the soldiers who had remained to guard the horses to keep an eye on her when he heard her voice behind him.
“Douglas?”
By the time he stopped and turned around, she was nearly upon him. She had climbed out of the carriage and followed him. It was difficult not to be on his guard as he faced her.
“What is it?”
She was staring at him again, and he almost asked her the same question again, but she broke from whatever trance she was in.
Somehow, she couldn’t seem to stop staring at him, as if trying to figure out if this was all real.
If he truly meant what he said. Even though he’d told her he was serious, she was having trouble grasping it.
Her expression was full of questions.
And perhaps a little fear.
“You must understand something,” she said, her voice quivering. “I have never, in my life, heard those words where they pertained to me. I never imagined I would.”
He was a little less embarrassed by her confession, but not by much. “And I never imagined I would say them,” he said, folding his enormous arms over his chest and averting his gaze. “Contrary to what you might think, this was not easy for me.”
“I believe it. How do you feel now that you have said it?”
He was still looking away, but he started to chuckle. “I am not certain yet,” he said. “It all depends on how you intend to answer.”
“Might I have time to think on it?”
He nodded. “Aye,” he said, turning to look at her again. “I do not expect an answer today or tomorrow or even a month from now. It is an important question that should be taken seriously. But I would like to ask you one more.”
“What is it?”
“Is there anything about me that you like, Mira?”
“There is everything about you that I like, Douglas.”
He couldn’t keep the grin off his face at her frank reply. There had been no hesitation. “Ah,” he said, now feeling the least bit giddy. And nervous. “I see. Then… then that is a fine answer. I am satisfied.”
Mira was starting to laugh because he seemed rather twitchy now that she’d eased his mind a little. “You had better take me into town and buy me something to eat,” she told him. “And probably to drink. I think I need it.”
“I think I do, too.”
“Shall we go?”
“If I offer you my elbow, will you take it?”
Giving him a look of exaggerated exasperation, she grabbed his elbow and pulled him toward the main avenue. “Come along, my impetuous lad,” she said. “We are going to eat well and we are going to speak more about this proposal you have given me.”
“Before or after we get drunk?”
She grunted in response. “You are impossible.”
He smiled down at her, his long blond hair draping over one eye. “I am quite possible, my lady,” he said. “I intend to show you just how possible.”
Grinning, Mira met his eye for a moment before looking away, unable to hold his gaze. Her breathing was coming in quick gasps and her heart was thumping strangely in her chest, all signs of madness, she was sure.
But a good kind of madness.
Something that had started off as a pretense had turned into something else.
*
“And then I am going to annex all of Norfolk. It should all be under one house, and that house will be de Winter. When I am the head of the house, it will be the most powerful in England.”
Jonathan had been watching Douglas and Lady Mira in the distance as they skirted the market and headed toward the north side of the city, but he was listening to Davyss de Winter spout his plans of grandeur.
Truthfully, almost since the moment Douglas had taken up residence at Axminster, young Davyss was lauding his plans for the de Winter empire when he came to power.
And what plans they were.
As the heirs to the Earldom of Radnor, the de Winter family owned practically all of Radnorshire, but they also had deep ties to Norfolk.
Great swaths of the shire belonged to the House of de Warenne, the Lords of Surrey, and Davyss’ mother was the sister of the current Earl of Surrey.
Lady Katherine de Winter was more powerful that her brother and certainly more formidable.
She had a son who thought just like her.
A big, strapping, powerful, talented son who was a full-fledged knight at least two years before he should have been.
Jonathan had to grin at the ambitious Davyss.
“Who are you going to annex?” he asked. “Bigod’s properties? If you try, you will not keep him as an ally.”
Davyss knew that. He knew all of it, fundamentally, but he had a big ego and a big mouth. “Mayhap I will marry one of their ugly daughters,” he said. “That would join our families, and when Bigod dies, I will step into his place.”
“He has a nephew, Davyss,” Jonathan said in a low voice. “And I take exception to your calling Bigod women ugly.”
That brought Davyss pause. He and Jonathan had served together for some time and he’d known the man most of his life.
He knew why Jonathan, an elite, Blackchurch-trained knight, was now languishing at Axminster when he should be out leading armies.
Davyss’ callous comment touched on that very thing.
“I did not mean all of them,” he said. “Forgive me, Wolfie. That was a careless thing to say.”
Jonathan waved him off, as if none of it mattered. “Go on,” he said. “Finish telling me how you will make one great de Winter empire and force the end of the Bigod dynasty.”
It was the first time since reaching the marketplace that Davyss had stopped talking.
Or at least took a breath before he continued.
His comment about Bigod women had slowed him down, and he was genuinely contrite about it.
As Lady Isabel and her women stood over near a man who sold exotic fabrics from all over the world, Davyss and Jonathan were on guard several feet away.
Eric had gone off, somewhere, so it was just the two of them.
Davyss’ attention shifted from his boasting to Jonathan.