Chapter Twenty-Two
When the doctor arrived to inspect Scarlett’s ankle, Malcolm was waiting outside her room, seemingly the image of the perfect gentleman.
No one was the wiser about what had transpired between them.
The doctor proclaimed her injury a mild sprain and prescribed rest until it could bear weight.
Scarlett elected to stay in her room for the rest of the day, convalescing, which was partially in service to her ankle and partially to the tumult of her brain.
Tilly had briefly come to visit her, in between the time she was busy with the various activities of the party, but other than that, Scarlett was largely alone.
Except, of course, for the maid, who had been dispatched to attend to all her needs. This provision was physically helpful but made the possibility of Malcolm returning to her room unfortunately impossible.
Thus, she had plenty of time to reflect on what had happened and what had almost happened between them. In truth, she felt nearly drunk with power. She had never imagined she could have such an effect on a man, or that she herself contained the capacity for such pleasure.
Scarlett was no less resolute, however, in what she wanted to have happen between them.
She was determined that he ruin her, especially now that they had gotten so close.
She wanted to experience him in all fullness.
Yes, she knew that their relationship couldn’t continue past the next two weeks.
That it would be over with the house party.
But she believed what she had told him. She wasn’t harming anyone in taking this step, especially since what lay before her in life was years of respectable spinster celibacy.
The next morning, she found she was able to gingerly bear weight on the ankle, as long as she did not try to walk far.
She also discovered that she had gotten her courses.
On the one hand, it was a relief. She had expected her courses to arrive—and she was glad to have been correct. On the other hand, it did complicate her plans to have Malcolm deflower her posthaste.
Nevertheless, she needed to tell him of this development. She had promised to do so on that walk back from church, which seemed now to have been undertaken by two wholly different people. She just had to devise a way to speak with him in private—or near private.
Luckily, she did not have to resort to any desperate stratagems.
For she was seated next to him at dinner that very night.
She had barely spoken to him since their time together yesterday.
When he first saw her in the drawing room, he blushed deeply. She desperately wanted to playfully scold him. If she could, she would tell him that if he kept flushing so furiously when he saw her, others would begin to suspect the nature of their connection.
She would have loved to taunt him with these words, even though she was sure that her face was just as flushed upon first glimpsing him. It was impossible to see him and not think of how the day before he had used his cock to bring her to the best orgasm of her life.
He did not approach her immediately. Which was probably best for discretion, even as she burned to speak with him. When he came to lead her into dinner a few minutes later, she luxuriated in having him close to her once more.
At dinner, after he helped her to wine and she took a fortifying sip, she felt daring enough to communicate her news.
“Mr. Brown,” she said softly, her voice nearly lost under the tumult of all the voices around them.
“Do you remember that you were anxious about a certain course arriving to table on time?”
He frowned at her, clearly confused. “I do not recollect—”
“It was a course specific to me. And you were concerned that it would be delayed because of an action you yourself had taken.”
Understanding kindled in his eyes. “Ah, yes, I do remember now.”
“Well, I am happy to tell you that it has arrived. Your anxieties were for naught.”
“Ah, I am glad,” he said quietly, taking a sip of wine. “I certainly would not want you to be inconvenienced on my account.”
“I appreciate your consideration.”
For a moment, she allowed herself to reflect on what it would be like if her courses hadn’t arrived.
He had offered to marry her. When he had made her that offer, it had affronted her more than anything.
She hated the idea that he would marry her out of pity.
He couldn’t possibly, she had told herself, want such a thing.
But given what they had shared yesterday, it now seemed less apparent that he would regard a marriage to her as an act of charity. She knew that their lives were fundamentally incompatible. She only knew London, and he only knew Somerset. She had no idea what their lives together would look like.
But she supposed she had little idea what her life would look like once Tilly was married, even in London.
Yes, she would resume some of her usual activities, of course.
The teas and charity endeavors and lectures and trips to the theater would not cease.
Vera was a wealthy woman, and the comforts of their home would not disappear just because Tilly was marrying.
But chaperoning Tilly had been most of her life for the past few years.
Most of the exciting social invitations would surely dry up once her sister was wed.
There would be fewer balls and parties. Further, Tilly would often not be in London at all, but here in Somerset, in this very house.
Scarlett would not have Tilly’s companionship.
Of course, it occurred to her that if she had been forced to marry Malcolm on the account of carrying his child, she would not be far removed from her sister.
That idea, rather than calming her, irked her somehow. She wasn’t sure how she had come to have so little life outside of her sister. When had that happened? And how had she let it?
“How is your ankle?”
His question startled her from her reverie.
“Oh—tender. But getting better. It is really only sore now. The doctor said it wasn’t serious, as you know.”
“I am glad to hear it. I worried for you.”
“You did?”
“Yes,” he said with a smile. “Is that surprising?”
She wanted to say, You didn’t seem so worried when you were attempting to bed me.
But, alas, they were at the table, surrounded by others.
“You must tell me, though, what caused that girl—Miss Larchman, is it?—to push your brother into the pond.”
“My brother.” Malcolm glowered. “You would be shocked to hear how I spoke to him yesterday.”
“You were cross with him?”
She looked across the table at Mr. Tarlington and realized that he did look a little more sullen than usual.
“Yes. His nonsense with Miss Larchman endangered you, an innocent bystander. He needs to be more careful.”
She laughed. “But surely it was not his fault that he was pushed into a pond. Isn’t it—well—her fault? Was it just a lark?”
Malcolm looked around the table, as if to ascertain who would overhear him.
He took a sip of wine, appearing rather irritated.
“Miss Larchman and Philip have been friends since they were children. She is a very nice girl. Unusually clever. If she were a man, she would undoubtedly be at Cambridge or Oxford. Her father, our vicar, Mr. Larchman, is very learned for a country parson and has taught her near everything he knows. In short, I am sure she would not push my brother into a pond unless she had a very good reason. He can, after all, be very vexing.”
She frowned, imagining the worst. “Do you suppose he did something untoward?”
He scowled. “No, nothing of that sort. I am sure he was just quarreling with her about something childish. They have long been the closest of friends, and yet somehow fight like cats and dogs. Their antics are endless. But they are grown up now and need to give up such childish behaviors.”
“Perhaps it is not childhood that is the problem,” Scarlett theorized, “but the growing up.”
He raised his brows at that. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “Perhaps their relationship is not as simple as it once was.”
“You mean that there is something between them?”
“I don’t know many young ladies who would push a young man they didn’t care about into a pond. Unless he had done something very rude indeed.”
“It could be nothing of the latter nature. I know that Philip cares for her—and he is not depraved.”
“Well, then, perhaps it is an affair of the heart. I hope you weren’t too harsh with him.”
Malcolm looked across the table, grimaced, and then brought his gaze back to her. “I may have to apologize.”
She shouldn’t laugh at such an admission, a man quarreling with his brother, but she couldn’t help it. He seemed so serious. And the idea of him browbeating his own brother to defend her honor filled her with a ludicrous sort of pleasure.
Soon, however, it was time for the ladies to withdraw, and she had to leave him for the time being.
In the drawing room, she took tea with Miss Marburry, Miss Jones, and Tilly.
The girls were very cordial to each other, despite their competition for the same man, although it seemed increasingly obvious that Tilly had won that race.
After the matter of the handkerchief, George had returned to giving her sister his utmost attention, and so Scarlett had begun to regard the game of forfeits as a mere anomaly.
When the gentlemen entered, George proved true to this thesis. He immediately claimed Tilly, pulling her into a tête-à-tête in the corner.
Slowly, the drawing room emptied. Often, Malcolm stayed to escort her back to the lodge, but tonight he never entered the drawing room after dinner.
She heard it mentioned by Severn that he had been called away by his overseer to discuss an urgent matter of business.
She knew that he felt he had been neglecting his duties of late, given that he had said as much to her.
So, as the fire died down in the grate and she tried to read one of the fiction volumes strewn around the room, it was once again only her, Tilly, and George.
In the quiet of the room, however, it was impossible not to hear the two young people talking, even in their low tones.
“I will do my mother the favor,” George was saying, “of waiting to announce the engagement until the end of the party…”
Scarlett stilled. The engagement. Had George actually asked her sister to become his wife? And if he had, why had she not told her?
“That is perfectly acceptable to me,” Tilly whispered. “I do not see a rush. I am merely happy to have it agreed upon between ourselves.”
It was settled, then. Her sister was engaged to George Salisbury.
For a moment, Scarlett felt hurt that her sister hadn’t confided in her.
But then she wondered why she cared. Why shouldn’t Tilly have a secret engagement?
It would only be for a matter of one or two weeks.
Scarlett had long felt a proprietary interest in all that concerned Tilly, but now she was beginning to see that she had let it go too far.
Soon, Tilly would be married, and would live a life where her husband, not Scarlett, was her nearest connection.
She didn’t need Scarlett the way she once had.
And now that Scarlett saw this fact plain in front of her, she realized how many questions in her own life she had let go unanswered because she told herself that she must think of Tilly first.
Yes, her prospects had been severely limited by her father’s ruin.
Tilly and her mother had had the wealth from Vera’s family to buoy them against disgrace.
While Tilly’s prospects had been dimmed by their father’s loss, her very good dowry had ensured that she would have a future.
Their household had been forced to economize, of course, as they had been unable to go on in the style of living they had maintained when her father was alive and prosperous.
But Vera had more than enough on her own to furnish herself and her daughters with a comfortable home.
Scarlett had never been jealous of Tilly.
How could she complain when Vera’s wealth had provided her with all the comforts of existence?
Nevertheless, she saw now that she had resigned herself to having no future when she lost her father and her fortune, the dowry that would have been hers if he had not been ruined.
But she couldn’t let this loss determine her entire existence. Not anymore. She didn’t know what such a resolution meant.
She had always known that, even with money, she would never be any man’s first choice. And without it, she could hardly expect to be acceptable as a wife. She was plain and plump and not clever nor talented. These things would never change.
But did that mean she deserved no pleasure in life?
Before, she had accepted such a fate without question. Now, however, after her experiences with Mr. Malcolm Brown, she began to wonder. To think of other possibilities.
She sat there and watched the fire die in the grate. Tilly’s and George’s murmurs had once again become inaudible to her across the room. She didn’t mind. She no longer needed to know the contents of her sister’s conversations with her lover. In almost no time, they would be married.
No, Scarlett resolved, she needed to think now of herself. Tilly had made her choice. And Scarlett had to make hers.
She knew what this choice would be. She needed to live her own life before she awoke one day to realize it had passed her by. She didn’t want to only dream of what she wanted.
She wanted to seize it.
Scarlett Perkins needed to be ruined by Malcolm Brown.