Chapter Four #2
“I cannot reveal secrets of my family, nor tell the truth from any other person’s perspective,” he said quietly. “But I will not lie to you, Miss Morgan. If I cannot answer to your satisfaction, you will have to trust me that I do not tell all for a good reason.”
“And should I trust you?” came the gentle yet teasing question.
Samuel almost tripped over his own feet. His honor had never been questioned before! He was a gentleman! He was a lord! More to the point, he was a Chance!
He opened his mouth to say all these things, and more, then he caught the eye of Miss Morgan and realized…that did not matter.
To the Miss Morgans of the world, gentlemen were not always kind. Lords were a type of far-off person whom one almost never met. And a Chance? Why, no Chance had ever been in Brighton. What did she know of his family?
“You should trust me,” he said finally, “because I give you my word. And that is a great thing. You will have to…erm…trust me on this.”
This whole thing was getting away from him, but there appeared to be nothing for it.
Samuel grinned. “I know that is probably not very helpful.”
“Not really, but the fact that you see that is perhaps half the battle,” said Miss Morgan lightly. She crossed her arms—for warmth, Samuel would guess. Or perhaps as a natural defense. “As I said, I have questions.”
“Ask away.”
“You said… At luncheon, you said…” For some reason, Miss Morgan’s face had gone pink. Had she truly warmed up so quickly? “You said that it was imperative that you and your wife, that you wouldn’t… Well. Consummate.”
Ah.
Now heat burned Samuel’s cheeks, and he rather supposed his face was just as red, if not redder, than Miss Morgan’s. Why, to the casual observer, they may even look as though they were courting!
Well, not courting. There was no chaperone, obviously. Though now Samuel came to think about it, did the lower classes even use chaperones?
“My lord?”
Samuel blinked, then shook his head as though in doing so, he could rid his mind from the question he would not ask: had Miss Morgan ever been courted?
“Consummation,” he said aloud.
“Yes…consummation,” repeated Miss Morgan, her expression serious. “I am sure you can understand that I am curious about how… How that would work.”
Would work? Good God, was he about to give a biology lesson to a young lady while walking along Brighton beach?
“Ah,” Samuel said aloud helplessly. “Right. Well… Well, when a gentleman and a lady…er…when they love each other very much… or are forced into a marriage, I suppose, of convenience or status, one they aim to secure for all their lives—”
He was interrupted by a vigorous whack on his arm, which would have hurt, if Frank had not been in that habit for several years now.
“I didn’t mean—of course I know how to—honestly!” Miss Morgan looked pink again. “I meant, how do you intend to keep up the pretense without…without it actually happening, you dolt!”
Samuel laughed, the chuckle releasing some of the tension in his neck. “Oh, that’s easy. Separate bedchambers.”
Miss Morgan slowed to pick up a shell. When they started to walk again, it was more slowly, and her fingers twirled the shell around and around. “Will that not cause comment? For your servants, I mean—you have servants, don’t you?”
“Oh, it’s quite common among my sort of people for a husband and wife to have separate bedchambers,” said Samuel with a shrug. “No one will think anything of it.”
“And you wouldn’t be…tempted?”
It was a good thing he was looking away at that moment at the cresting waves that scattered gold and red from the dying sun along the surf, for he was not sure what his expression would look like.
Tempted? Dear God, he was tempted. He was tempted right now.
He may not have been the cad that Benjamin was, or the rake that Cousin Zander was reported to be, but Samuel had had his fair share of dalliances—widows only, naturally, and those who were fully aware that he would not be offering neither hand nor heart.
None of them had ever tempted him like Miss Morgan.
She was…delectable. Innocent and yet worldly, a heady combination Samuel had never known he wished to taste before. He wanted to know what it was to touch those lips, with his fingers, with his lips, with his—
“Samuel? My lord? What am I supposed to call you, anyway?”
Miss Morgan’s tones wakened Samuel from his entirely inappropriate daydream.
He tried to smile. “‘Samuel.’ ‘Samuel’ is fine.”
“Consummation,” Miss Morgan repeated sternly, as though she were a schoolteacher and her prize pupil was misbehaving. “I asked you if you would be tempted.”
Samuel cleared his throat. Well, here it was: time for that modicum of truth. “Right. Well, it’s very important that doesn’t happen. For when we seek an annulment.”
“For when you and this mythical wife of yours seek an annulment,” Miss Morgan corrected him with a wry expression.
A sharp pain, sharp and unexpected, seared through Samuel. Was she truly discounting herself from his clever…fine, his frantic scheme? But then why have this conversation—why seek him out and ask these questions?
“You do not wish to accept the role?” he asked quietly as the beach curved slowly to their left.
“It’s not… It’s not that. It’s just…” Miss Morgan’s voice faded away and she looked out to the water. Her footsteps halted and she stood there, utterly lost in her thoughts.
If it had been someone else, he might have interrupted her, but Samuel rather enjoyed taking the moment to look at her.
He could understand why she had become an actress. What man would not wish to look at her? Why, on the stage as Ophelia, for example, she would have been magnificent.
And she was out of work. That should worry him, he knew, in case her skills as an actress would not prove up to his task, but was there not far more people who wished to be on the stage than… Well, room on the stage?
Anyone could be down on their luck. That was, Samuel had never been so. It did not happen to Chances, not even really to their poorest branch. But he had read about it. In newspapers. In novels.
“To be your wife…to take on the role of Lady Chance—”
“Lady Aylesbury, actually,” Samuel reminded her with a sardonic smile.
Miss Morgan did not turn to look at him, and her voice continued on with a wistful air. “It would be the role of a lifetime. To actually inhabit the peerage, to meander through Society, to gain entrance to such places and—and hold court for you, as your wife…”
Samuel swallowed. Yes, he hadn’t really thought that bit through yet.
Miss Morgan lifted her face to him. “To lose oneself in such a part. It would be magnificent.”
“But you would not be able to lose yourself within it,” he reminded her quietly. “It is very important you understand—this is not a permanent position.” Well, he supposed, he had initially been insistent on that. Surely, she would prefer that?
“A year and a day,” she said with an incline of her head. “Like a fairy tale.”
“This is not a fairy tale,” Samuel said decisively.
It was imperative—crucial she understood.
He would not be accused of forcing a lady—a stranger—into a lifetime of matrimony.
“You appear to be a very nice woman, Miss Morgan, but we hardly know one another. Committing to one another for a lifetime would be ridiculous.” He swallowed, almost wishing that weren’t true.
Would the future marchioness—the real marchioness—captivate him as much as Miss Morgan?
“‘Nice’?” she said, her mouth agape, as though that were the only word he’d spoken that mattered, as if he had mortally wounded her.
A seagull screeched overhead as the tide continued to come in and the sun dipped, finally, below the horizon. The dusk air was cold, yes, but there was a cordiality here Samuel had not expected.
“More than nice, I am sure,” he amended with a laugh.
“But my point is that this is not the end of the story. This wedding will be quick and perfunctory. You will play a part, as my wife, to get me the money. We will live as partners, not husband and wife, though to the outside world it must appear to be true—and after three hundred and sixty-six days, we will go our separate ways, never to see each other again. Do you understand?” There.
That was the proper way to go about this, wasn’t it?
Wasn’t that the best way to get her to agree to the job?
There was no way an actress would want to spend any longer than that as a marchioness, away from the actual stage.
Miss Morgan looked up at him with brilliant, sparkling intelligence in her eyes. Or Samuel supposed it could have been the reflection of the stars. “Why do you want the money so much?”
Samuel swallowed. He didn’t know, exactly. Or at least, he knew, but he wasn’t going to tell her.
Think what he could do with such a fortune!
Such good he could do, such changes he could make to the family.
Investments to secure them for generations, support for the family’s charities, an additional input into Frank’s dowry—if she was going to persist in wearing trousers, she was going to need it.
Not that he could say all that to Miss Morgan, a relative stranger.
“I admit the distant relative to whom the money would go otherwise is not of the most commendable reputation,” he said aloud. “But more than that… Money brings freedom. I want freedom.”
Something glittered in her eyes, and this time, he was almost certain it was not the stars. “And you are not worried about my past?”
“Should I be?”
Miss Morgan laughed as she slipped her hand through his arm and turned so that they started back toward the town. “I meant that I am an actress. It is not the most respectable profession—indeed, you may find yourself embarrassed if my past resurrects itself.”
But Samuel could not concern himself with such things. What on earth could possibly be in such a nice girl’s past that he would have to worry about?