Chapter Four #3
It was incredible. It was nonsensical.
It was going to make him say something absolutely foolish.
‘Marry me, Miss Oliver,’ Montague said cheerfully.
Miss Oliver dropped her paintbrush. It fell tip down into the sand, but she completely ignored it. ‘What—what did you just say?’
‘Marry me, Miss Oliver,’ Montague repeated, knowing this was probably not the way to most induce a positive answer, but knowing he could hardly find a better woman in the whole of Brighton.
She was charming and pretty.
And, what’s more, she was bold and charming, and did not accept what he said merely because he said it. She loved art and argued back. For a man who had sworn for a time off matrimony, she appeared to have the same general disdain for Society.
What else could he need? Why waste time?
She was spluttering now and Montague tried not to notice how her breasts heaved as she attempted to regain her breath. Very pretty indeed. Making heirs with her would be delightful.
‘You cannot be in earnest,’ she managed to say, swooping low in a swish of muslin and retrieving her paintbrush. ‘Bother.’
‘Is it ruined?’
Miss Oliver glared, as though it had been he who had dropped it. ‘Probably.’
‘Never fear, I shall purchase you a great deal of paintbrushes,’ Montague said airily. ‘I always go for Sothertons myself.’
Now that got her attention. Perhaps that should have been his method of attack, he wondered thoughtfully as her gaze narrowed.
‘You…you know of Sothertons?’
‘They make the best paintbrushes in the world, I think. I always use them,’ Montague said cheerfully.
Perhaps he should have mentioned to her earlier that he was a fellow artist—but then the woman was so swift to cut him off in their previous conversations, it was no wonder she was staring at him agog now.
‘You paint?’ Miss Oliver whispered, before seeming to recollect herself and stepping backwards.
Montague glanced about them. There were a few people promenading along the beach, but surely he and Miss Oliver could not be accused of doing anything untoward.
Not yet, at any rate.
‘Of course I paint,’ Montague said with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘Now, you were about to accept my hand in marriage.’
He could see the desire in her and the curiosity.
There Miss Oliver stood, sun-yellow gown brilliant against the myriad browns of the pebbles and the blue green of the sea, and she was looking at him as though she desired him.
There was a leaning to her posture and a bite of her lower lip that told him she was considering it.
But what was there to consider? He was a marquess and she was barely gentry, as far as he could tell. He was handsome, at least in a good light, and…well. He was wealthy.
Montague cleared his throat. ‘So you’ll marry me, yes?’
She could help him take care of John. In a small way, it would rid him of the memories, the memories that clawed at him in the dark.
Being punished by being locked in that cupboard, the sound of rats scratching under the floorboards sending him into a panic.
The hunger. The dark hunger that had gnawed at his stomach that week he had been forbidden more than a singular meal.
The way his uncle had laughed when he’d slipped and slit open his arm, no bandages for the orphan…
Montague shook his head slightly.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
This was about Calliope. Calliope and the boy. She could care for him. Hell, she could be in charge of the boy if she wanted. He had no desire to—
‘No,’ Miss Oliver said simply before turning place to her easel and plunging her paintbrush in a jar of water.
Montague stared and said, ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘No,’ Miss Oliver repeated, as though to a small child. ‘Good day, my lord.’
‘But—you cannot—Miss Oliver, you have been naught but prickles ever since we met,’ Montague began. ‘And—’
‘And so why on earth would you ask me to marry you?’ Miss Oliver rolled her eyes, something entirely inappropriate and somehow highly sensual. ‘As my brother-in-law, the Duke of Glanyrafon, was saying only the other day—’
Montague lost track of what she was saying for a moment, head ringing. Duke of Glanyrafon? Had he not wed some woman he barely knew at the beginning of the year? And this—this was her sister?
‘—so I will thank you to leave me alone,’ Miss Oliver finished sternly.
Taking a staggering step backward, Montague could not help but be impressed. She was marvellous. And the trouble was, the more she disliked him, the more he wanted to speak with her.
After years of debutantes falling over themselves to endear his heart to them, it was…refreshing. No, startling, to be spoken to in such a way.
Enticing.
‘Miss Oliver, I will not give up,’ Montague said grandly.
Miss Oliver rolled her eyes again. ‘Go away, my lord.’
Right. Well, all he would have to do is put together a plan, Montague told himself as he made his ungainly way off the beach and onto the promenade.
And he had just the idea to tempt the beautiful Miss Oliver into a bargain she would not be able to refuse…