Chapter 4 #2
She was, by any fair measure, extravagantly pretty, all wide blue eyes and a mouth built for mischief, and she had been Louisa’s dearest friend since the two of them were girls sneaking ratafia from a tray at their first ball and deciding on the spot that they suited each other far better than either suited polite conversation.
“You would sooner set the house on fire.”
“I considered it,” Fiona admitted, rising from the settee in a swirl of skirts.
“Where on earth have you been? Your butler would tell me nothing beyond an infuriatingly serene ‘Lady Louisa had an engagement,’ which is the sort of sentence that means either something very dull or something very interesting, and I refuse to leave until I know which.”
“Sit down, Fiona.”
“I am sitting. I am the very picture of sitting. Now, talk.”
Louisa dropped into the chair opposite her, pulled the pins from her bonnet with more force than strictly necessary, and set them on the table between them. “I have just come from Ashvale House.”
Fiona went very still. “Ashvale House?”
“Yes.”
“The Duke of Ashvale’s Ashvale House?”
“Is there another one I am unaware of?”
“Louisa.” Fiona leaned forward, her eyes bright with the particular delight she reserved for scandal that had not yet fully ripened into fact. “Why in heaven’s name were you calling on the Duke of Ashvale?”
“He wrote to me. He has a ward, a young boy, who has not spoken since his father died three years ago. Someone told him I know sign language, and he wondered whether I might help.”
“That is not nearly as interesting as I was hoping, though I grant it is very good of you.” Fiona sat back, faintly disappointed, then narrowed her eyes. “Why do you have that look?”
“What look?”
“The look that says you are about to tell me something you already know I will have opinions about.”
Louisa reached for the teapot, poured herself a cup she had no real intention of drinking, and used the small ritual to organize her thoughts before answering. “He offered to employ me. I told him it was impossible.”
“Impossible how?”
“An unmarried woman cannot live under a bachelor’s roof, Fiona, whatever the reason. And I told him I would not be parted from Eleanor for any position, however well compensated.”
“Sensible. Go on.”
“So I told him that employment solved only half his problem.” Louisa met her friend’s eyes, and made herself say the rest of it plainly, before her nerve failed her. “And that marriage would solve both.”
The teacup Fiona had just lifted paused halfway to her mouth.
“I am sorry,” she said slowly. “I believe I misheard you. For one dreadful moment, it sounded as though you told the Duke of Ashvale that he ought to marry you.”
“You did not mishear me.”
Fiona set the cup down with exaggerated care, as though the china itself might shatter from the shock of what it had just witnessed. “Louisa Everly.”
“Fiona Blackwood.”
“You proposed marriage. To a duke. Whom you had met, by my reckoning, one hour ago.”
“Three-quarters of an hour, if we are to be precise about it.”
“I do not care to be precise about it. I care to understand how a woman who once turned down Mr. Beaumont because his conversation bored her within a fortnight of dancing with him has now proposed marriage to a complete stranger before he had even offered her tea.”
“He did not offer me tea. He is not, I think, a man who considers refreshments part of a negotiation.”
“A negotiation.” Fiona pressed a hand to her chest as though warding off a faint. “You negotiated your own marriage as though it were a horse trade.”
“It was exactly that.” Louisa allowed herself the ghost of a smile.
“I require a husband who will give Eleanor a name and never ask me to give her up. He requires someone Kit will trust enough to reach him. I pointed out that marriage solved both problems more thoroughly than employment ever could, and I left him to consider it.”
“And what did he say to that? Did he have you removed from his house? Did he ring for the footmen? Was he as aghast as I am?”
“He asked for time to think it over.”
Fiona’s mouth fell open.
For a long moment, she said nothing at all, which Louisa considered something of an achievement, since she could not recall the last occasion on which her friend had been rendered speechless.
“He asked for time,” Fiona repeated, as though the words required careful handling.
“Louisa. A woman he had known for three-quarters of an hour proposed marriage to him in his own study, and he did not laugh in her face, did not have her shown to the door, did not send a very firm letter explaining that he had misunderstood the nature of her visit. He asked for time to consider it.”
“That is what I said, yes.”
“Do you understand what that means?”
“It means precisely what it says. He wishes to think before he answers.”
“It means,” Fiona said, with the triumphant patience of a woman explaining something painfully obvious to a slower friend, “that he is seriously considering it. No man asks for time to think over a proposal he intends to reject, Louisa. A rejection costs nothing and requires no consideration whatsoever. A man only asks for time when the answer he expects to give is not the answer he thinks he ought to give.”
“You are building an entire theory of the Duke of Ashvale’s character out of one polite sentence.”
“I am building an entire theory of the Duke of Ashvale’s character out of the fact that he did not throw you out of his house, which, from everything I have heard of him, is precisely what I would have expected.
” Fiona sat forward again, delighted despite herself.
“He must be either mad or brilliant, Louisa. There is no third explanation. Either he has taken leave of his senses entirely, or he has heard your proposal and recognized, faster than most men manage in a year of courtship, that it is the most sensible offer he is likely to receive in this lifetime.”
“Or,” Louisa said, “he is simply a practical man who does not waste time on outrage when a solution is standing in front of him.”
“That is what I said. Brilliant.” Fiona grabbed a biscuit from the tray with the satisfaction of a woman who considered the matter settled. “Now, tell me the important part.”
“I have just told you the important part.”
“You have told me the practical part, which I am sure is very significant to whatever calculations occupy your head at all hours, but you have entirely neglected the part I actually wish to know.” Fiona fixed her with a look of pure, unrepentant curiosity. “Is he as handsome as they say?”
“That is not remotely relevant.”
“It is very relevant. You are potentially about to marry the man. I should think his face falls well within the scope of things worth discussing.”
“I did not go to his study to study his features, Fiona.”
“No, but I imagine you noticed them regardless, since you have eyes, and since I have heard from no fewer than three separate sources that the Duke of Ashvale is widely considered one of the more tolerable views in London, on the rare occasions he permits himself to be viewed at all.” Fiona’s grin widened. “So, is he handsome or not?”
“I have no comment to make on the subject.”
“That is not a no.”
“It is not a yes, either.”
“Louisa.” Fiona set down her biscuit, abandoning even the pretense of eating it, fully given over to the pursuit of an answer. “You have turned the shade of pink you do when you are trying very hard not to smile. I have known you for years. I know exactly what that color means.”
“I am not smiling.”
“You are smiling with your entire face while your mouth remains stubbornly flat, which is more convincing than an actual smile would be.” Fiona looked positively gleeful.
“He is handsome. He is dreadfully, unfairly handsome, and you have just proposed marriage to him under the guise of practicality, and you are sitting there pretending the matter never crossed your mind.”
Louisa reached for the nearest cushion and threw it at her.
Fiona caught it against her chest, laughing so hard she nearly slid off the settee, and pressed the cushion to her middle as though it might help contain the laughter now shaking her shoulders.
“There,” she gasped, breathless, entirely too pleased with herself. “I have my answer.”