Mary Balogh - The Proposal

She came down the house steps unassisted and approached him across the pavement while he held out a hand to help her up to the high seat. He noticed her limp again. He could hardly not notice it, in fact. It was not a slight limp.

“Thank you.” She smiled at him as she set her gloved hand in his and mounted to her seat without any inelegant scrambling.

He followed her up and gathered the ribbons in his hands again.

He did not know why the devil he was doing this. She was not actually his favorite person in the world. She had refused his marriage offer, which of course she had had a perfect right to do, and which he was not surprised she had done when he had thought back later to remember exactly with what verbal brilliance he had proposed. But she had not been content with a refusal. She had offered to help Constance anyway, and then she had invited him to court her—with no guarantee that she would look more favorably upon any proposal he cared to make at the end of the Season.

Like a handful of dry seeds tossed to a bird. Like a dry bone cast to a dog.

But here he was anyway even though it was quite unnecessary. She and her cousin, Lady Ravensberg, had already made tidy arrangements for Constance to make some sort of debut into tonnish society, and Connie was beyond excited. He had not needed to extend this invitation, then. Neither had he needed to purchase this extravagant and garish toy that he was driving. Had he bought it with her in mind? It was a question whose answer he did not wish to contemplate.

In the meanwhile, he was becoming uncomfortably aware that the seat of a curricle was narrow and really designed to accommodate just one person, especially when that person was large. She was all warm, soft femininity—as, of course, he had discovered on a certain beach in Cornwall. And she was wearing that expensive perfume.

“This is a very smart curricle, Lord Trentham,” she said. “Is it new?”

“It is,” he said, guiding his horses past a large wagon piled with vegetables, mostly cabbages that looked none too fresh.

A short while later he turned into the park. He must join the fashionable promenade, he supposed, though he had never in his life done so before. It was where the ton came in the late afternoons to show off their expensive finery to one another and to exchange gossip and sometimes perhaps even some snippet of real news.

“Lord Trentham,” she said, “since leaving Grosvenor Square you have spoken two words. And those were wrung out of you by a question that demanded an affirmative or negative answer. And you are scowling.”

“Perhaps,” he said, looking straight ahead, “you would prefer to be taken home rather than to continue.”

He wished he had not invited her. It had been an impulsive thing—even though he had bought the curricle for just such an occasion. Good Lord, he was a mess. He felt far out of his depth and in imminent danger of drowning.

Her head was turned toward him. She was studying him closely, he could tell without turning his head to look.

“I would not prefer it,” she said quietly. “Your sister is happy, Lord Trentham?”

“Ecstatic,” he said. “But I am not convinced I am doing the right thing by her. She does not know what is facing her. She thinks she does, but she does not. She will never be one of them—one of you.”

“If that is so,” she said, “and she realizes it early, then no harm will have been done. She will move on with her life and find happiness in a world with which she is more familiar. But you may be wrong. We are a different class, but we are the same species.”

“Sometimes,” he said, “I have my doubts about that.”

“And yet,” she said, “some of your closest friends in the world are of my class. And you are one of their closest friends.”

“That is different,” he said.

But there was no time for further conversation. They were upon the masses and must perforce join the promenade of slowmoving vehicles parading about a large empty oval. Most of the vehicles were open so that the occupants could greet acquaintances and converse with ease. Horses moved in and out between them and also stopped frequently for their riders to exchange social niceties. Pedestrians strolled nearby, far enough away not to be trampled but near enough to see and be seen, to hail and be hailed.

Lady Muir knew everyone, and everyone knew her. She smiled and waved and talked with all who paused beside the curricle. Sometimes, if it was a brief exchange, she did not introduce him. Sometimes she did, and Hugo felt eyes upon him, curious, assessing, speculative.

He found himself nodding curtly to people whose names he would never remember, and even whose faces he would forget. If it were not for Constance, he would be consoling himself with the inward promise that he would never do anything like this again. But there was Constance and his promise to her and the invitation to Lady Ravensberg’s ball next week that had already been made and accepted.

He was committed now.

But not to courting Lady Muir, by Jove. He was not a puppet on anyone’s string. Just last evening he had dined with the family of one of his cousins, and the only other guest at the table was a youngish woman who had recently lost her widowed mother, with whom she had stayed home dutifully long after her brothers and sisters had married. She was close to him in age, Hugo had guessed, and she was pleasant and sensible and had an attractively full figure even if her face was on the plain side. He had had a good talk with her and had escorted her home. His cousins had been matchmaking for him, of course. But he thought he might be interested. Or at least, he thought he ought to be interested.

And then his mind, which had been woolgathering, was snapped back to the present. Two gentlemen on horseback paused beside the curricle and Hugo, looking at the nearer of the two, saw a man he did not know. It was hardly surprising. He knew no one.

It was the other one who spoke to Lady Muir.

“Gwen, my dear girl!” he exclaimed in a voice that was so familiar that Hugo’s stomach immediately churned with nausea.

“Jason,” she said.

Lieutenant-Colonel Grayson, not in uniform today, looking as coldly handsome as ever and as arrogant and as supercilious. He was one of the few military officers of Hugo’s acquaintance whom he had truly hated. Grayson had made his life hell from the first day to the last, and he had had the power to do it in style. Twice he had succeeded in blocking promotions that Hugo had earned both by seniority and by prowess. Climbing the ladder had been a slow business as long as Grayson’s eyes had been on him—and they always were—gazing contemptuously along the length of his aristocratic nose.

His eyes were on Hugo now.

“The hero of Badajoz,” he said, making his words sound like the grossest of insults. “Lord Trentham. Are you sure you know what you are doing, Gwen? Are you sure you have not granted the favor of your company to a mirage?”

“I take it, Jason,” Lady Muir said while Hugo looked steadily back at him, his jaw tight, “that you know Lord Trentham? And that he was indeed the commander of the brilliantly successful Forlorn Hope at Badajoz? Have you made his acquaintance, Sir Isaac? Sir Isaac Bartlett, Lord Trentham.”

She was referring to the other rider. Hugo switched his gaze to him and inclined his head.

“Bartlett,” he said.

“I did not know you were in town, Gwen,” Grayson said. “I shall do myself the honor of calling upon you at … Kilbourne House?”

“Yes,” she said.

“It would seem,” he said, “that Kilbourne is too indulgent. You need advice and guidance from the head of your late husband’s family, since you are not getting it from the head of your own.”

And he nodded and rode on. Sir Isaac Bartlett smiled at both of them, tipped his hat to Lady Muir, and followed.

The hatred was pointless, Hugo decided as he moved his curricle onward. What had happened during his years in the military was long in the past and would remain there. But he was too preoccupied with quelling the hatred he felt anyway to concentrate any attention upon Lady Muir beside him as they completed the circuit and she called gaily to a number of acquaintances. He was surprised, then, when he turned his head to ask if she wished to do the circuit one more time, as most people seemed to be doing, and discovered that her face was pale and drawn. Even her lips were white.

“Take me home,” she said.

He drew the curricle away from the crowd without delay.

“You are unwell?” he asked.

“Just a little … faint,” she said. “I will be fine after I have had a cup of tea.”

He turned and looked at her again. And he heard the echo of the words she had spoken with Grayson—or, more particularly, the words he had spoken to her.

“Lieutenant-Colonel Grayson upset you?” he asked. Probably the man had an even higher rank by now.

“Viscount Muir?” she said.

He frowned in incomprehension.

“He is Viscount Muir now,” she said. “He was Vernon’s cousin and heir.”

Ah. Small world. But the man’s final words to her were now explained.

“He has upset you?” he said.

“He killed Vernon,” she said. “He and I together.”

And she turned her head to look away from him as his curricle moved out into the street. Only the brim of her bonnet and the primroses and greenery were visible to him.

She did not look back again or say anything else. She offered no explanation.

And Hugo could not think of a blessed thing to say.

Incredibly, Gwen had not seen Jason, Lord Muir, since he succeeded to the title, or at least not since Vernon’s funeral.

Or perhaps it was not so very surprising. He had not given up his career when the title became his. He still had not, as far as Gwen knew. He was a general now. He was, presumably, a very important man in the army. He was probably away from England for much of his time or else was in parts of the country remote from London. If he had ever spent time in town, it must have been when she was not here. She had even stopped holding her breath each year for fear that she would see him.

He had been two years Vernon’s senior, and had dominated his younger cousin in every imaginable way except possibly in looks—and in social rank. He had been larger, stronger, more successful at school, more athletic, more popular with his peers, more forceful in character. Whenever he had had an extended leave from his regiment, he had spent much of it with them. He had needed to keep an eye on his inheritance, he had always said with a loud laugh, as though he were making a joke. Vernon had always laughed with him in genuine merriment. Gwen’s laughter had been more guarded.

Vernon had adored Jason, and Jason had seemed fond of him. He had tried to jolly Vernon out of the dismals whenever he found him in one of his black moods, with admonitions that he had the title to live up to, that he must be more of a man, more of a husband for his beautiful wife. He had always been loudly jocular with Gwen, telling her that she must hurry up and produce an heir as well as a spare so that he could relax and concentrate upon his career. He had always laughed loudly at his own joke, and Vernon had laughed with him. He had once or twice set an arm about Gwen’s shoulders and hugged her to his side, though he had never made any more overt advances to her. She had always cringed with revulsion anyway. He had apparently been the first to reach her side when she fell from her horse. He had been with them on that occasion, riding a short distance behind her—a very short distance when she had made the jump, almost as though he had felt that he needed to urge her horse to jump high enough.

He had wept inconsolably at Vernon’s death and again at his funeral.

Gwen had never known how much was sincerity with him and how much was artifice. She had never known if he loved Vernon or hated him, if he coveted the title or was indifferent to it, if he was really sorrowful at her miscarriage or secretly glad.

And of course he had not literally killed Vernon, any more than she had.

She had always hated him with a passion and felt guilty about it, for he never did anything overt to deserve it and she might have been doing him a dreadful injustice. What other military man, after all, would weep publicly over the death of a cousin? He was one of Vernon’s few surviving relatives and the only one who had been in any way attentive to him. Vernon’s father had died young, and his mother had not lived much longer. Vernon had succeeded to his title at the age of fourteen and had been governed by a pair of competent but humorless guardians until he reached his majority. He had had no brothers or sisters.