The Debutante's Daring Proposal Read online

  She was just getting to her feet when she heard the sound of a dog barking. And in spite of telling herself it still didn’t mean Edmund was on his way, she spun round to face the path along which he’d come, if it was him, so swiftly that she almost lost her balance.

  She flailed her arms to try to avoid slipping into the water, as her left foot sank deep into the mud on the bank. She muttered a string of extremely unladylike words as she struggled to extricate her foot from the sucking grip without losing her boot in the process. How typical that having taken such pains with her appearance, whoever it was approaching was about to discover her either standing on one leg with her other, bare foot in the air and her boot in the mud, or more likely flat on her back in the reed bed.

  And if it was Edmund, who never had a hair out of place, she’d...she’d...probably throw the muddy boot at him. At least he wouldn’t forget her again as easily as he’d done the last time.

  But then the boot came free from the mud, with a slow sucking plop, just as the dog burst over the embankment. It came pelting down the slope and circled her ankles, the whole rear end of its body wriggling in greeting.

  ‘Lion?’ She bent to stroke the elderly spaniel’s ears. If it truly was Lion, then Edmund couldn’t be far behind. She straightened up just as a vision of sartorial elegance came sauntering leisurely along the path from the lakeside. His boots shone in the pale spring sunshine, his coat fluttered out behind him as he walked, giving tantalising glimpses of a beautifully cut jacket and snowy white neckcloth. His light brown hair was cropped so severely that not a single lock could venture out from beneath the brim of his hat.

  But his eyes were hidden by the way light reflected off the lenses of his spectacles. He’d probably worn them to create a physical barrier between them. As if she needed to be reminded of the immense gulf that separated them nowadays. Because he couldn’t possibly need to wear them for any other reason, not when he was walking about his own estate.

  Not unless his eyesight had deteriorated an awful lot since they’d last been on speaking terms.

  The Earl of Ashenden came to a standstill and swept her with one of those cold, imperious looks designed to put the lower orders in their place. A look designed to impel her to drop a curtsy and beg his pardon, and go back to where she belonged. A look that made her acutely aware of her windswept hair, her mud-caked boot and the fact that her gloves had worn so thin in parts they were almost in holes.

  A look that made her wish she really was holding a muddy boot in one of her hands, so that she could throw it at him and knock that horrid, supercilious, unfeeling, inhuman look off his face. She was just picturing a boot-shaped stain splattering the front of his expensively tailored coat when Lion wheezed and flopped down at her feet.

  ‘I cannot believe you made poor old Lion walk all the way up here,’ she said, since she didn’t have any other missile to hand.

  ‘I did not,’ he replied. ‘We came in the carriage as far as the alder copse.’

  ‘You came in a carriage?’ Now it was her turn to look at him with scorn. What kind of man took a carriage out to drive a mere mile, especially when he had a stable full of perfectly splendid hunters?

  As though she’d spoken those thoughts aloud, his head reared back. ‘I thought Lion would be pleased to see you,’ he said, with just a touch of emphasis on the spaniel’s name, which conveyed the implication that the dog was the only one who regarded this meeting as a treat. ‘It is too far for him to walk, at his age. Also, he enjoys riding beside me in an open carriage.’

  As if to prove his master right, Lion chose that moment to roll on to his back to invite her to rub his tummy. She bent and did so, using the moment to hide her face, which she could feel heating after his rebuke. She couldn’t really believe that his attitude could still hurt so much. Not after all the times he’d pretended he couldn’t even see her, when she’d been standing practically under his nose. She really ought to be immune to his disdain by now.

  ‘Did you have something in particular to ask me,’ he asked in a bored tone, ‘or should I take my dog and return to Fontenay Court?’

  ‘You know very well I have something of great importance to ask you,’ she retorted, finally reaching the end of her tether as she straightened up, ‘or I wouldn’t have sent you that note.’

  ‘And are you going to tell me what it is any time soon?’ He pulled his watch from his waistcoat pocket and looked down at it. ‘Only, I have a great many pressing matters to attend to.’

  She sucked in a deep breath. ‘I do beg your pardon, my lord,’ she said, dipping into the best curtsy she could manage with a dog squirming round her ankles and her riding habit still looped over one arm. ‘Thank you so much for sparing me a few minutes of your valuable time,’ she added, through gritted teeth.

  ‘Not at all.’ He made one of those graceful, languid gestures with his hand that indicated noblesse oblige. ‘Though I should, of course, appreciate it if you would make it quick.’

  Make it quick? Make it quick! Four days she’d been waiting for him to show up, four days he’d kept her in an agony of suspense, and now he was here, he was making it clear he wanted the meeting to be as brief as possible so he could get back to where he belonged. In his stuffy house, with his stuffy servants and his stuffy lifestyle.

  Just once, she’d like to shake him out of that horrid, contemptuous, self-satisfied attitude of his towards the rest of the world. And make him experience a genuine, human emotion. No matter what.

  ‘Very well.’ She’d say what she’d come to say, without preamble. Which would at least give her the pleasure of shocking him almost as much as if she really were to throw her boot at him.

  ‘If you must know, I want you to marry me.’

  Chapter Two

  The Earl of Ashenden took a silk handkerchief from his pocket, removed his spectacles and began to polish the lenses.

  The way he’d always done when he was trying to think about exactly what to say before saying it. If she wasn’t trying so hard to convince him she could act the part of a grand lady, she would have done a little victory dance. Because she’d succeeded into shocking him into silence. Edmund Fontenay. The man who was never at a loss for a clever remark.

  ‘While I am flattered by your proposal,’ he said, replacing his spectacles on his nose, ‘I must confess to being a touch surprised.’

  Hah! He didn’t need to confess any such thing. Not to her. Not when she knew exactly what the whole spectacles removing and wiping and replacing routine was all about. She’d stumped him. ‘Would you mind very much explaining why you have suddenly developed this interest in becoming...’ he paused, his gaze growing even colder than it normally did whenever it turned in her direction these days ‘...the Countess of Ashenden?’

  She sucked in a sharp breath at the low blow. ‘I have no interest in becoming the Countess of Ashenden. It isn’t like that!’

  ‘No?’ He raised one eyebrow as if to say he didn’t believe her, but would very graciously give her the chance to explain.

  ‘No. Because I know full well I’m the very last person qualified to hold such a position.’ At least, that’s what his mother would say. And what Stepmama had said. Countless times. That it would be useless to set her cap at him—even if she’d been the kind of girl to indulge in that sort of behaviour—since the next Countess of Ashenden would have a position in the county, and the country, for which Georgiana simply didn’t have the training. Let alone the disposition.

  ‘In fact, I would much rather you weren’t an earl at all, but just...my neighbour.’ But unfortunately he was an earl. And he hadn’t been her neighbour for some years. He came back to Bartlesham as rarely as possible. His interests lay in London, with the new, clever friends he’d made. Her real neighbours had begun to wonder if he was going to turn out just like his father, who’d only ever returned to
his ancestral seat to turn his nose up at it. ‘Oh, what’s the use? I might have known this was a waste of time.’

  ‘You might,’ he said.

  ‘Well, we cannot all be as clever as you,’ she retorted. ‘Some of us still do stupid things, hoping that people won’t let them down. You might as well say it—some of us never learn, do we?’

  ‘Some of us,’ he replied, slowly advancing, ‘would be more inclined to assist a...neighbour in distress if that neighbour would explain themselves clearly, without flinging emotional accusations left, right and centre. If, for example, you have no interest in becoming a countess, why have you asked me to consider marrying you?’

  He was standing closer to her now than he’d done since they’d both been children. Close enough for her to see those blue flecks in his eyes, which prevented them from looking as though they were chiselled from ice. This close, she’d swear she could see a spark of interest, rather than cold indifference. This close, she could even, almost, imagine she could feel warmth emanating from his body.

  She got the most inappropriate urge to reach out and tap him on the shoulder, to tag him and then run off into the trees. Only of course, he wouldn’t set off in pursuit nowadays. He’d just frown in a puzzled manner, or look down his aristocratic nose at her antics, and shake his head in reproof. The way Papa had started to do whenever she did anything that Stepmama declared was unladylike.

  Just then Lion yawned, making her look down. Which shattered the wistful longing for them to be able to return to the carefree days when they’d been playmates. Smashing the illusion that he’d just looked at her the way he’d looked at her then. As though she mattered.

  When the painful truth was she’d never mattered to him at all. Well, she’d never mattered to anybody.

  Still, it did look as though she’d succeeded in rousing his curiosity.

  She peeped up at him warily from beneath her lashes. He was studying her, his head tilted slightly to one side, the way he so often used to look at a puzzle of some sort. Her heart sped up. And filled with...not hope, exactly. But a lightening of her despair. And she wondered whether it would be worth explaining why she’d considered making the outrageous proposal, after all.

  ‘Look, you know my father died last year—’ she began.

  He flinched. ‘Yes. I did mean to offer my condolences, but—’

  She made a slashing motion with her hand. It was far too late for that now. And she couldn’t bear to talk of it. It was bad enough that she’d turned out to be such a disappointment to the bluff, genial man she’d adored. That his final words to her had been an admonition to try and be more like Sukey, her stepsister.

  ‘I don’t wish to go over old ground,’ she said, proud that a slight hitch in her voice was the only thing betraying how very much Edmund’s absence, his silence, last year, had added to her grief. Which had been foolish of her, considering they hadn’t spoken to each other for several years. Why had she thought a bereavement would have made a difference to the way he dealt with her?

  ‘The point is,’ she continued, ‘that now we are out of mourning, Stepmama has decreed we go up to London, so that Sukey and I can find husbands.’

  ‘And?’

  The impatience bordering on irritation he managed to inject into the single word cut her like a rapier thrust.

  ‘And I don’t want to go! I don’t want to have to parade around before a lot of men who will eye me up like some prize heifer at market.’ She bit back the painful admission that she could just imagine what they’d say of her, all those smart London beaux. They’d sneer at her, no doubt, and scoff and turn their noses up at her. She couldn’t imagine any decent man actually liking her enough to propose marriage. Not when she’d been such a disappointment to her family that they’d spent years trying to turn her into something she wasn’t.

  ‘I don’t want to have to accept an offer from some horrible man—’ who’d probably be deranged; well, he’d have to be to want to marry someone who struggled so hard to behave the way a lady should ‘—who will probably take me heaven knows where...’

  The Hebridean Isles, like as not. Where there would be nobody to talk to. Because nobody lived there. Which was why the wild and hairy Scot would have gone to London to find a bride. Because there simply weren’t any women in those far-flung isles. And that would be the only reason she’d look like a good choice—because he wouldn’t know any better.

  ‘You may meet some man who is not horrible,’ he replied in a flat voice that cut right through her deepest, wildest imaginings. ‘That is the whole purpose of the Season, I believe? To meet someone congenial?’

  She took a deep breath. Counted to five. ‘Whoever they are, they will take me somewhere...’ Somewhere remote, so that nobody could criticise him for his poor choice. Or populated with odd people who wouldn’t notice her own failings because they were practically savages themselves.

  But because her fears about her future would sound pathetic when voiced aloud, she finished limply, ‘Somewhere else.’

  ‘Then all you have to do is refuse all offers,’ he said in a condescending tone, ‘return to Bartlesham and live out your days as a spinster.’

  Spinster! Ooh, how she hated that word. She much preferred the word virgin. A virgin was pure. Unsullied. A spinster was...a sort of dried-up husk of a person.

  ‘If you had spent any time at all down here since Papa died,’ she spat out, ‘you could not have just said anything so fatuous. Six Chimneys is entailed. And my prig of a cousin who inherited only gave us leave to stay on here for the year of mourning. Once we leave and go up to London, there will be no coming back. It’s marry some stranger, or...or...’

  Oh, no. Her eyes were prickling. She’d sworn she wouldn’t cry. Not in front of Edmund. She turned away. Slashed at the reeds with her riding crop a few times to relieve her feelings. Turned back, her spine stiff.

  ‘Look, I know I’m not much of a catch,’ she said in a voice that only quivered just a little bit. ‘I’m not an heiress and I don’t have a title or anything, but I wouldn’t interfere with your life, like some wives would. You could leave me down here once we’re married and go back to London. I wouldn’t even put your mother’s nose out of joint by trying to take over running the house, or trying to outshine her at county affairs, or anything like that.’ Well, she couldn’t. She wouldn’t know how. But neither would she embarrass him by gallivanting all over the countryside like the hoyden she’d used to be. At least she knew better than that, now. ‘I’d keep out of everyone’s way, I swear!’

  He looked her full in the face for the space of what felt like an eternity, though it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. Apart from the fact that it wasn’t anything good, since he’d got that flinty look again.

  ‘It is of no use looking up at me,’ he said eventually, ‘with those big brown eyes of yours, the way Lion does when he’s begging for scraps. I am not soft.’

  ‘I know that. Nobody,’ she said bitterly, ‘knows that better than I.’

  ‘Which only confirms your unsuitability to become my wife. You wouldn’t come to London with me, you wouldn’t even run the house if I left you down here alone. Just what, exactly, are you offering? What will I get out of this ridiculous marriage you claim to wish to make?’

  ‘Well...I don’t...I mean...’ She swallowed. Lifted her chin. Forced herself to say it. ‘That is, I don’t know if you remember, but you promised me, you did, that when you grew up, you’d do anything to help me if I needed a friend. And I’ve never needed one more than I do now...’

  ‘When I made that promise I was a boy,’ he bit out, his mouth twisted with distaste. ‘A callow youth. And I never imagined that you’d expect repayment this way. By demanding I make you my Countess!’

  Georgiana sucked in a deep, agonised breath. The...the...brute. Didn’t he know what it had cost h
er to break through all the years of estrangement and write to him, begging him to meet her? Couldn’t he see how desperate she must have been to have broken all the rules by proposing to him?

  ‘I’m not demanding anything,’ she protested. ‘I was just hoping...’ She shook her head. That was the trouble with hope. It might raise your spirits for a while, but when someone tore it away, it left a ragged, gaping wound in its place. ‘I can see it was foolish to expect you to keep your promise. I might have known you’d find some way to wriggle off the hook.’

  His nostrils flared as he sucked in a furious breath.

  ‘Don’t you dare accuse me of breaking my promises Georgie. Or trying to wriggle out of anything—’

  ‘But you just said you wouldn’t marry me. That you wouldn’t do anything to help me at all.’

  He darted forward as she made to turn and leave, seizing her by the upper arm.

  ‘I never said anything of the sort,’ he growled. ‘It’s just that you didn’t offer me the one thing that might make me consider your...offer.’

  Her heart kicked at the inside of her chest. There was something about the way he was looking at her that made her feel...weak. And sort of...trembly inside.

  ‘W-what might that be?’

  ‘Heirs,’ he said. ‘The only reason I will ever marry, any woman, is to fulfil my duty to provide heirs to take over my responsibilities when I’m gone.’

  ‘But that would mean...’ A vision flashed into her brain of how babies were made. It still made her feel ill to think about that day she’d gone into the stables and seen Wilkins lying face down in what had looked like a bundle of rags, with his breeches round his ankles, pounding that bundle of rags into the straw. There had been a pair of female legs spread grotesquely on either side of his hairy bottom, legs, she had discovered a few months later, which had belonged to one of their housemaids. The whole episode left a bad taste in her mouth, especially since, no matter how hard Liza had wept, Stepmama had insisted on turning her off, for being a bad influence on the daughters of the house.