There was indeed very little left to fear. The worst had happened to him already. And somehow he would manage no matter what happened – or did not happen – during the next two weeks. All sorts of little boys, after all, were raised quite adequately by men who had to work for a living. "You would be a foolish man if that were the truth," she said. "But I do not believe it is. I believe you are simply a liar. You are in good company, however. Men will admit to almost any shortcoming before they will admit to feeling fear. It is considered weak and unmanly." "Miss Huxtable," he said, "I have Woodbine Park in Warwickshire to offer you if you marry me. It is a sizable home in spacious, well-kept grounds. And its income, though no vast fortune, is more than comfortable. I have future prospects of far greater splendor. I am the Marquess of Claverbrook's heir, and he has properties dotted all over England. He is vastly wealthy." "And is this /all/ you have to offer, Lord Sheringford?" she asked after regarding him in silence for several moments.
He opened his mouth to speak and then shut it again. What else /was/ there? She was not imagining, was she, that he had fallen violently in love with her last evening and had his heart to lay at her feet? "I cannot offer an unsullied name," he said. "I am afraid I earned a notoriety that will not quickly die – if it ever does." "That is true," she agreed. "But the past cannot be changed. Only the future is at least partially in our control. Are you sorry for what you did?" He felt a spurt of anger. Was she about to read him a sermon? "No," he said curtly. "You would do it again, then?" she asked. "Yes," he said. "Without hesitation." "It must be good," she said so quietly that he almost did not hear the words, "to be loved that dearly." He opened his mouth to reply and closed it yet again. "What will you do," she asked him, "if I reject you today?" He almost hoped she would. He did not find her … comfortable.
He shrugged. "Resume the hunt," he said. "I still have almost two weeks." "Thirteen days, to be exact," she said. "An eternity." "Yes." "But this time," she said, "you will carry the unpleasantness of today's gossip with you into the courtship, as well as your notoriety. Your chosen bride and her family will believe that you have jilted me too." "Perhaps." He would not glare. It would suggest that she was getting under his skin. He fixed her with a stare that many people found intimidating.
When trying to recall her face earlier, he had assumed that with her dark hair she must have brown eyes. They were actually a startling blue – and they did not waver from his. "Why should I marry you?" she asked him. "Give me reasons, Lord Sheringford. Not the financial details. I knew of those even before stepping in here. I am not swayed by such considerations. I no longer have to fear poverty even if I never marry and live to be a hundred. Why should I marry you? With what persuasions did you arm yourself before you came here?" If he had arrived in that ballroom two minutes before or after he actually had, he thought, there would have been no collision and no dance and no conversation in an alcove. He would have picked out some pathetic-looking girl who would have been only too delighted to marry him. Indeed, he had already picked out such a girl a moment before the collision, had he not? He would not be sitting here now being interrogated by a woman he suspected he might easily come to dislike quite intensely.
He stopped himself from drumming his fingertips on the arm of his chair. "You are not a young woman," he said. "How old /are/ you?" "Thirty," she said. "You think I am desperate for a husband, then? You did not expect that any great persuasion would be necessary?" He stared at her for a few moments. "You would have to be blind to be desperate," he said. "Since you are not, you must know how beautiful you are. You must also realize how sexually appealing you are, though I do not suppose you use just those words in your genteel mind. We both know that I do not represent your last chance, Miss Huxtable. But you have been shaken during the past few days by the reappearance of a former lover. /Was/ he a lover, by the way? Or was he merely a man you loved?" For the first time she flushed. She did not look away from him, though. "He was – " she said before stopping abruptly. "You are impertinent." Ah – interesting! "You went to last evening's ball," he said, "expecting that Allingham would offer you marriage. You were ready to accept him even though you do not love him." "How do you know I do not?" she asked him. "You were not distraught," he said.
She raised her eyebrows. "I was not? Yet I collided with you when attempting to dash from the ballroom in ungainly haste," she reminded him. "Because you were chagrined, even humiliated," he said, "and because you had spotted your faithless lover and remembered that you would not after all have a fiancГ© to dangle before him. When Allingham came to claim his dance with you, you showed no symptoms of a woman whose heart he had just shattered." "I am relieved to hear that," she said. "Major Dew came here this morning to beg me not to marry you. He offered to marry me instead." "And?" He raised his eyebrows. "And I said no," she told him. "And yet," he said, "you still love him." She looked consideringly at him. "Do I?" she said. "You seem to know me better than I know myself, Lord Sheringford. But you would marry a woman you believe to be in love with someone else?" "You would not be happy with him," he said. "Because he has a weak chin?" She raised her eyebrows again. "Because he loves /himself/ more than he loves anyone else," he said. "Such men do not make good husbands." "But you would?" she asked him. "I am not in love with myself," he said. "Or with you." The corners of her mouth lifted in a slight smile. "Are you always so honest?" she asked him. "We lie," he told her, "in order to persuade the world and ourselves that we are something we are not – usually something far better and more flattering than what we really are. I have no wish to deceive myself, and others already believe they know me very well indeed." "And /do/ they?" she asked him. "Are you defined by what you did five years ago?" "You must confess," he said, "that there is nothing much worse a man can do than abandon his bride on her wedding day – except perhaps to run off with her married sister-in-law instead." "Why did you do it?" she asked him. "I suppose," he said, "because I liked the one woman better than the other and was willing to take what I wanted and be damned to the consequences." "And yet," she said, "you told me last evening that you were head over ears in love with your bride. Are your feelings so fickle? And do you always take what you want?" He ignored the first question and thought about his answer to the second. "What I want is not always available for the taking," he said. "Do you want /me/?" she asked.
But she held up a hand again before he could answer. "You claim always to tell the truth," she said. "Tell it now, Lord Sheringford. As you said a short while ago, there is still time for you to find a different bride. Despite everything, there is bound to be someone out there who will be only too happy to marry an earl and future marquess. Do you want /me/?" He scorned to look away from her, and she would not look away from him, it seemed.