Page 29 of A Gentleman’s Offer

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Meg scribbled a hasty semi-discreet note to Maria, telling her that she had made discoveries about A Certain Person’s life and character that made it impossible for her to contemplate tying herself irrevocably to him. She was going to see him, she explained, and tell him so, and then would visit Maria as soon as she could to explain matters more fully and to see if they could puzzle out some new solution between them. The money was the chief problem, she wrote, and as she did so the infuriatingly elusive idea seemed to nibble at the edge of her conscious thoughts once more, only to dart away, like a fish in a stream, when she tried to capture it.

A colder, more carefully considered and formal missive went off to Sir Dominic, asking him to call on her at his earliest convenience, and once it was despatched Meg could only wait. She realised – once it was too late to do anything about it – that Sir Dominic might easily not be in, sitting idly around waiting for a summons from her; was it not excessively likely that, after the touching family scene she had observed, he had accompanied his mistress and children to wherever they were staying, and that he remained there still in domestic bliss. Domestic bliss, and yet yesterday he had offered for her! ‘He could be gone for days!’ she said aloud to the empty sitting room, pacing up and down it. ‘Days!’

However, Meg’s worst fears were not realised; a surprisingly short while later, her anxiously straining ears caught voices in the hall, and Sir Dominic was announced and ushered in without any greater ceremony; the butler knew, of course, that she’d sent a note to him not an hour since and that he must be calling on her in response to it. He knew, too, as all the senior servants did, of Maria’s disappearance and her own masquerade, and so it was no wonder he showed her visitor directly into the room rather than enquiring if she was at home. Of course she was at home to her supposed betrothed and co-conspirator.

Sir Dominic was as immaculate as ever in snowy cravat, blue coat, pantaloons and shining hessian boots with jaunty gold tassels. (Those damn boots.) There was a warmth in his eyes as he greeted her that would have been highly gratifying in other circumstances; now, though, it angered her. No doubt he is attracted to me, she thought. I can hardly take it as a unique compliment! No doubt, like many a man, he thinks he can have everything he wants, including several willing women at once at his convenience. Well, he can’t. Not me, not this time.

‘Sir,’ she said coldly. ‘Won’t you sit down? There are urgent matters we must discuss.’

A little frown appeared between his brows, and the ardour in his gaze was replaced by a searching regard. Whatever you might say about him, however untrustworthy he was, he was far from stupid. He knew instantly that something was wrong, though he could not have the least idea what it might be.

‘Has something happened, Meg?’ he said. ‘Some more bad news?’

‘No, but I have been considering, and I have come to the conclusion that I cannot marry you – whether in my sister’s name or in my own. I thought it only right that I told you so directly.’ Meg was proud that her voice barely wobbled as she said this. The new, chilly version of herself was unfamiliar and not particularly likeable, but she wasn’t trying to be likeable just at the moment, and to speak so correctly and emotionlessly served as a sort of armour, she was discovering.

‘And yet you say that nothing fresh has happened to bring you to this decision?’

‘Nothing. I have reflected deeply on the matter, and I am resolved that I am right. To marry you in the guise of my sister is clearly impossible, for many excellent reasons. If I cannot so help her, to marry you as myself would serve no useful purpose at all. The wedding must be called off without loss of time.’

‘“Serve no useful purpose”?’ Sir Dominic mused. His face was almost expressionless, but there was a spark of something in his eyes – Meg could not tell, and should not care, whether it was hurt, or anger, or some combination of the two. His feelings could be of no possible significance to her, and no doubt it would do him good not to get his own way for once in his life. ‘That is a curious choice of phrase. I confess that when I so maladroitly pressed my suit – was it only yesterday? – it was not because it “served some useful purpose”. Nothing can have been further from my mind than any considerations of sordid practicality.’

‘That cannot be so,’ she said steadily, her anger at his hypocrisy giving her strength, ‘because you have made it quite clear to me in the past that your main reason for seeking my sister’s hand was to obtain a legitimate?—’

‘Your sister’s hand, yes,’ he cut in impatiently. ‘I’ve never denied that. But not yours. Be damned to legitimate heirs and the requirements of the family and all that nonsense. Marrying you would be quite a different matter, for me at least. I thought you knew that, Meg.’

It was cruel, she thought, to offer her the possibility of happiness and snatch it away. ‘I thought I knew it too,’ she said half to herself. ‘But I was wrong.’

‘Meg, my dearest…’

He had risen from his seat and was coming towards her; she feared he meant to put his hands on her, even kiss her, which ought to disgust her. And yet she was forced to admit that it still struck a fugitive spark of excitement in her. Despite all she had seen such a short time since, despite knowing that he belonged to another – or should, if there was any decency in him – the thought of him holding her, caressing her, still made her heart leap and her pulse race. She knew that if she let him touch her, she would be lost to herself. Her every instinct screamed at her to move away to safety, to put some distance between them, but she held her ground, though it was a struggle. ‘Mere physical attraction is no basis for marriage. I’m sure it’s more than a lot of people have, but it’s still not enough for me.’

If she’d thought that would check him, she was wrong. ‘I entirely agree with you,’ he said. He was very close to her now. ‘I am well aware that we’ve only known each other for a short while, and in these cursed awkward, impossible circumstances, but I had thought, had hoped, that something was growing between us that you were as aware of as I.’ His voice was very low and intense. ‘To say that I want above all things to kiss you, to make love to you, cannot be news to you, and you are right, such a connection can hardly be unheard of. Until today, I had thought that we shared that awareness, yes, but beneath it a deeper and much more important feeling that?—’

She could not let him say it, odious, lying hypocrite that he was. ‘No. No, you are mistaken. Will you not believe me when I tell you so?’ She was aware that a note of desperation rang in her voice, which, if he heard it, could hardly serve to convince him that she was utterly indifferent to him. But it was so hard to be cool when hurt and anger threatened to overwhelm her.

‘As a gentleman, I should take my rejection, and leave you,’ he said drily. ‘You will say that you owe me no explanation, and it is true, you do not. You can owe me nothing, this situation is none of your making, and if you ask me to leave you, I must take my dismissal and trouble you no more. But every fibre in my being screams out to me that that would be the worst mistake I have ever made – that something is horribly wrong, and I must set it right before terrible damage is done that I would regret for the rest of my life. Someone has wounded you, has told you something untrue and greatly to my discredit. I can only think that. And if you believe ill of me with no good cause, should I not try to defend myself, in a matter so vital to both of us and to our chances of happiness?’

‘No such thing has happened. No one has traduced you; I have heard no rumours or gossip. I would not listen, in any case, if someone I did not know and trust – and who else could it be but someone I did not know and trust, given the nature of my acquaintance in London? – spoke ill of you.’

‘Then I can only assume that your own doubts have preyed upon you and driven you to this decision. Is that correct? I think it must be. And what can I say to you to convince you that we can find a way through this so that we can be together in honour and honesty?’

Enough of this. While a great part of her wished to send him away and never lay eyes on him again, then to curl up and weep till she was exhausted, another part of her was furious, and would like to see his reaction to the truth when he was faced with it. Let him try to wriggle his way out of this! If it would hurt her to speak, it would hurt her more to keep silent. Honour and honesty, indeed! She had not meant to say it, but it seemed, since he pressed her, that she must. ‘Sir Dominic, I saw you myself, this morning, in the bazaar. You say I should not listen to gossip, but I presume you will allow me to credit the evidence of my own eyes. I know what I saw, and it can have only one explanation, which has nothing to do with honour and even less with honesty.’

She looked at him, expecting to see guilt and horror written plainly across his handsome features. Panic, even anger, since members of the male sex, her mother had cautioned her, often became enraged and even violent when confronted with the incontrovertible evidence of their own bad behaviour. But unbelievably, astonishingly, he was smiling. Grinning. He appeared to be entirely at his ease, even amused. She could have slapped his face. Good God, were men truly so different, were they all of them utterly devoid of all human feeling?

‘You saw me in the bazaar, with Annie and the boys?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said stiffly, offended by the ease with which he said the other woman’s name to her. ‘I saw your happy little family scene. And how you can stand there and smirk at me?—’

‘Meg, she is family – they all are. It’s perfectly true, I assure you. But not in the way you think. My dear, she is my sister.’