Page 12 of The Reckless Love of an Heir (The Marlow Family Secrets #4)

He looked at the back of her head. Her blonde hair was beautifully and perfectly styled, and then there was the curve of her narrow neck.

She bowed her head a little as she spoke to Sarah and it presented the area of skin just above the neckline of her dress.

He sighed. His heart may not care but other parts of him would very willingly become involved in a relationship with her.

He breathed in. What were her sentiments? Was it merely compliance with their families’ wishes or did she have some greater affection for him? Perhaps at some point he should ask her, and that too should become open between them.

‘Henry. You are quiet and brooding, neither of which are terms I would use to describe you. Is your arm hurting?’

He turned to face Susan. ‘My arm always hurts since I fell from my curricle.’

It was uncharacteristic for her to approach him and commence a conversation.

Her pale grey eyes were intensely grey tonight, thanks to her dress, which exaggerated the colour just as Alethea’s dresses made her eyes bluer. But Susan’s spectacles also seemed to make her grey eyes shine with a vibrancy that had more depth than Alethea’s blue eyes ever did.

Susan had recklessness within her, she might deny it as many times as she wished, but she did, and a dash of rebellion her sister never displayed .

Alethea may have just told him she was willing to rebel against their parents’ wishes and marry someone else if he did not hurry up and place a ring on her finger, but he would guess she had no intention of doing so and merely hoped to gee him up.

‘I am sorry you are still in pain,’ Susan said.

He smiled. Bless her, she did look genuinely sorry for him. Since their truce she had been kind to him. He may tease her over her rebellious nature but it was no more than a pale shadow compared to his, while her caring side… She outshone him like the sun to the moon in her sense of empathy.

‘I am not complaining, only stating a fact, not asking for your pity.’

She started to smile but her teeth pressed into her lip to prevent it.

He leaned a little forward and said near her ear, in a quieter conspiratorial voice, ‘You have no need to be sorry for me, remember. I did it to myself.’

She laughed suddenly, only for a moment, but then she smiled fully.

God, had she ever smiled at him before? If she had, perhaps he had not seen it up close, but the vibrancy in her smile was quite striking.

Alethea had always been the bright, exuberant one.

But there was exuberance in Susan, too, it was simply hidden.

‘How long before you may take off the sling?’

‘Another week or so.’

‘You will be well enough to attend the assembly in York then. Alethea will be pleased. You will go?’ The last was half question half statement.

Alethea will be pleased…

Of course there was another way to glean the level of Alethea’s attachment to him, he could ask her sister.

They were close, they must share confidences.

‘I am not so sure she will be pleased, she may prefer to use the occasion to flirt with others and throw me off. We have just fallen out because I believe your family were expecting me to propose this evening, and I have just assured Alethea that she should not expect it during my current stay or indeed in the months following.’

The brightness in Susan’s expression was extinguished. ‘Why?’

‘Why will I not propose? Because I am not ready. Is it not better for me to wait until I am happy to settle? I like my life in town.’

‘You are so self-centred.’

Her words struck and spurred him into biting back. ‘And you are always direct.’ He swallowed back his temper. ‘Will she be very hurt?’ That was not really the question he was asking. Does she think herself in love with me?

‘Of course she will. She will be cut by it. How can she not be?’

Cut in what way? Cut through the heart? ‘I have not told her I will never propose, merely that she should not expect it yet.’

‘That is even crueller, if you wish to keep her dangling on a line of hope, like a caught fish you are trying to tire.’

‘It is not like that. I am not doing it deliberately to vex Alethea or delay?—’

‘No. As I say, you are merely thinking of yourself.’

Susan was far too quick. Damn her. ‘I am being wise. I am thinking of us both. I do not wish her to be unhappy, and if I would be unhappy if I married her now, that would make her unhappy too?’

‘You are as self-centred as ever, Henry.’

‘And you judge me as poorly as always, Susan.’

‘Because you have always been arrogant and only interested in the things that benefit you. You were spoilt as a child, Uncle Robert freely admits it, and you have grown up idle and irresponsible.’

Oh, Lord. Idle and irresponsible.

He laughed internally. ‘And there was I thinking we had shaken hands upon a truce.’ He could not defend himself, her accusations were true. He drew an income from his father’s estate and lived in town amusing himself with his friends, and women.

It was doubly amusing, though, that considering all the years he had known Susan, he did not really know her at all.

That also served to prove her point – he was self-centred.

He smiled more broadly. ‘You are probably right, I was and am. But regardless, that does not make it right for me to rush into marriage with Alethea, no matter my motives or lack of them.’

She huffed out a sigh. ‘And you are probably right.’ It sounded as though she was cross she was forced to agree with him. Her gaze passed over his shoulder as though she had had enough of the conversation.

‘What is the level of Alethea’s attachment to me?’

Her eyes turned back to stare into his. ‘You should ask Alethea.’

‘I know, but I believe it might set the vipers upon me. At the current time, it is better to ask you.’

‘What is the level of your attachment?’ she asked.

Touché again . ‘I think I ought to only tell Alethea that.’

‘Well, there you are then.’

‘Dinner is ready, my lord!’ Davis announced to the room in general.

Because Susan stood beside Henry, he offered his arm to her. As she had done the other day, when he’d only worn his shirt, she did not merely lay her fingers on his arm, which was the done thing, but held it with a gentle grip that did things to his body he ought not to feel stir .

He sat between Aunt Julie and Alethea at the table. The latter turned her head away from him throughout the meal, avoiding conversation, and also left a footman to cut up his food.

Instead of speaking to him, Alethea talked animatedly to Susan and Sarah, the conversation flowing across the table.

They spoke of the assembly Susan had mentioned earlier.

It was to be held in a couple of weeks’ time.

He would probably be well enough to return to town before the assembly took place, and yet it was to be Sarah’s first, apparently, so he really ought to stay and show his support and dance with her, as her eldest brother.

Self-centred… The accusation pricked.

He would stay.

After the meal, his mother rose and led the women from the room. It left him in the company of his father and Uncle Casper. When the doors closed Henry’s muscles stiffened instinctively. It jarred his damned shoulder. But he sensed a need to defend himself.

Davis poured each of them a glass of port while Henry awaited the onslaught.

It did not come. Neither man mentioned Alethea, or their hopes that he would propose to her. Instead they asked about his life in town.

Once they had finished their port, they joined the women in the formal drawing room.

As he entered, Susan caught Henry’s eye first. She was not sitting with the others but was on the far side of the room searching through the music in the chest there, presumably because she intended to play the pianoforte.

She was being different from the others again. But she very rarely sat and joined in conversation.

As she leaned over, searching through the sheets of music her bottom was beautifully outlined within the thin muslin material of her dress and layered petticoats.

He’d never thought about her figure before.

Susan was the sort of woman whose personality absorbed one’s attention too much for any thought beyond it…

but now he looked… and thought… She had a very handsome figure.

He looked away. Alethea was sitting with Christine. As the youngest, she was not yet out, so she would be excluded from the assembly dance. But she was gathering information about it as though that information were precious jewels to be held up to the candlelight and admired with reverence.

The thought made him smile. It was charming to see Sarah and Christine growing up. There, see, he was not entirely self-centred.

He sat beside Aunt Julie, as Susan took a seat at the pianoforte and raised the lid.

She played the instrument extremely well.

He could not remember hearing her play before.

But he had probably been too focused on his own endeavours to listen – proving her right about his character.

She also sang beautifully. Her voice had an enchanting, individual lilt.

As she played, her eyes closed. He watched her as she let the music transport her out of the room.

She was rebelling again, in her own quiet way, no longer hiding in a corner, or the library, but immersing herself in the music and withdrawing there.

Alethea rose and crossed the room. ‘Sarah, would you pour me a cup of tea?’

Henry stood. Now was his moment to rectify the situation between them.

He crossed the room. ‘Wait a moment, Sarah,’ he said quietly to his sister, then to Alethea he said, ‘Will you walk outside with me for a short while? The night is reasonably warm. I think we need to continue our earlier conversation and I would rather not do so in here.’ Hopefully she would not misconstrue this invitation.

She looked at him with eyes that judged him with condemnation.

His lips twisted in a half-smile, probably in a mocking expression – he’d always been thick-skinned – he’d never really been touched by others’ ill-opinion. He came from a large family and had attended a boys’ boarding school. Such things made a person less vulnerable.

‘Oh, very well.’ Her answer was impatient but forbearing. ‘Lead on.’

He’d always known Alethea had a rigid strength of character, a valuable quality for a Countess.

In London life, there was a need to be stalwart and to cling to one’s morals.

Although where people set their bar on morals varied, and he knew his bar was far beneath Alethea’s – but that too was a positive. He preferred it that way about.

He lifted a hand, encouraging her to walk before him, towards the French doors which led out onto the terrace. If they stood within sight of the windows there would be no issue with propriety.

A footman opened the door for them to pass through.

Alethea crossed the stone paving to the balustrade and looked out over the formal gardens which were outlined in bright moonlight.

All this would be his one day, and therefore hers too. Between them they would care for it and cherish it as his parents did now.

‘Sulking does not become you…’ he said quietly.

She turned and glared at him. ‘I am not sulking. I am angry.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I cannot keep waiting!’ she shouted in her obvious frustration. ‘My life revolves about your whims, whether or not you care to come home, and then when you do come I am left to hover waiting to see if you will ask… It is like this is a game to you!’

Self-centred! The accusation rang in his head in Susan’s tone. ‘I do not treat this or you as a game. I have feelings too, that is all.’ But damn it, he wanted to know what hers were. ‘What do you feel for me? Am I breaking your heart by asking you to wait, then?’

Her eyes flashed with anger. ‘Is that what you wish for, for me to be here pining for you while you lead a jolly life in town? Susan constantly complains I see too much good in you. I always thought you better. You are proving her right!’

Susan… He should tell her to mind her own business.

‘Susan has always had very little tolerance for me; we both know it. Do not let her opinion sway yours. What if all I ask is for another year?’ Of freedom , to live life as a bachelor and get the recklessness out of his blood.

‘At the end of that year then I will propose and we will settle here.’

‘I am three and twenty next month and in a year I shall be four and twenty. Perhaps I do not wish to wait a year.’

He breathed in. The net was closing. He could not avoid it forever, he had always known that.

What she said was true, four and twenty was late for a woman to marry.

He sighed out. ‘Why not come to town then this summer and spend time with me there? I still wish to wait a year, but then we may become better acquainted and you shall not feel so excluded.’ There, he was not entirely selfish or irresponsible, he could think of her happiness too.

She stared at him, her lips slightly parted. Her eyes caught the moonlight and shone silver. He had an urge to lean and kiss her but it was hardly in the manner of the moment and he would guess they were being watched .

‘Very well,’ she answered. Her lips pursed for a moment before she added, ‘When should I come?’

‘I intend to stay here until the assembly and then return to town. You may come any time you wish. I shall write to you when I am there, and you may let me know when it is convenient for you, your father and mother.’

‘I should not have asked you that, should I?’ she replied.

‘You do not own London, Henry. I can go there whenever I wish, and when I am there, I can dance with whomever I wish and allow any man who desires it to court me. You may wait a year, Henry. But I may decide not to.’ She turned away and went back inside.

He smiled. Then laughed.

She had not answered his question, but he did not think her heart was involved. He thought her feelings the same as his. There was attraction between them; the rest was only practical. They suited one another and it was what their parents hoped for.