Page 13 of The Spinster's Seduction(The Lover's Arch #4)

Charles waited at home until his father returned, an unusual turn of events. For the most part, he avoided the duke, and only met with him when summoned.

“Enter,” the duke called from within his study.

Charles did so. The study had remained largely unchanged since his childhood, where he had been hauled after various misdemeanours. In a way, he supposed this was another mistake on his part, if of a different nature.

His father sat behind the desk, silver hair cropped short and one hand curled around the silver lion’s head of his cane. “Charles,” he said, cocking a brow. “This is unexpected.”

Charles inclined his head, acknowledging the remark, and rested a hand against the chair before the desk. He didn’t want to sit—the aftermath of his conversation with Lady Rosamund still rampaged through his veins, and he had to fight not to pace the room. “I had something I particularly wanted to speak to you about.”

“Did you indeed. I’m gratified.”

Charles’s eyes narrowed. “Something serious.”

“More intriguing still.” The duke gestured languidly. “Go ahead. The floor is yours. ”

“I have two matters I wish to discuss,” Charles said, unable to keep from pacing. “The first is my role within the family. And my marriage. No doubt you’re aware I agreed to marry Lady Rosamund out of duty.”

“An agreeable turn of events, given the way you have shirked your duty thus far.”

“Yes. Yes.” Charles hesitated. It went against his instincts to admit his faults, especially to his father, but this was part of the man he always ought to have been. “I have no excuse for my behaviour.” He strode to the fireplace, then to the books stacked on bookshelves, their spines creased. “When you proposed I marry Lady Rosamund, I could find no excuse to refuse. So I agreed.”

“And now, I take it, you regret such rashness.”

“In a way.” He turned, hands tucked behind his back, and met his father’s steady gaze. “I have spoken to the lady and explained that I will not be proposing—and that the fault lies with me and me alone. I expect you will think less of me for this decision, but that leads me to the second thing I would like to say.”

The older man sat back in his chair. Although he was approaching seventy, his back remained straight and his eyes sharp. “Pertaining to this issue?”

“Well, three things,” Charles amended. “The next is an aside, if you will, but this situation will put Lady Rosamund at a disadvantage, and I would like to make amends. Can you speak to Uncle Jacob about the prospect of a match between Richard and Lady Rosamund? I think they’d suit. She’s amenable and a highly eligible lady, so I can’t see why he’d refuse out of principle.”

“I’m aware of her eligibility,” his father said dryly. “That was why we recommended her. But I will do so, if you wish.”

“I do.”

His father’s brow quirked, the only indication of surprise—or anything else—he deigned to give. “And you? What is your plan now?”

“I—” Charles tucked his hands more firmly behind his back. “I intend to marry Miss Evelyn Davenport, if she’ll have me. ”

Silence, save for the popping fire. Charles knew that was his father’s way, and he kept his peace. Eventually, the duke sighed and unstoppered the brandy. “It seems,” he said as he poured two measures, “we will be needing this.”

“I won’t have you try to convince me otherwise,” Charles said, accepting the glass. “I can’t say if she will accept my proposal, but I will marry no one else.”

“I have no intention of preventing anything, and I doubt I could convince you to entertain any course but your own.” His father’s mouth twitched. “Drink with me, son, and tell me about this newfound resolution of yours.”

“I daresay you’ll think me a fool.”

“I daresay I’ve thought you a fool these past twenty years. But I suspect this will be the making of you. Sit, Charles. You may have boundless energy for striding about, but I do not.”

Charles sank into the chair, leather creaking beneath his weight, and sipped the brandy. “This is good stuff, sir.”

“Miss Davenport, I take it, knows of your aspirations.”

“Actually,” Charles said with a wry grin, “she vowed she would not accept me if I asked. And she has turned me down twice already.”

His father’s brows rose. “Indeed? And still you persist.”

“I do. Before, she did not know—how could she?—that I meant every word. Now, however, I think she will. Or so I hope.”

“And how will you convince her of this?”

“I will tell her I love her, for a start.”

“Ah.” The word was soft, drawn out, almost lost to the crackle of the fire. “That is an admirable beginning. Do you think she loves you in return?”

“Yes.” Though he couldn’t be certain she loved him in the same way a wife loved a husband. She desired him—that much was evident. She trusted him. She loved him enough to have been his friend, even during the worst of his years. Perhaps that love could become more, or perhaps that was all it would ever be. If so, it would be enough—he would make sure of it, if she would just consent to be his wife .

“I know this may come as a disappointment,” he said, draining his glass and putting it down with a decisive clink . “You wanted me to marry for an heir, and if I marry Evelyn, there is no guarantee she will bear one. Nor would I demand it of her.”

His father looked at him gravely. “It may surprise you to hear that I had not intended you to marry merely so you could treat your wife as a breeding mare.”

“Then why?”

“Because there comes a time in every man’s life when he faces a crossroads and must choose a path. I hoped you would choose yours. It seems you have, at last.”

“And my choice satisfies you?”

“I like Miss Davenport. Your mother and I have long thought you might suit.” His father drained his glass and put it down. “Admittedly, it took you a decade or two longer than I’d hoped for you to come to that conclusion, but now you have, and she remains unmarried. What else is there to do but wish you luck?”

“If you thought for so long we might suit, why didn’t you tell me?”

His father looked at him sternly over the top of his glasses. “Would you have listened? It was my misfortune to raise an unruly, contrary son who had only to hear I had an opinion to do the opposite. If I had recommended Miss Davenport as a prospective bride, I have no doubt you would have cut ties with her immediately.”

Charles crossed his legs and leant back in his chair. “You’re mistaken, Father. Evelyn is the one person I would not have given up for any reason.”

Evelyn tucked her cloak more firmly around herself as she followed her father’s painfully slow progress down the steps to the street and their waiting carriage. To her relief, he had decided that he wished to attend the party, which meant that Charles would not be obliged to accompany her.

That meant, therefore, she would be spared several hours in close confines with him.

“I still don’t know about these trains,” her father grumbled as they set off for the station. “Nothing like it in my day. All that metal and oil and smoke. Can’t be good for one. And what if it comes off the rails? They go so fast.”

“Not all that fast, Papa. And you know they’re perfectly safe. You’ve ridden them plenty of times.”

“Can you believe that the village of Havercroft now has a station? Heavens, it feels as though they’ve infiltrated everywhere.”

“But you must admit it’s more convenient than travelling everywhere by carriage.”

“Carriages take longer, perhaps, but mark my words, they are a great deal safer than these newfangled machines. And if a carriage was properly sprung, you would hardly notice the unevenness of the road.” He scowled, and Evelyn tried not to smile. Every time they travelled, he brought out the same complaints, though ten years ago they could not have travelled almost directly to Charles’s estate—and their own—so conveniently.

“Don’t forget we don’t have to change horses,” she reminded him. “And there is a dining car if we should find ourselves in need of sustenance.”

“Bah! Eating on a metal contraption like that? It can’t be borne.”

Knowing she would get nowhere with him in this mood, Evelyn settled back against the cushions and stared out across the city as it slid past. Smog hung between the houses, the air thick with the city scents—not all of them pleasant. She had no issues with the advancement of technology, and indeed the train had been a particularly convenient introduction to their lives, but she wished there was not so much coal dust everywhere.

At the station, they boarded the train and took their seats, one opposite the other, an unlit lamp perched on the table between them. Whatever her father said, this was positively luxurious compared to a carriage.

“Well,” he said, fussing with the rug over his lap. “It’s good of dear Charles to invite us. I always did think he was a good boy.”

Although Evelyn’s stomach lurched at the sound of Charles’s name, she merely shook her head and smiled a little. “I suspect the duke does not think the same.”

“Norfolk? He wanted the boy to grow into a miniature version of himself, that’s all. A mistake, if you ask me. No man should expect his son to behave just as he did, and don’t forget what Charles was like when he was younger.” He chuckled. “Liked to run wild, he did, and dragged you into all sorts of scrapes into the bargain. Your mother wanted to separate the two of you, but you always came back covered in dirt and shining. Very little made you shine like that, and I thought better not to tarnish it.” His watery gaze turned distant and affectionate. “Your mother made the same mistake the duke did and wanted you to turn out just like her. But you have always been your own person, stubbornly so. I never saw reason to argue with that.”

A lump rose in her throat, and she spoke before she could hold herself back. “Do you ever wish I married? That is to say—would you have preferred it if I had been as Mama was, a diamond of the first water who made a beneficial marriage and left you alone so you didn’t have to provide for me all this time?”

Her father’s bushy brows descended over his eyes as he reached out to take her hand in both of his. “Oh, Evelyn. Is that how I’ve made you feel?”

“No. No, no, you have never said a thing to make me feel like a disappointment, but I know you and Mama were so excited to present me, and you hoped I would make an advantageous match, and instead I’m here.”

Women did not have much to their names except for that of their father or husband. Evelyn had never married, never even wanted to—except for that impossible daydream she had of Charles—but she knew it reflected poorly on her status. And thus, by extension, her father’s. No parent wanted an unmarried daughter. Thinking of her mother, the bright spark she was, made Evelyn remember all the ways she could never live up to that.

Her father squeezed her gloved fingers gently. “Do you wish you had married?”

Her laugh sounded a trifle thick. “Not to any of the gentlemen who asked for my hand.”

“Then why should I wish you into a life with them? You know your own mind, now just as you did as a child, when you climbed trees with Charles and covered your dress in moss and lichen stains.”

“Thank you,” she said, attempting a smile. “I suppose it’s just that I know Mama dreamt of me making some great match, and—”

“Your mother only ever wanted to see you happy . But the thing about people is that they equate happiness to their experience of it. She shone in the light of the ton , and so she thought that, given the opportunity, you would do the same. But you shine in different ways, and you derive joy from different places, and that is not to say that you are wrong, or that she was wrong for wanting you to experience her life.” His eyes glistened with tears in the cold blue light from the windows. Winter had given the world a hard-edged glow, but inside the train, everything felt soft and warm. “It just meant she loved you very much. But if you are happier with your life the way it is than you would have been if you were society’s darling, then she would have been delighted for you. Marriage is not the measure of a life well-lived.”

“Oh,” Evie said stupidly.

People equate happiness to their experience of it .

Her father tucked her blanket more firmly around her the way she so often did to him, his movements weak but his intentions strong. “So long as you are true to yourself, you could not fail to make me proud, Evie,” he said, sitting back with a huff that spoke of his exhaustion. He found travel so tiring, especially during the winter when they had to battle the chill. “You should know that. ”

Absurdly, though she knew it was foolish of her to give into fancies, she felt as though she was eighteen all over again, so worried about the prospect of her Season the next year that she felt as though she might vomit every time she thought about it.

“So don’t do it,” Charles had said with a shrug when she had confided in him about it. He’d looked so tall and strong that year, back from university, half stranger, half friend, a drawl in his voice she had not yet become accustomed to. “Carve your own path. Do what makes you happy.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Why not, Pidge?” He used the blade of a knife to carve an apple, fingers nimble. That summer, she had found him utterly captivating. Every lanky, over-long line of him. The heavy brows, the deep eyes that she always felt she was in danger of falling straight into.

“Because,” she’d said helplessly.

“Because what?”

“Everyone expects it of me.”

“So? Your life is yours to lead. Not theirs.”

“And how else will I find a husband?” she had asked, exasperated that he couldn’t see things from her perspective—and some small part of her hoping he would hear that and jerk away from the idea. Revolt. Tell her she would be marrying no one but him.

Instead, a gleam in his eye she couldn’t quite identify, he said, “You needn’t marry if you don’t want to. Strikes me as a dull thing to do.”

She hadn’t bothered telling him that it was all very well for a young, indolent man to say such things, but far less acceptable for a lady. She had expectations. A mother who was so excited about her daughter’s entry into society that she could hardly contain herself. A proud father.

Of course, there were pressures weighing on him too, she later understood. Both the pressure to marry and the expectation that he would step into his father’s shoes, shedding his own skin as he did so. A different form of pressure executed in different ways, and yet similar all the same.

She had not known his thoughts, just as he had not known hers.

Your life is yours to lead. Not theirs .

Such simple words, uttered carelessly in the moment, discarded the way he had discarded pieces of apple peel, never imagining she would pick them up and treasure them for near twenty years.

Her vision sharpened. How stupid she had been all this time, believing she could not, merely because other people would not think she should.

She was no longer eighteen, clinging to the desperate hope that Charles would swoop in and save her from her fate—yet convinced even then he would make a terrible, scandalous husband. For twenty years, she had pined in silence, content with the pieces of himself he’d given her, because they’d been so much more than he’d offered anyone else.

But now she knew better. Now she understood: he was an excellent friend and lover, and for her, he would have been an excellent husband. Perhaps not then, but now—if she had allowed herself to accept his hand in exchange for his seduction.

But she had not. Her realisation had come too late. Because if Lady Rosamund had been invited to the party in the expectation of a proposal, Charles could not fail to follow through. And if Evelyn confessed even a hint of her feelings, she suspected he would throw the girl over just to save her some heartbreak.

Tempting as it was, she could not allow him to do that. Things had come this far—he had to choose Lady Rosamund.

Still, the thought hurt. In her desperation not to be a second choice, Evelyn had thrown away her chance to be his first.

“I’ve been a fool,” she whispered.

“Well, so are we all fools sometimes,” her father said, half asleep.