‘I went to university, went on the Town and enjoyed myself. I didn’t really think much about marriage until my father died. Then I found myself with the title, and Felicity’s father enquired—somewhat impatiently—when I was going to get on with it.’
‘At which point you discovered that she did not want to marry you.’
‘How did you guess that?’
‘You had neglected her, taken her for granted, and then you turned up and demanded that she marry you, at your convenience.’ Eleanor shrugged. ‘Why on earth would she want to marry you?’
‘That just about sums it up. She said she did not want to marry me and I put my foot down. Bullied her, I suppose. I told her that she was breaking a long-standing agreement, pointed out that the gossip would be harmful to her, that she would have the reputation of a jilt. I kissed her with rather too much enthusiasm. Nothing I am at all proud of now, believe me, but at the time I thought it was for the best. Best for her.’
I told her everything except the truth. But of course I did not know what that was until it was too late…until she was gone.
‘And?’
‘She ran away with another man. A poet, of all things. I suppose he seemed more sensitive than I.’
It would not have been difficult.
‘There was one hell of a fuss. And that was the end of my marriage before it began.’
Do not ask me any more.
But of course this was Eleanor, so she did.
‘What happened to her?’
‘Her caring poet left her when he discovered that Felicity’s father was not going to release her dowry. They had fled to Rome. She caught one of the summer fevers that plague the place and…died.’
Alone and in poverty and betrayed. And that was all he was going to say about Felicity. He could hardly bear to think about what had happened—he certainly was not going to talk about it.
Leaving aside his own pig-headed stupidity in failing to see what had been under his nose, and failing to do anything as unmanly as actually analyse his own emotions, he had thought that Felicity had no choice other than to marry him, and that by forcing the issue he had been doing the right thing. And he had been wrong. She’d had plenty of choices—only he had panicked her so that she had failed to see them. And he… He had been left staring into the empty space that had once contained the woman he’d realised he had loved all along.
Now the very different woman on the other side of his desk watched him through clear hazel eyes that were apparently unclouded by any emotions at all—except distress for Felicity and extreme irritation with him.
Unlike Felicity, Eleanor had very few options. They boiled down to genteel poverty if she was lucky, and real hardship if she was not. Or marriage to him. And by giving Eleanor that choice he might, somehow, make up for taking Felicity’s choice away from her. Whether it did or not, or if anything ever could, he kne
w he could not walk away from Eleanor. Not and live with his conscience. And that, damn it, was increasingly difficult to keep locked away.
‘And you think that, having heard that, I will still marry you?’ It did not, somehow, sound like an aggressive question, more a puzzled one—as though she really did want to understand.
‘I am hoping that you can overlook my past, overlook the unfortunate beginning to our relationship and say yes.’
‘Because that will soothe your conscience?’
The woman had been born with a scalpel instead of a tongue. He would swear it. Fortunately she thought it was only his conscience in question here. He had not revealed that he had loved Felicity—still did—and that whatever he could offer a wife in terms of position and comfort he could not give her his heart.
‘Because I am never going to be at a loss for a stimulating exchange of views with you in the house,’ Blake said, throwing away all attempts at diplomacy.
‘Then, yes. How could I refuse such a flattering proposal?’
For a moment the sarcasm stopped him hearing exactly what she had said, and then it hit him.
She has surrendered!
For a moment he was not certain whether the emotion tangling inside him was shock, relief or horror. Perhaps all three. It took him a second to realise that Eleanor was still speaking.
‘I assume you have calculated how much damage marriage to me will do to your political ambitions and your social life? If not, I am sure Jonathan will soon point them out to you. I would only ask that you do not…that you are not…’
For the first time Eleanor lost her composure. Blake glanced down at her hands, twisting a handkerchief into a knot in her lap, and realised that her composure had been lost some time ago, and what he had been looking at was a desperate mask of serenity.