Her voice was so wistful that James gave Charles an unexpected squeeze, with the result that Charles gave a big burp. James rubbed his back. Charles obligingly burped again.
“The Duchess just fed him,” Jessie said. “You do that well.”
“I like children. Would you like to walk with me in the Duchess’s rose garden?”
They left Charles sucking his thumb as he fell asleep in his crib.
The afternoon was cloudy, the summer air heavy.
“A rain will clear everything up soon,” James said for want of anything better. Jessie was walking beside him, her head down, staring at the toes of her slippers.
“Rain is usually a good thing,” he said, frowning at her profile.
She looked up at him then. “What do you want, James?”
“Didn’t Spears, Badger, Maggie, and Sampson tell you?”
“No, they just caught me one day in the kitchen and asked me all sorts of questions until my eyes crossed.”
“It’s their collective specialty. They’re quite good. Damn their eyes, they’re usually right. Even when you want to shoot them, you end up brooding, sitting alone in the dark, unable to sleep, because you know they’re right.”
“They spoke to you?”
He decided she didn’t need to know they’d all trooped over to Candlethorpe, leaving Chase Park defenseless, and trapped him in his drawing room. It would hurt her to know that they’d come after his skin, wanting to nail him to the altar. Dammit, it would hurt her, he had no doubt that it would, and for some reason, he didn’t want to hurt her.
“They’re always speaking to me,” he said, sounding irritated. “They’ve tried to improve my character for the past seven years.”
“Have they succeeded?”
He frowned at that. “You know, I’m not certain, but perhaps they have in some ways.”
“The Duchess’s roses are exquisite.”
“Yes, everything she touches turns exquisite except for Marcus. She says that’s just fine because she likes him offensive. She says it keeps her mental works well oiled when he’s being himself.”
“Why are they so nice to me, James?”
He looked up to see the rain clouds nearing. He said, cutting to the chase, “Because they’re fond of me and they’re fond of you and they believe we will wed.” There, he’d said the word. He plunged ahead. “Would you like to marry me, Jessie?”
There, it was done, only the result wasn’t quite what he’d expected. She jerked as though he’d just kicked her. Then she blinked as if awakening from a dream. She turned on her heel and walked away—well, she walked for about three feet, and then she picked up the skirts of her modest gray gown and broke into an Old Jessie run, flying across the ground, faster than most boys, her petticoats white and flounced, flapping about her ankles, which were encased in lovely white stockings. Even lovelier white slippers were on her feet. He was used to seeing those feet only in boots, sturdy, ugly boots.
“Jessie! Dammit, wait!” He was off after her. He got a slap in the face by a low-hanging elm-tree branch. He cursed the tree and her and kept running. He caught up with her near the small lake. She was leaning against a tree, her arms around it, hugging it, her face pressed against the bark.
“Jessie,” he said once he had caught his breath. “Why the devil did you run away from me? You’re going to scratch your face if you keep shoving yourself against that bark.”
She didn’t move, just seemed to press herself more tightly against that damned tree.
“Don’t you want to marry me, Jessie? Is that it?”
Her silence continued. He felt his irritation blossoming like one of the Duchess’s roses after it had been well manured. “Why, damn you? I’ve known you since you were fourteen years old and looked like a knobby-kneed boy except you didn’t, not with all that flyaway red hair that never stayed hidden beneath those disreputable old hats of yours. I know you so well that I always know when you’re lying. You’re no good at it. I know you don’t have any breasts, at least I thought I knew, but after seeing you in that trollop ball gown with your breasts falling over the top, I’ll have to think about that some more. You can scrub down a horse and a stable nearly as fast as Oslow. You know horses, nearly as well as I do. You ride, nearly as well as I do. You race—again, sometimes nearly as well as I do.”
“I’ve beaten you regularly, James, over the past six years.”
“Ah, so that got you a mite testy, huh? Now that you’ve turned around and given me the courtesy of facing me, well then, will you marry me?”
“You want to marry me because you know when I’m lying?”
“There are other reasons. I’ve already listed them. We would deal well together. We share the same aims—we want to race and own studs, which I already do, and with marriage you would be part of it, too.”