“But you’ve said, several times, that you wish to marry me,” she said.
“I have never wanted anything so much in my life,” he said.
“Well, then,” she said.
“Well, then, what?”
“I’m an heiress,” she said.
MIRABEL waited through a short, churning silence.
Then, “No,” he said.
He paced from the fire to the door and back. He sat in a chair and got up again. He started toward her, then away again. He returned to scowl at the fire.
It was not the reaction she’d expected. She had never dreamt the problem was so simple. Still, it remained a problem to him, and how could she expect otherwise?
William Poynton had loved her, too, but the sacrifice required of him was too great. He could not give up his dreams and ambitions any more than she could abandon her home and her amiably oblivious father, whom every scoundrel and sharper for miles around was busily duping and defrauding.
“I would not expect you to turn country squire and stay in Derbyshire all the time,” she said, her heart beating frantically. “Naturally, you would wish to be in London in the spring, during the Season.”
“If you think I would leave you alone in Longledge, in the height of the tourist season, when the place swarms with idle men, I strongly recommend you think again,” he growled at the fire.
The flickering light deepened the shadows under his eyes and hardened the lines of his angular features.
“You cannot imagine I can leave the estate unattended, especially in the spring and early summer, when there is so much to do,” she said, lifting her chin even as her spirits sank. “We had better settle this now. Certain points are not negotiable.”
He turned to her, his eyes cold and hard. “There is nothing to settle,” he said. “I shall not come to you penniless. I have been a parasite upon my father. I refuse to be a parasite upon my wife.”
“A parasite?” Mirabel stood and faced him, though she wanted desperately to run away, so mortified she was. “I see. I have thrown myself at you in every possible way, yet you doubt me. You have said repeatedly that you wished to marry me—until now, though it will solve all your problems at once. You find this intolerable? Why? Your pride won’t bear it? Perhaps you imagine I shall make a lap dog of you, as Judith Gilford tried. If that is what you imagine, then you cannot know me at all, and this professed love of yours is like all your other passions: intense, but lacking the strength to deal with the practicalities of ordinary life.”
“I can deal with them very well, thank you,” he said curtly. “And I mean to prove it.”
He went out, his limp more pronounced than usual. In spite of her shame and anger and despair, Mirabel winced for him, for the unceasing pain he lived with and his constant struggle to keep it from showing.
She told herself it was all pride, and he had more than his share—far too much. Still, she knew a part of what drove him to behave as he did was courage. Angry though she was, she knew as well that the same pride and courage made her love him all the more.
No, not love. Of course not love. She’d known him only a few weeks.
Yet it had been more than time enough, she now saw. Somehow, without her quite realizing, he’d stolen the very last bit of her heart. Then out he went, with her heart in his keeping—her heart—as though it were nothing more than a handkerchief embroidered with his initials.
Let him go then, with his precious pride and his beastly canal. If he didn’t want her money, that was his problem. She would proceed as originally planned. Nothing had changed, really, she told herself. She knew he’d make her wretched. She’d accepted the fact that she’d pay for a brief happiness with a long misery. It was no more than she’d bargained for. She was quite resigned.
It must have been resignation, then, that caused her, when she’d heard him take his leave of Mrs. Entwhistle and go out, to pick up the nearest breakable object—a pitcher—and throw it against the fireplace.
CREWE carried in a supper tray shortly after Alistair returned from his tumultuous encounter with Mirabel.
He picked at his food, then, weary and sick at heart, undressed and went to bed. It was only to rest his limbs after the afternoon’s hard traveling. The hour was far too early for sleep—not that he expected to sleep, given the recent encounter with Mirabel and its stunning revelations.
An heiress! Why hadn’t Gordy told him?
He must have assumed Alistair knew this, along with everything else he should have known but didn’t. Given the size and prosperity of the estate, he’d assumed, naturally, that she must have a respectable portion. He’d also assumed, however, that the property must be entailed, as his father’s was, upon the nearest male in the paternal line.
But the way she’d offered herself as the solution to all his problems told him that her funds must be substantial. She knew he was expensive. She’d probably estimated the cost accurately to the nearest shilling. Unlike most other women, she’d had to learn what everything cost and how to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of buying this or that, how to decide whether repairing or replacing was the sounder economic choice. She would not have suggested he marry her to solve his problems if she hadn’t been certain she could afford him.
But he didn’t want another—any other, but most especially her—to buy him out of his present difficulty.
If he could not solve this problem himself, he would lose the last scrap of self-respect he had remaining. He would not deserve her love or his father’s respect or Gordy’s friendship.
All the same, he felt like a beast for rejecting what she offered. He’d hurt her. Again. His brain had shrunk while his masculine pride swelled to monstrous proportions. He should have explained. But it was not until he was alone in his bedchamber that matters sorted themselves out. While with her, all he’d known was frustration and shock and anger. He couldn’t think, let alone speak clearly.
Despite all this turmoil, however, he fell into a deep enough slumber to dream the Waterloo dream again, in more detail and length than the previous night. Every night it started a moment earlier in the battle and shed light in places previously dark. Every night he saw the carnage more vividly and relived his feelings more intensely. Every night he woke himself or his valet with his ravings.
This night Crewe stood over him, gently shaking him. “Wake up, sir. You’re dreaming again.”
Alistair struggled up to a sitting position. “What time is it?”
“Close to midnight, sir.”
“Has Lord Gordmor come?”
No, his lordship had not yet come, and Crewe thought it unlikely he’d arrive this night. The weather had turned very bad since the master had gone to bed.
Alistair got up and looked out the window. He could see nothing. He could hear the pounding rain and roaring wind, however, which sufficed to make him agree with Crewe. As great a hurry as Gordmor was in, he would not risk either his people or his horses. He’d have stopped at the nearest inn as soon as the weather took a turn for the worse.
In any case, there wasn’t room for everyone here. Miss Oldridge and her entourage had left only a few rooms unoccupied. These were the smallest and darkest, overlooking a narrow alley at the back of the building.
Still, when he heard the knock at the door, Alistair assumed Gordy’s panic had overcome his caution. Expecting his friend, he did not hurry to throw his dressing gown on over his nightshirt when Crewe answered the door.
Alistair heard a whisper.
Crewe said softly, “Yes, he’s awake, but—”
He was unceremoniously thrust aside, and Mirabel flew in, in a flutter of delicate ruffles and…lace?
She came halfway across the narrow room, then stopped short. “Oh. I didn’t realize. I thought Crewe meant you hadn’t yet gone to bed.” She flushed and looked away.
Alistair looked wildly about. Crewe hurried to a chair, snatched up the dressing gown, and swiftly stuffed his master into it. He mumbled so
mething about a hot drink, and vanished.
When he had gone, Mirabel turned back to Alistair. She wore a dressing gown of fine, oyster white lawn, trimmed with exquisite silk lace, over a matching nightgown with a ruffled hem. She looked like a princess in a fairy tale. His gaze moved slowly, disbelievingly, from the dainty silk slippers up over the deliciously feminine confection to her face.
Her cheeks were a very deep pink, and the candlelight made twin stars in the twilight blue of her eyes. Her red-gold hair tumbled over her shoulders, and a fiery froth of curls danced about her face.
She clasped her hands at her waist.
“I withdraw my opposition,” she said.
OUT of doors, the storm continued unabated. The wind whistled and wailed, and rain beat against the windows. Within, the fire crackled and hissed in the grate.
Mirabel would have felt safer outside, in the middle of the storm, than here in this small room.