The Beguilement of Lady Eustacia Cavanagh (The Cavanaughs 3)

It would undoubtedly be easier to pretend he’d never made it, that she’d never heard the words, but her mind wasn’t having that. She had heard, and entirely contrary to her expectations, the greater part of her conscious self wanted to—as she’d informed him—think about it.

On the one hand, that seemed absurd; she knew perfectly well why she didn’t dare accept any man’s proposal. It was safer for everyone that way.

On the other hand…there was equally no question as to the genuine value of the benefits Frederick had described; indeed, many of those had been on show throughout the evening. Being the partner of Lord Frederick Brampton, Marquess of Albury, musical scholar and renowned pianist, had elevated her to a position where everything she’d said that had touched on music had been listened to carefully and treated with respect.

As Lady Eustacia Cavanaugh, she was accorded the respect due her rank, but as Frederick’s partner, she was instantly transformed into someone whose opinions on music mattered to the musical world and, indeed, to the world at large.

The same opinions, just advanced from a different stage.

She might have thought he’d planned it—making his suggestion in the morning, knowing the advantages would be amply demonstrated that evening. “Except I was the one who insisted we attend the dinner.” He’d been reluctant, but had allowed himself to be talked around.

Sleep, clearly, wasn’t going to be hers anytime soon. She opened her eyes and stared at the underside of her tester bed’s canopy.

She should have told him no. Categorically no. She still didn’t understand why she hadn’t.

Instead, she’d told him she would think about his suggestion, implying an evaluation of sorts. To her mind, it was, therefore, incumbent on her to undertake at least a review. “At the bare minimum, I’m going to have to come up with understandable, explainable, and preferably irrefutable reasons for refusing him.”

She’d learned enough of him to be certain that, this time, he wouldn’t accept a single-word dismissal.

“So, to the pros and cons. The pros are obvious—he listed most of them. The ones he didn’t mention”—such as that marriage to him might enable her to have children of her own, satisfying a yearning that had only grown stronger over the past year of seeing Rand and Kit marry and set up their nurseries—“I’m already aware of, and I don’t need to add any further weight to his list.”

For instance, by enumerating his personal attributes—his temperament, his relative unflappability and natural decisiveness, his intelligence, his musical talent, that he danced like a dream and was handsome enough to turn her head and set her pulse racing. On top of that, he’d shown an unexpected ability to understand her, and he’d never expected her to be anyone other than herself. More, he seemed to actually see her, clearly and without the veneer of his own expectations, and was confident enough in himself to deal with her openly and directly…

She frowned at the canopy, then, in a whisper, admitted, “The pros are substantial.”

Indeed, with no other gentleman had she even bothered considering advantages, let alone felt…as if she should allow herself to be tempted.

“Dangerous,” she murmured. Lord Frederick Brampton, Marquess of Albury, had proved to be more so than she’d imagined he could be.

“That brings me to the cons.” To the tangle of her fears that she hadn’t truly examined for years.

She paused, vacillating, then accepted that she wouldn’t be able to look Frederick in the eye and refuse him if she didn’t take the lid off what, for her, loomed as Pandora’s box and

examine what lay inside, before setting the lid firmly back in place.

Because nothing would have changed; the basis of her fear of marriage was immutable, and time had no power to erode it.

She forced herself to do it—to lift the tangled skein of her memories from the mental box in which she’d locked it, tease out the strands, and critically study each one. She hadn’t ever done that, but in light of the challenge of Frederick’s suggestion, it was, she supposed, time she did. Not that she held out any hope that the total weight of her cons would have miraculously lightened enough for the pros to tip the scales Frederick’s way, but she had to at least keep faith with him and properly assess both sides.

So she let herself remember—vividly remember—her father and his love, the true and utterly unconditional love he had borne for her mother. How her mother had exploited that love, the existence of it, as the chink in her father’s self-armor and inflicted cruelty upon cruelty, devastating attacks that would simply not have been possible if her father hadn’t possessed such a weakness—if he hadn’t carried the vulnerability caused by his love for her mother. If it hadn’t been for his abiding, forgiving, enduring love.

None of her three brothers, not even Godfrey, had seen the truth; sent away to school, they’d seen and known very little of the worst incidents, but Stacie had been there, always there, and she’d heard, seen, and understood.

Her heart had bled for her father, while his had been broken again and again, until, at the last, he’d closed his eyes and died.

If anyone had ever died of a broken heart, it was he.

Since that time, she’d held to one overriding, unflinching, unshakeable purpose—to the silent vow she’d made on her father’s grave: that she would never, ever, become like her mother.

The surest way to guard against that had been—and arguably still was—never to marry.

In the nearly fourteen years since she’d first made that vow, nothing had occurred to make her reassess her chosen way of fulfilling it.

But now, there was Frederick and the unexpected situation in which they found themselves—all through no fault of their own.

She paused as, on one level, her mind cleared.

Here she was, against all expectations, actually considering the pros and cons of marrying him…because he and all his pros had made her want enough, desire enough, to hope there might be some way…