‘It is a voucher for Almack’s,’ he explained when she frowned.
‘Almack’s?’
‘Yes. Even you must have heard of the place. Vouchers to gain admittance are highly prized by most debutantes. They will do whatever it takes to get their hands on one.’
‘I am not,’ she said with sinking heart, ‘a debutante.’
‘Nevertheless, you need to make an appearance there. You will find your future as my wife will go much more smoothly once you show that you have the approval of the patronesses. Which is why I asked them to call and look you over.’
‘Oh,’ she said, recalling the visit from two rather nosy women when she’d been staying with Lady Harriet. ‘I thought they were interviewing Lady Harriet. They promised to send her vouchers for Almack’s, but they never said anything to me.’
‘Do you not wish to attend?’
She would rather crawl over broken crockery all the way to…to Walsingham!
‘Would you have preferred,’ he said, turning to his side and raising himself up on to one elbow so that he could look down into her face, ‘the diamonds after all?’
She almost said something very rude about the diamonds.
‘I know I ought to feel grateful that you went to so much trouble for me—’
‘It was no trouble. Just had a word with one or two people…’
‘And it was as much for your dear friend Lady Harriet as for me, wasn’t it?’ she snapped.
‘You have no need to be jealous,’ he said in what she could only think of as an extremely patronising tone.
‘Jealous? The very idea! You seem to forget that I know that Lady Harriet dislikes you intensely.’
‘Besides which, it was not for Lady Harriet that I obtained vouchers, but for the sake of her husband. My friend, Lord Becconsall. I do not want his marriage to be a cause for regrets. Unsuitable though, in many people’s eyes, she may be.’
‘Unsuitable? She’s the daughter of an earl!’
‘Rank is not everything, my dear.’
‘Well, no, it can’t be, or they wouldn’t have given me a voucher, would they?’
He shook his head as though in disbelief at her stupidity. ‘What do you think you are, now?’
‘What do you mean? I am a nobody.’
‘No, you little goose, you are a marchioness. Now that you are my wife, you are Lady Rawcliffe.’
‘Good grief, so I am.’
He gave her a withering look. ‘You must be the only woman in England who could forget the little matter of becoming a marchioness, upon marriage to a marquess.’
‘Are you saying I’m stupid?’
‘No,’ he said, tapping her on the tip of her nose with the end of his forefinger. ‘Just very, very unworldly.’
‘Hmmph,’ she said. And would have crossed her arms across her chest if they weren’t still linked as far round his body as she could reach.
‘I know that you don’t possess the clothes you would need to attend such an exclusive club, if that is what is bothering you. But that is a matter which can easily be rectified.’
‘It isn’t the clothes! Well, not only the clothes.’
‘What, then?’
Dear me. When he looked at her like that, as though he was really interested in hearing what she had to say, he was even more dangerous to her peace of mind than when he was kissing her.
‘I’m just…not…ready. Perhaps I never will be. I’m not… I wasn’t brought up to take a place in society. I’m just a vicar’s daughter. And it’s no use,’ she carried on hastily when he took a breath as if to make an objection, ‘saying that now I am your wife I have a title. I have absolutely not the first idea of how to be a marchioness. I wasn’t brought up to be anything but possibly a housekeeper or companion to some elderly invalid. I have no idea how to be a grand lady.’
‘First of all,’ he said silkily, sliding his foot up and down her leg in a most suggestive way, ‘you have already proved to be the ideal marchioness, for me, by your response to me in this bed.’
She wasn’t sure whether to be flattered, or offended. After all, very many women had responded to him in his bed, she had no doubt. And he hadn’t been obliged to marry any of them to prevent a scandal, either.