10

THEY walked back to the house in silence.

It had seemed a good idea last night. She had not believed he would refrain from offering for Meg if she simply asked it of him. He would look at her with that hard-jawed, supercilious look of his, and proceed to business. And she /knew /Meg would not say no.

Desperate measures had been necessary, and she had known just what measures they must be.

Something his mother had said had hardened her resolve. /But you have had your chance, Mrs. Dew. Your elder sister has not./ It was true. She had had her chance. She had married Hedley. It did not matter that he had lived only a year and had been very ill throughout it. She had had her chance.

Meg must not be deprived of hers, even if that chance appeared to be slim to none. /She /would marry Viscount Lyngate instead of Meg and give him the wife he needed and give her sisters an easy entrГ©e into society.

She would be the sacrificial lamb - though she had not thought of what she was doing in those terms until /he /had said it.

It did not really matter that neither of them particularly liked the other. That could be changed. If they were married, she would work on making him happy. She would work upon making herself happy too. She had done it before, after all - and in far more difficult circumstances.

And she could not deny that physically she found him very appealing indeed. Peculiar, almost painful things happened to her insides at the very thought of being married to him.

It would not be difficult…

Last night it had seemed a good idea. Today she was not nearly so sure.

She was not even marginally pretty, let alone beautiful.

She had had her boast exposed for what it was. How very humiliating it was to compare /her /kiss with /his/.

She knew he had kissed her only to prove a point, not because he had /wanted /to.

She had been left with the feeling that she had unleashed something very dangerous indeed.

Good heavens, she was still aching in places she had not known there were places.

And then there had been the great shock of discovering that he was heir to a dukedom. She had proposed marriage to a future duke!

That meant she was probably going to be a duchess one day.

She was going to be a viscountess as soon as she married and - though she had never until recently ventured more than a few miles beyond Throckbridge - she was going to be presented to the queen, and then she was going to introduce Meg and Kate to society.

And this man was going to be her husband.

If he kissed like that when standing beside a lake in broad daylight, what was he going to do to her when…

Well.

She stumbled over the merest tuft of grass, and he pressed her hand more tightly against his side and looked down at her briefly - with a very tight-lipped look as if to say he did not expect such awkwardness from his future duchess.

What were Meg and Kate and Stephen going to say?

What was his mother going to say?

And his /grandfather/?

Why had he turned the tables on her and offered for her? It was the last thing she had expected at that particular point. She had been about to crawl away in search of a deep, dark hole to hide in, preferably forever. "Mrs. Dew," he said as they stepped onto the terrace. He stopped walking and looked down at her again. "There is still time to change your mind.

I have sensed your agitation since we left the lake. Do you /wish /to marry me or do you /not/? You have my word of honor as a gentleman that regardless of your answer I will never marry either of your sisters." The chance of reprieve!

She gazed up into his eyes and thought quite irrelevantly that whoever had made them blue - God? - had been very clever indeed since one expected dark brown with his Mediterranean complexion.

Yes, she did wish it despite everything. But… "Do /you /wish to marry /me/?" she asked him.

His nostrils flared and his jaw set in a hard line. "It is not at all the thing, ma'am," he said curtly, "to answer one question with another. I will answer nonetheless. I offered for you.

Therefore I wish for a marriage with you. I am not a ditherer, Mrs. Dew.

Now I will hear /your /answer." Ah. A man accustomed to command. He would have the right to command and bully her forever after she married him. /If /she allowed him to get away with it, that was. "Of course I wish to marry you," she said. "I was the first to ask, remember?" "I doubt I will ever forget," he retorted.

And he half bowed to her and offered his arm again.

She chuckled despite herself. "Was that our first quarrel?" she asked him. "I would suggest you not even try counting," he said as she took his arm. "Before the nuptials have even been celebrated you may find you cannot count so high." She laughed outright.

And then sobered again. "Who is going to tell?" she asked as they climbed the marble steps to the house. "I will," he said decisively. He sounded grim.

She did not argue. She was massively relieved if the truth were known.

However would /she /tell?

Stephen was coming out of the study. "Ah, Lord Lyngate," he said, "you have arrived at the perfect time. Meg has just sent word that tea is ready in the drawing room. You will join us? And you are wearing /blue, /Nessie. Not gray or lavender today? It is about time, I must say." As she followed him upstairs with her betrothed, Vanessa wondered if a heart could really beat its way right out of one's chest.

Katherine was sitting by the window, looking through the fashion plates Miss Wallace had left for her yesterday. Margaret was seated behind the tea tray, wearing her best day dress. She looked very determined and self-conscious when she saw that Viscount Lyngate had come. She must be steeling herself for the offer she thought was coming, Vanessa thought. "My lord," she said, "you have arrived in time for tea. Will you be seated?" "I will," he said, "though I would like to say something first that concerns all of you." Margaret looked openly dismayed - as if she expected a public declaration right there and then. Stephen looked interested, and Katherine looked up from the fashion plate she had been studying. "Mrs. Dew," the viscount said, "has just done me the great honor of accepting my hand in marriage." Vanessa wished she had sat down as soon as she was inside the room. But it was too late now. She could only stand where she was on legs that felt distinctly wobbly.

There was a horrible silence that seemed to stretch forever, though it was probably no longer than a second or two. "I say." Stephen was the first to find his tongue. "Oh, I say, this /is /a surprise." And he took the viscount's hand in his and pumped it up and down and then caught Vanessa up in a bear hug, grinning at her as he did so.

Katherine jumped to her feet and came hurrying across the room. "Oh," she cried, "this really /is /splendid. But I did not suspect a /thing/. Ought I to have? Neither of you has given the smallest sign that you have a tendre for each other. But of course - you danced together at the assembly. And you, my lord, danced with no one else /but /Nessie." She looked for a moment as if she might rush into his arms, but if she had intended that, she thought better of it and rushed into Vanessa's instead after Stephen had released her.

Margaret remained standing behind the tea tray. Vanessa met her eyes over Katherine's shoulder and saw an expression in them that was impossible to read. "Nessie?" she said. She did not even look at Viscount Lyngate.

Vanessa crossed the room to her, her hands outstretched. "Meg," she said, "wish me happy. Wish /us /happy?" The expression - whatever it had been - was gone, to be replaced by a strained smile. "But of course I do," she said, taking Vanessa's hands and squeezing them tightly. "I wish you all the happiness in the world. And you too, my lord." He bowed to her - to the woman he had come here to offer for today.