Page 60 of A Much Maligned Miss

“Apparently more than you like me!”

She looked up quickly at this. “No, I never said that! I am not choosing The Citadel over you, for I can have you both, can I not? Like I am currently.”

“This situation,” he said carefully, “is entirely temporary in nature, Caroline. You have known that from the outset. Marriage would be an infinitely more permanent arrangement.”

She took a deep breath. “Yes, but don’t you see? When you get tired of me here, I will have new friends around me. With their help I will be able to carve out some semblance of a life I enjoy.”

“You mean with the four thousand pounds I bestow on you?” he said rather nastily. “It is the money that would sustain you in the event of our parting ways. Something that is nothing to do with any new so-called friends.”

Caroline swallowed. “Yes,” she agreed, forcing herself to remain calm. “The money will help me a good deal to start with. Maybe I could make some investment or purchase some property which would give me security. I could open a boarding house or… Oh, I don’t know. There are lots of things.”

“You could open an eel stand, perhaps?” he suggested sarcastically. “Or sell pea soup along The Strand.”

Caroline shrugged a shoulder. “Mr. Bailey indicated he would gladly hire me to pose for him at his studio,” she muttered, glancing away.

“I’ll just bet he did,” he retorted curtly. “But I think you will find marriage would offer you a good deal more security than the dubious life of an artist’s model.”

“Maybe so,” she agreed, taking a deep breath, “but when you bore of me, as you inevitably will, I would be stuck in your uncle’s townhouse, taking tea with polite society matrons for the rest of my life, quite miserable. While you swan off to house parties and gambling hells, and whatever and whoever else takes your current fancy! Do you suppose I could return to such a drab existence after knowing another?” she appealed.

“You would have your reputation and a title to fall back on, madam,” he pointed out coolly. “No doubt that would cushion the blow.”

“I would rather have the company of true friends and people whose society I actually enjoy,” she answered at once. “I have already spent twenty-seven years of my life surrounded by polite company and I infinitely prefer Effie to the likes of Mrs. Ryland!”

This gave him pause. “It seems,” he said rallying, “I must remind you that, as my wife you would also enjoy the society of my own intimate circle. Do you forget Emmeline and Teddy Vance, so soon, who you once also deemed true friends within my hearing?”

“When I…” She swallowed and began again in a quiet voice. “When I accepted your carte blanche, my lord, I did it in the full realization that it put me quite beyond the pale with respectable folk like the Vances of Vance Park forever. I have already reconciled myself with that fact.”

“It did,” he agreed harshly. “It did put you beyond the pale. But I could drag you back within their sphere if we acted now, at once and without hesitation.”

“By removing me henceforth from The Citadel?” she guessed.

“Yes.”

“Then I must decline, though I am fully sensible of the honor you do me.”

He gave a short, sardonic laugh. “My God. Is this really how my first proposal of marriage is to be received?” he asked aloud.

“Is it really your first?” she asked, before she could stop herself.

He nodded and stubbed out his cigarette in a saucer. “You would not know if from my polished address but, yes, as it happens. It is.”

24

Gervaise disappeared shortly after fetching her washing water in a new jug decorated with roses. He did not speak, merely set it down in the matching bowl, then walked back out of the room again, closing the door quietly behind him.

Caroline was left alone with the twins. She felt strangely shaken by his proposal, and could not settle, though the sitting room was warm and the cats content. Where could he have gone to? she wondered, pacing about in his thick socks.

She hoped to goodness he had not gone to find more congenial company. That of pretty women, she thought with a pang, who would pander to him and hang off his every word. Really, she had done very little to appease or make herself agreeable to him lately.

She had certainly made a poor start to her new role. Wives might drive their husbands from their doors with disagreements, but mistresses would be ill advised to do such a thing. Did she even qualify as his mistress yet? He could dump her out on the street, and she’d be left with precious little recourse.

Not that she thought he would actually do that. Not really. But would he now be tempted to just leave her in this attic though, and distance himself from The Citadel? He was a shareholder, it was true, but that did not mean he needed to spend much time here. He clearly was not as fond of the place as she had so swiftly grown.

What would Ralph Carstairs and Barty Ewell do if they found Gervaise had left a discarded woman to molder in their attic? She hardly liked to think. Returning to her wineglass, she took another gulp and a little warmth crept back into her cheeks.

She carried the bowl and jug through to the bedroom and found a pretty new bedspread laid out on the bed. Again, it was charming and of the best quality, when she might have imagined a kept woman’s bed being decorated in a far more flaunting manner, perhaps in a flamboyant red or gold.

Running her hand over it, she wondered if his proposal had been why his gifts had been so respectable. Had he started to think of her in such terms? Was that why she had emerged untouched from his bed not once now but twice?