A knock sounded on the door. She remained hidden and silent. Someone was in her room and softly cleared their throat. Couldn’t be her furious sister, then. She peered over the blanket and found Bailey, her lady’s maid, at the foot of the bed, with her slim hands clutching nervously at her apron.
“I’m sent to inform you that Mr. Blackstone shall be here in an hour,” Bailey said in her gentle voice. “You are to meet him and Mrs. Greenfield in the Blue Parlor.”
She wasn’t ready; not now, not in an hour, not in a year.
“Bailey,” she said. “Bring me a sherry, please. No, make it two.” The two sherries had been a poor idea. The liquid burned like acid in her empty stomach on her way to the Blue Parlor. It threatened to surge straight up her throat when she entered and spotted Mr. Blackstone’s forbidding figure next to the fireplace. Her mother looked pale and pinched and had recruited Flossie for reinforcement.
This would not do.
She tried to stand tall. “Mama. I wish to speak to Mr. Blackstone alone.”
Her mother drew back, a hand on her chest. “Now, Harriet—”
“Alone, Mama.”
Something in her voice made her mother fall quiet. She wasn’t certain what precisely she would to do if they refused to give her some privacy, but it would be sherry-fueled and wildly embarrassing in any case, and her mother realized it. “Very well,” she said. “Florence.” She nodded sharply at Mr. Blackstone as she swept past. “You have fifteen minutes—we shall be right outside.”
Hattie stiffly lowered herself onto a chair. The stale smell of cold ash came from the nearby fireplace, and she clasped a hand over her unsettled stomach. Mr. Blackstone remained standing since she had not invited him to sit. He looked offensively well rested and was dressed somberly in black and gray again. His jacket, however, was made of velvet, an oddly soft choice for a hard man.
“Mr. Blackstone.”
He inclined his head. “Miss Greenfield.”
“Do you wish to marry me?”
“Yes.” He said it calmly and without hesitation.
Her heart sank. “You aren’t known for heeding convention,” she said. “You could shirk your responsibilities and throw me to the proverbial wolves without much consequence to your routine.”
He paused. “Is that what you want?”
“Well, I’d rather we not both suffer needlessly when it could be only me.”
“You seem to greatly underestimate your father’s reach,” Mr. Blackstone said dryly. “As it is, I’m in need of a wife. And I’d rather not throw you to the wolves.”
No—he’d rather devour her himself. Her fingers skated nervously over the trimming on her pale green skirt. His posture was relaxed, but his eyes missed nothing. She felt him studying her face and noticing every embarrassing detail: the shadows beneath her eyes, her swollen nose, the entire sleepless night. She’d rather not be here, exposed to him, but she had questions. Of course, asking him whether he indulged in excessive gambling or debauchery—common husbandly vices that normally blighted a wife’s life—seemed ridiculous.
Are you cruel?
Have you killed anyone?
Tell me how you came by all your ill-gotten gains.
“Do you recall my aunt mentioning how I beautify the world with a brush rather than my rational brain?”
He nodded.
“She said it because my head is not quite right.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes,” she said quickly. “I cannot spell properly. I have difficulty copying a row of numbers in the correct order.” He gave no reply, was just watching her calmly, so she added, “My father spared no effort: tutors, doctors, exercises—I’m a hopeless case. You can’t rely on me for your social correspondence, nor for controlling the household accounts.”
He contemplated that for perhaps two seconds. “It matters not,” he then said, “not to me.”
She blinked. “You don’t mind whether your wife is slow in the head?”
“You seem bright enough to me.”
“Sometimes I go to the wrong address because I misread the house number.”
He arched a brow and said nothing. He knew what she was attempting.
“Then there’s the matter of my attention,” she tried. “It is either scattered or directed with an unnatural focus. I lose track of time when I paint, for example.”
“And yet you study at Oxford,” he said. “You correctly identified a rare Han vase on the spot—few people in Britain can. I’ve no worries about your brain. Besides, I’m taking you as my wife, not as my accountant.”