“I don’t care
how
it happened!” Malcolm Hamilton, Viscount Warring, shouted.
Alessandra shivered in the face of her father’s rage, Geoffrey’s lips thinned even further in vexation, and Alessandra’s mother sat very still, her face pale. Miss Parker covered her mouth with her hand and fled the room from her position near the door, obviously thinking to excuse herself from a volatile family matter.
Alessandra watched her chaperone’s hasty retreat and wished she could do the same. While she had changed her gown, Lord Graham had arrived on their doorstep. That interview had been held behind ominously silent doors, and had been far too quickly ended to promise any forbearance on her father’s part. She had hoped once Miss Parker had been retrieved from the park, that lady might shed some helpful light on the subject now so clearly infuriating Lord Warring. Unfortunately Miss Parker’s blithesome unawareness of the day’s happenings, and the subsequent jumbled versions told thereof to her by several persons with overriding opinions, had only served to further aggravate him.
“Papa, please try to understand—”
“I understand perfectly!” he thundered, the ends of his graying hair trembling with outrage. “I understand that Lord Graham came to my home to inform me that my daughter was seen, unescorted by her chaperone, being disrobed in a secluded walkway in Hyde Park. I understand that Huntingsley here was the man doing it. I understand—”
“I was not disrobing your daughter, sir.”
“Did you, or did you not, expose her…her
underthings
?”
“Malcolm, please, don’t shout so,” Alessandra’s mother cried with an eye toward the closed doors where servants’ ears probably resided.
“My lord, I did, but it didn’t happen the way it sounds—”
“I don’t care
how
it happened. I
do
care that it
did
happen.” Lord Warring made a futile effort to lower his voice, for as he continued it grew in volume again. “What about my daughter, sirrah? What about her? She’s ruined, that’s what. You know what a nine-days’ wonder the tattlemongers will make of this.” Lord Warring strode back and forth across the carpet, his vivid blue eyes crackling fire, one vengeful hand raised as though he were prepared to smite Old Hickory himself.
“Exactly the point I was trying to make, my lord. It will only be a nine-days’ wonder, and then everything will go back as it was,” Geoffrey said calmly, crossing his arms and leaning back against the mantelpiece in a nonchalant attitude belied by the tightness of his jaw.
“It will
not
‘go back as it was.’ Lessie here will still be ruined forever. And what are you going to do about that, hmm? Well, I’ll tell you what you are going to do. You are going to marry my daughter before those nine days of wonder are over, do you hear me?”
The room fell silent, and they all looked at one another with stricken or shocked faces. Geoffrey stood upright, his arms falling to his sides in astonishment.
“Oh, Papa, no,” Alessandra protested weakly.
“You be silent. You’ve no say in the matter. If you’d wanted say, you should have thought of that before you allowed all this to happen,” her father snapped at her.
“I just ripped my dress!”
“Then why did he have his hands all over you? Why were the two of you alone? No, don’t say another word! You’ll only make matters worse. Amelia, take your daughter up to her room and put her to bed. She’s going to be busy tomorrow,” he said with ominous promise in his voice. He turned back to Geoffrey, who exchanged glare for equal glare.
Lady Warring rose and led a protesting Alessandra from the room. The latter only had time to throw Geoffrey one beseeching look before her mother firmly closed the door between them.
“Come along, Alessandra. I suspect your father is quite right. We should put you to bed,” Lady Warring said, avoiding her daughter’s eye and shaking her head fretfully.
“Mama, you have to persuade Papa that marriage is out of the question. It’s ridiculous. I’ve just begun my first season. I was so looking forward to all the balls and assemblies. I just tore my dress. Yes, I know there was a bit of a scene, but I’m sure—”
“Your father will know what is best for you,” Mama said. She had the glint in her eye, the one that said “Father has spoken the eleventh commandment, and so it shall be.”
When puddles of tears formed anew in Alessandra’s eyes, her mother softened just a little, and she put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “Tut tut,” she soothed. “Really, you must trust your father and me in such a matter. Everything will be made right. Hush now, darling girl. I’ll ring for Maggie, and she’ll have you tucked in right and tight in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Oh, my sweet, don’t cry. We’ll make it all better, you’ll see.”
And so Alessandra allowed herself to be soothed into bed and into slumber, never dreaming that downstairs the very thing she didn’t want to happen had just been arranged.
***
The following morning, a grim-faced Alessandra was more or less shoved into the front parlor, the door pulled shut soundly behind her. No one was in the room other than her cousin.
“Geoffrey,” she greeted him, wincing internally at the stiffness she heard in her own voice.
“Alessandra.”
She wondered briefly if she looked as haggard as he did. Her father’s firm announcement this morning that she was to consider herself betrothed had caused the color to fade from her cheeks, she knew.
Geoffrey looked as though he had not slept a wink all night. His cravat was simply tied, his eyes were bloodshot, and his boots reflected the possibility that they had not seen a proper polishing since his walk in the park yesterday.
“So. I am here.” The words were lame, but what else was she to say?
I’m here as I’ve been ordered to be.
“As you probably know, I’ve come to ask you to be my wife,” Geoffrey said. “Will you do me the honor?” he said baldly. He did not quite look at her. He stood with his back to the fireplace, his arms crossed as he gripped each of his elbows. Alessandra fleetingly thought to herself that this was the very look of a belligerent schoolboy made to recite before the class.
She glided across the room, coming to stop in front of him. When she spoke her tone was no longer contentious, softening into something more like anguish. “I...I don’t know what to say. I mean, I do, for Papa has ordered me to accept. In fact, he says that your asking me is just a formality, and as I am under the age of my majority, I will have to do as he says in any event.” Perhaps Geoffrey’s scowl deepened. “But, what I mean is...I will defy him.”
The scowl was replaced by surprise. “You will?”
“Yes. If it would make you miserably unhappy that we should wed, I will refuse.”
He lowered his eyes for a moment, and she felt a strange little lump begin to form in her stomach. Not that she had expected him to be overjoyed Papa would settle for nothing less than leg-shackling the two of them, but still it hurt to guess she was so repugnant as to have him find her so readily unworthy of his name.
“It’s not a simple matter, Alessandra,” he said at length, finally raising his eyes to meet hers full on.
“Why not? We could just say we won’t do it. I’ll probably be locked in my room until Papa can whisk me away to rusticate—” she hesitated and chose not to say
forever
“—in the country, but I would truly much prefer that over causing us both to form a distressing union.”
He surprised her by smiling faintly, albeit faintly. “Only a girl fresh from the schoolroom could phrase things quite so dramatically.”
She must have glowered at him, because he uncrossed his arms and took up both her hands, looking her directly in the eyes. “I thank you for that offer. I do truly appreciate your sentiments.” He released her hands, took a small step back, and gave a shake of his head. “However, I am afraid your father may be correct in thinking this little episode has put you quite beyond the pale. Perhaps if you’d been longer in town and people knew you and your sensibilities a little, then perhaps they could be a trifle forgiving of a little peccadillo… But, too, consider that Lord Graham will be having a wondrous time dining out about town on the tale. I know this, because I thought for a moment that I was to be refused entrance at my club last night. Not even two hours past…the event. So you see, it is not only your reputation which suffers, but my own as well.”
Alessandra sank down into a chair, her legs suddenly unable to hold her properly. “Oh,” she said quietly.
He began to pace the length of the room as he spoke. “If we were
not
to marry, you would indeed most likely be sent off to the country. We can only wonder if the locals would query the fact that the beautiful, dowered girl from a wealthy family is not in London making her debut. It is possible this would not make suitors leery, or not come to the attention of fortunehunters and cits, but I must tell you that your father believes both cases to be highly likely to occur.”
She heard what he said, including the fact he had called her beautiful. Even in the midst of disaster, she was female enough to enjoy a moment’s pleasure at the compliment.
“As for myself, I should be quite surprised to find I was now as fully welcomed into the homes of London mamas, with the same possible exception of cits and fortunehunters. Since I had not been particularly in mind to find a wife just now, this censure would not unduly upset me, except that I cannot care to inflict the same stain upon my parents and my brother, Elias.”
He stopped and turned to face her, a frown settling on his brow. “On the other hand, if we agree to marry, then we each have someone whom we know is not merely after our funds, titles, or possessions. We know each other, and I am bold enough to suggest we could rub along together well enough. And we would be accepted into society once again under the blessings of marital propriety.”
Geoffrey turned to face her fully, crossed his hands together behind his back, and said simply, “So.”
She took a beat, but then lifted her hands in a little gesture of resignation. But her words belied the gesture of surrender. “I have one—no, two—problems with this ‘solution’ of Papa's.”
“They are...?”
“The first is rather silly, I suppose, but it disturbs me a great deal.” She could not meet his eyes, for this was the oddest conversation she had ever had in her eighteen years of life.
“Tell me what it is.”
“Well,” she started, then had to stop, only to start again. “Well, if we exchange marriage vows,” she had to stop again, aware of the flaming red in her cheeks. It seemed such a private thought, and she had never shared a private thought with a man before. She hurried ahead, “It is simply that I should not be comfortable standing before God and swearing that I will ‘love, honor, and obey’ you, if such is not true.”
He gazed down at her with his rich, dark eyes, and slowly a kind smile formed across his lips. “You are a rather mindful young lady,” he said, making her blush a bit more since she was not quite sure how he meant the words.
He moved to sit next to her. She made room for him, more than was necessary so that even the skirts of her pale blue gown did not touch him, but he moved closer and gathered up her hands in his own once more.
“I think we can agree if we marry that those words must have a particular meaning for us, as we would agree upon here and now.”
He paused to think for quite a few a moments, then said, “For us they must mean that we should
love
as best we may, even if it is in only a familial way. And we should
honor
the marriage vows—sickness and health, and all that—and
obey
would mean when and where it applies to the household or the marriage as a union.”
“Are you saying...that we should live separate lives such as your mother and father do?”
>His eyebrows shot up, and his smile wavered. It was certainly no family secret that his mother and father had lived in completely separate households for years now. The entire extended family had felt the social sting that had accompanied the messy separation. However, the ugliness of the whole business was in Geoffrey’s mind completely dwarfed by the fact it had been much more unpleasant living in a house where once both his antagonistic parents had resided, and he had been secretly relieved when they no longer shared a household.
“Live apart?” he said slowly, again taking his time to consider. “After a fashion, yes. And I don’t think it would be fair to ask you to...take no lovers, but I would ask that under the ‘obey’ part of the ceremony, you would be most discreet in any such matter.”
She stared at Geoffrey, sure she was unable to hide some of the repugnance she felt at such an offer of husbandly “understanding.”
She looked away for a moment, and found herself thinking, to her own great astonishment, that it was, in its way, a magnanimous offer, for without such an understanding between them, and if they found no growing affection, she would be forced to live a severely sterile life.