Lance watched as Violet ate the last of her dessert, vaguely amazed at how much she’d eaten. For a small woman, she clearly had a voracious appetite, clearing away every last morsel of food that was set in front of her. Now she was licking what remained of the ice on her spoon in a way that made him feel hungry in a different way altogether. The feeling was even more powerful now than it had been that morning.
She seemed to be full of surprises this evening. Her appearance for starters. Not just the fact that she was out of mourning and had shed almost two feet of hair, but that she looked quite jaw-droppingly gorgeous as well. He’d ordered the blue gown on a whim, partly because he hadn’t been able to think of anything else as a wedding present and a grey mourning gown on its own had seemed somewhat dismal, partly because he’d never forgotten how vibrantly blue her eyes were. It seemed to fit her perfectly, too, despite his having to guess the measurements based solely on the memory of one dance. A memory that struck him now as uncannily accurate.
Her questions about their marital sleeping arrangements had taken him by surprise, too, though in all honesty they’d also come as something of a relief. He’d been wondering how to broach the subject himself, afraid of scaring her off, but it turned out that she already knew more about marriage than he’d assumed—although still not enough, apparently, to give it a try. She’d looked mortified the whole way through their conversation.
Of course, that might simply have been shyness, but the readiness at which she’d agreed to a seven-year delay suggested otherwise. What the hell had he been thinking, coming up with such a ridiculous idea? He’d just suggested seven years of celibacy! That was another surprise. A week, even a day, ago he wouldn’t particularly have cared, but watching her lick up the remains of her dessert, he suddenly, very definitely did. Just when he’d claimed to have lost interest in the process, too!
‘Shall we move next door?’ He cleared his throat huskily.
She nodded, draining the last of her wine before following him through the hall to the drawing room. A fire was roaring in the grate and she rushed forward to sit on a footstool in front of it.
‘Are you cold?’ He looked down at her with concern.
‘No. I’ve just always wanted to sit right in front.’
He guessed the implication. Yet another thing she hadn’t been allowed to do...
‘Was your father worried about you getting too close?’
‘Maybe, although in that case I could have sat beside him, but my chair was always set behind his.’
‘Then how could he see you?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t think he wanted to see me. Sometimes I think he didn’t like looking at me at all.’
Lance levered himself down into his armchair, swallowing a varied assortment of swear words. ‘Why on earth wouldn’t he like looking at you?’
She didn’t answer, leaping to her feet suddenly instead. ‘I’m sorry. This footstool’s for your leg, isn’t it?’
‘My leg be damned.’ He gestured for her to sit down again. ‘I said you could go wherever you wanted. That includes footstools.’
‘Here.’ She perched on one edge, leaving room for his foot. ‘We can share.’
‘You look uncomfortable.’
‘Well, I’m not.’ She reached down, wrapping her hands around his boot and lifting it up beside her. ‘How about that?’
He stiffened at her touch, his whole body tightening as a thrill of desire coursed through it. The view was even more stimulating. She was sitting lower down than he was, so that he had a perfect view of the tops of her breasts, moving gently up and down as she breathed. They were an exquisite size, too, he noticed, perfect handfuls...
‘Better.’ He dragged his gaze away quickly.
‘What happened to your leg?’ She looked at it curiously, as if she might somehow guess the injury by staring at his trousers.
‘I was shot.’
‘In battle?’
‘Nothing so grand.’
‘In a skirmish?’
‘In a duel.’
Her eyes darted back to his. ‘I thought they were illegal?’
‘They are, but my opponent had a legitimate grievance.’
‘Which was?’
He sighed. ‘I doubt you’d like me very much if I told you.’
‘You promised to always tell me the truth.’
‘So I did, but there’s a difference between telling the truth and telling everything. Suffice to say that the answer doesn’t reflect very well on me. I deserved everything I got and more. Besides, you haven’t answered my question yet. Why didn’t your father like looking at you?’
She seemed to exhale slowly. ‘I think it was to do with what you said earlier, about me looking like my mother. I was a reminder of her when he didn’t want any.’
‘Didn’t he care for her?’
‘The opposite.’ She gave a sad-looking smile. ‘It’s hard to imagine my father in love, I know, but he did love her. No one’s ever told me so directly, of course, but I’ve heard things and pieced them together. There were never any pictures or mementoes of her in the house because he didn’t allow them. No one was even allowed to mention her name in his hearing. He wasn’t always the way he became, but when she died he was heartbroken, and...’ she paused briefly ‘...he blamed me.’
‘For what?’
‘For killing her, I suppose. You see, I was sick first. I don’t even know what kind of illness it was. All I know is that she nursed me and then she fell sick, too. Only I got better and she didn’t. I think he blamed me for that.’
‘You were only a child.’
‘I know. He knew it, too. I suppose that’s why he never accused me directly, but there were times when I caught him looking at me as if he resented me for it. As if he hated me even.’
Lance frowned. He’d thought of Harper as a miserable, cranky old curmudgeon, but he’d never realised just how much of a monster he’d truly been.
‘You said he controlled you.’
‘Yes.’ She stared into the fireplace. ‘Although he always said that he was trying to protect me. I wanted to believe it, but I think it was a form of punishment, too, as if he were trying to stop me from living my own life because I’d ruined his somehow. But I went along with it, always trying to please him, to make him happy. I never asked for anything. I never argued back. I thought that maybe one day...’
‘One day?’ He prompted her as her voice trailed away.
‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe I hoped that he’d tell me he loved me and let me go, but he never did. He spent his life warning me about fortune hunters and men who might pretend to care for me, but he never cared either. It was as though he refused to care for anyone ever again after my mother died.’
Lance felt a dull ache in his chest. Hadn’t he experienced something similar after his own mother’s funeral, when he’d told himself that he never wanted to feel hurt or pain like that again? Like her father, he’d closed his heart a long time ago, too—or thought that he had. Was that why he’d been so self-centred and reckless with everyone else’s feelings, because he’d thought himself immune to caring for anyone else deeply?
The past seven months had given the lie to that. Here he was, right back to where he’d started, grieving a brother and father he hadn’t realised he loved so much until it was too late. Maybe he’d been just as much a monster in his own way as her father had, taking his grief out on everyone around him. The thought made him distinctly uncomfortable. If that were the case, then he truly was the last man on earth she ought to marry.
‘I never really admitted to myself how angry I was with him until today.’ Her face wore a guilty expression. ‘I know it sounds wicked, but after the funeral, a part of me was relieved.’
‘That doesn’t sound wicked. It sounds perfectly natural.’
‘I thought that maybe I could finally make some choices of my own, but then Mr Rowlinson told me about the will.’
‘And you discovered that your father had shackled you into marriage instead?’
‘Yes, but then I thought that it might be a good form of revenge, marrying you. He would have hated the idea.’
‘There you go, then.’
She gave him a remonstrative look. ‘I don’t want to marry you for revenge.’
‘So call it rebellion.’
‘I was never very good at that. I did almost everything I was told.’
‘You’re doing it pretty well tonight.’ He smiled approvingly. ‘I must be a worse influence than I thought. Besides, you just said almost everything. What didn’t you do?’
She twisted her hands in her lap as if she felt genuinely guilty. ‘He told me to stop seeing Ianthe. He didn’t approve of her.’
‘Really? Then I definitely want to meet her.’
‘She’s the only real friend I ever had.’
‘One real friend is better than a lot of false ones. A man can have lots of friends, but there’s usually only one who’ll help you bury the body, so to speak.’
‘Is Martin yours?’
‘Martin? No, he just won’t leave me no matter how many times I tell him to.’ He laughed and then sobered again almost instantly. ‘I suppose Arthur was always my best friend.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He caught his breath, fighting back a sudden fierce onslaught of emotion. Arthur had been his best friend. Why hadn’t he known that until now?
‘Speaking of Martin—’ he forced himself to keep speaking normally ‘—he thinks he might be able to make it to Whitby tomorrow.’
‘Are the roads clear?’
‘No, but it hasn’t snowed any more and the man likes a challenge. So you can write to your friend Ianthe and tell her you’ve been imprisoned by a madman.’
‘I never said you were mad.’
‘You might as well make it exciting.’
‘Then I will.’ She gave what looked like a genuine smile. ‘Thank you.’
‘Thank Martin.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘Now tell me how else you defied your father. I like this rebellious side of you.’
She got to her feet instead. ‘Can I have another drink first?’
‘Help yourself.’ He gestured to the sideboard. ‘There should be some more wine somewhere.’
‘Would you like some?’
‘No, thank you, I’m trying to accustom myself to sobriety.’
She rummaged in the sideboard for a few moments and then sat down again with a full glass. ‘The night of the ball, my father told me not to talk to you, let alone dance.’
‘Really?’ Another surprise. That was interesting...
‘But then we were introduced and you were friendlier than your brother. Not that I didn’t like him, but...’
‘But he was a little less than charming.’
‘Yes, although at least now I know why. You were much friendlier.’ She took a sip of wine and licked her lips. ‘You didn’t tell me how small I was either.’
‘Didn’t I?’ He was so distracted watching her tongue brush along her top lip that he honestly couldn’t remember. At that moment, he was having a hard enough time following the conversation at all.
‘No. Usually it’s the first thing people say to me.’ She peeked up at him. ‘Doesn’t it bother you?’
‘Your height? Not at all, but then it occurs to me that you’re the perfect size for a walking stick. I can lean on your shoulder.’
She gave him a look that was part amused, part admonishing. ‘Are you never serious?’
‘I told you, I’m trying to learn.’
‘Sometimes I wondered if my size was the reason my father behaved the way he did.’ She sounded thoughtful. ‘Maybe he genuinely thought I was too small to look after myself. Maybe if I’d looked more like a woman...’
‘You do look like a woman...’ he dropped his gaze appreciatively ‘...especially tonight.’
‘But it would explain why he treated me like a child.’
‘He treated you like a child because he was a miserable, self-centred old man and took it out on everyone else, you especially.’
She looked at him strangely. ‘Is that why you were so angry at him at the ball? I didn’t understand at the time.’
‘I suppose so. I thought what he’d told you about fortune hunters was cruel, too. He implied that you weren’t worth marrying without a fortune. Believe me, Violet, there are plenty of other reasons.’
‘You agreed with him.’
‘What?’ He felt genuinely shocked. ‘When?’
‘When he asked if you’d marry me without a fortune and you said no. Not that I expected you to say yes,’ she added quickly.
His brow furrowed. ‘That wasn’t because of you. I would have said the same about anyone. I told you, I never wanted to marry.’
‘Until now.’
‘I’m willing to give it a try.’
‘For the money.’ She gave a small sigh. ‘Just as he said.’
Lance felt a fresh stab of guilt. Damn it all, the last thing he wanted to do was to prove her father right about anything, but he’d promised her honesty.
‘Surely that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends?’
‘No, I suppose not. It’s really quite ironic when you think about it. Neither of us ever expected to marry and yet here we are.’ She paused and then nodded emphatically. ‘All right, Captain Amberton, I accept.’
‘You accept?’ He wondered if he’d misunderstood.
‘Friendship. Marriage. The money. I’ll marry you.’