They stopped at the coaching inn at Watford for a meal and to change horses. As luck would have it, the maid, Mary, got talking to the landlady. The woman had six daughters, three of whom worked at the inn, two of whom were yet too young and one who apparently had a passion to become a lady’s maid. The landlady had a host of questions to ask Mary about the life and prospects for a lady’s maid, as well as the general wickedness of life in London.
“I’m sick of being stuck in the carriage,” Lucy told him. “I want to stretch my legs.” So he offered her his arm and they strolled to the edge of the village and turned down a shady, tree-lined lane.
“I’m calling it off,” Lucy said abruptly the minute they were alone. “I can’t stay with your grandmother, lying to her and getting her all excited about a wedding that will never take place. I want to go home. And the moment we get back to London, I want you to put a notice in the newspapers canceling this wretched betrothal.”
Gerald was silent, trying to think of what to say. Eventually he simply told the truth. “I don’t think it’s wretched, and I don’t want to cancel it.”
“What?” She jerked her arm from the crook of his elbow and stepped back, staring at him, her eyes wide. “What does that mean? You can’t possibly—”
“Want to marry you? I’m afraid I can. In fact, marrying you has become my heart’s desire.” There, it was out.
She gave him a troubled look. “But . . . but it was just a stratagem to get Papa to show himself.”
“It was also a stratagem to get you betrothed to me,” he admitted. “I could think of no other way to achieve it, with your determination to hold me at arms’ length and your ridiculous prejudice against lords.”
She shook her head, looking distressed. “But you can’t. I . . . I’m Lucy Bamber, the daughter of a scoundrel—you said it yourself. Papa was a swindler, a liar, a blackmailer, a—”
“And his daughter is nothing like that. The Lucy Bamber I know is honest, honorable, loyal, spirited and beautiful.”
“ ‘Beautiful’?”
“Very.” He drew her into his arms and kissed her as he’d been longing to kiss her almost from the moment they’d met. She resisted for an instant, then softened against him, sliding her arms up around his neck, twining her fingers in his hair and kissing him back with all the passion he’d hoped for.
After a few minutes she drew back. “I’m sorry—I should never have let that happen.”
“Why not? Didn’t you enjoy it? I did.” He reached for her again.
She pushed his hands away. “I’m serious, Gerald. I’m deeply sensible of the honor you do me, but I can’t marry you.”
“Why not?”
She just shook her head and walked a little way along the lane. Gerald followed. “You’re trying to think up reasons why you can’t marry me, aren’t you?” he said. “You have this ridiculous notion that you don’t belong in my world.”
She turned. “Well, I don’t. I wasn’t raised in your world, and I don’t fit in it.”
He snorted. “What you don’t realize is that lots of people feel that way, including me.”
“You? You’re a viscount, the son of an earl.”
“Yes, and I’ve been that for precisely eighteen months. Before that I was a cash-strapped captain in the army, the unregarded son of a second son, and nobody gave me a second glance.”
“Maybe, but—”
“What do you think it was like to come from a life involving years of hardship and turmoil and boredom and danger and responsibility, and battlefields that stank of blood and mud and worse, with the screams and groans of the injured and dying—some of them your men and your friends—ringing in your ears? And then the war is over and you come back and try to fit into a society where people are dressed in satin, silk and lace, smelling of perfumes and their most serious problem is deciding who to dance with. Or what to order for dinner. Or how to dress their hair. Or what juicy snippets of gossip they can pass on.”
Her eyes were huge. She swallowed. “I never thought of it like that.”
“Nobody ever does.”
She bent and picked a long stem of grass and twirled it pensively. “Why do you want to marry me, then?” She glanced at him, a faint blush on her cheeks. He didn’t think it was the heat. “I was so rude to you from the beginning.”
He laughed. “That’s what I found so interesting. For most of my adult life I’ve been of little interest to anyone—certainly not a desirable marriage prospect. Then my uncle died unexpectedly, and suddenly I was a viscount and the heir to an earldom, and then everything I said or did was sooooo interesting, and the matchmaking mamas were all over me, and every unmarried young lady was flirting and flattering me and doing their best to hook me.”
She snorted. “Not me.”
“I know, and that’s what first attracted my attention.”
She frowned. “But it wasn’t some ploy to be different.”
“Oh, I know that.” He let his gaze drift so somewhere over her left shoulder and murmured, “ ‘That woman over there is wearing the largest turban I’ve ever seen in my life. I wonder how she makes it stay on.’ ”
She half turned to look, and then remembered. She blushed. “Yes, well, I was very badly behaved that night. I’m sorry.”
He laughed. Her dimple gave her away every time. “I’m not. You were clever and cheeky and gorgeous and so determined to drive me away, it made me want to get to know you better.”
She grimaced. “And then you found out who I really was, the daughter of a blackmailing scoundrel.”
“Will you stop saying that,” he snapped. “You are not your father, and I don’t want to hear that nonsense ever again.”
Their eyes met for a long, intense moment. Then a cow mooed and broke the silence.
“I might not be like my father, but that doesn’t mean I’ll fit into your society. Your mother hates me.”
“She hates everyone. My grandmother will adore you.”
She shook her head. “Not if she knows the truth. I’m sorry Gerald. I know you think it would work, but I know that if I married you, I would end up getting things wrong and embarrassing you—and myself. And I refuse to be looked down on!”
“How do you know you will?”
“Because I always have been. My education is scrappy—I attended five different schools and never finished the year at any of them. I never did learn all the ladylike skills, and when people look down on me and try to make me feel small and inferior, well, I have a temper. I push back. And not always in a ladylike way.”