Stop talking, Patrina Tidemore. Stop talking. Except the words tumbled freely from her lips. “After two full Seasons, I’d not…” She warmed. “I’d not garnered many,” any, “suitors.” She shrugged. “He filled my ears with empty praise.” Fool that she was, she’d believed him. Patrina depressed an ivory key. “He asked me to go off with him.” Patrina cringed, even now unable to believe the height of her idiocy. She took a breath and forced herself to look at Weston. “He was so repulsed by me, he’d not even kiss me.” Her lips twisted with wry embarrassment. “I convinced myself his actions…” Or lack of actions. “Were born of a gentlemanly sense of honor.” A little, humorless laugh escaped her. “How very ironic, no? I should be ruined, considered sullied when he never did anything more than touch my hand at polite ton events.” Patrina expected the sting of shame in confessing just how undesirable Albert had found her. Instead, there was something oddly freeing in sharing with Weston the truth unknown by Society—a truth they’d never believe nor accept.
Weston walked over and stopped beside her. He caught a black curl and tucked it behind her ear. “He was a bloody fool, Patrina.” Hot desire sparked in his eyes. “If you were mine, nothing and no one could ever stop me from taking you in my arms.”
Her heart fluttered. It really was rather impossible drumming up memories of Albert with Weston near, with his fleeting touch upon her cheek.
She continued on a rush. “It was all a matter of revenge. Albert had lost property and a fat purse in a game of faro to my brother. My brother, in turn, employed Juliet, the baronet’s sister, as a governess for my three younger sisters.”
His expression grew shuddered. “Juliet?”
She nodded, knowing he’d connected the presence of Juliet a short while ago to the Juliet of her story. “Juliet Marshville, Albert’s sister, is now wed to my brother.”
That hard, stone-like set to his features indicated his annoyance.
“They fell in love,” she said, a touch defensively. “She is a good woman, Weston. I would not blame her for the crimes of her brother.”
The tension around his mouth eased. He ran his gaze over her face. “You are a remarkable woman, Patrina Tidemore. Most women would be consumed with bitterness and resentment.”
She touched another key. “What will that accomplish? I’ve come to accept my circumstances.” Although, she knew she lied to herself. She detested her present circumstances and wanted more, and even with the imprudent decision she’d made regarding Albert—she deserved more. She managed a small smile. “I don’t imagine you’ve come here to discuss my scandalous past.”
Weston captured her hand and raised it to his lips. “No, Patrina.”
She furrowed her brow. “Then what—?”
“I’ve come to offer you marriage.”
* * *
Patrina’s head remained cocked at an odd angle. She’d said nothing for—Weston glanced across the room at the ormolu clock atop the mantle—for several minutes now. He acknowledged he should have spent some time preparing his words.
Or in the very least, something slightly less jarring.
She pulled her hand free of his. “Have you come to make light of me?” The lyrical, sweet quality of her voice was belied by the hard glint in her eyes. Patrina spun away from him. She placed the pianoforte between them and braced her hands on the back of the instrument. “Because I assure you, I’ve dealt with far meaner, and far more vile, creatures than you.”
He clenched and unclenched his hands at his side. God, how he’d wanted to hunt down the reprobate before and take him apart limb by worthless limb. “I assure you—”
She pointed a finger at him. “A true gentleman wouldn’t come here and mock—”
“I didn’t—”
She jabbed her finger again. “—mock me for the mistakes I’ve made. Not that I have much faith there are any true gentlemen in all of England.”
“Have you finished?” he drawled. It was the absolute wrong thing to say. Patrina stormed out from behind the pianoforte in a flurry of skirts. She stuck her finger at his chest. He winced.
She opened her mouth, and then promptly closed it. “Yes.” She wrinkled her brow. “No. I’m not finished? What vile, loathsome, reprehensible, abhorrent cad would come here and be so very, deliberately cruel?” Well, that was certainly quite the vernacular the lovely Lady Patrina possessed. “Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped. “Pityingly,” she said. “I neither want, nor need, your pity.”
He held his palms up, in an unspoken truce “Does anyone truly want to be pitied?”
She pointed her finger as if to stick it in his chest, and he caught her wrist. He raised it to his lips and buried a kiss in the satiny smooth skin of her wrist. Her fingers trembled in his. He welcomed her body’s telltale awareness of him, for it indicated he’d shaken her world just as she’d upended his.
“I’ve told you once before, Patrina. I wouldn’t dare pity you, and neither would I mock you. Might I be candid?”
“Please,” she said, eying him the way she might a thief come to abscond with her family’s fine silver. Curtly.
“My children need a mother. I’m asking you to be their mother.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “So, I’m clear. You want to wed me. A woman you met a mere five days ago.”
“Six days,” he corrected.
“Six days,” she amended.
Odd, he knew the exact moment he’d seen her, and the exact number of hours to pass since he’d come upon her hurling snowballs at his children. “Yes,” he said with a curt nod.
Patrina proceeded to tap the tip of her slipper in a steady rhythm. “A woman who scandalized the ton with her elopement.” She ran her gaze over his face, as though expecting him to demonstrate a suitable level of horror and shock at her admission. He schooled his features. After Cordelia’s treachery, it would take a good deal more than this slip of a young lady to shock or horrify him. “Should I continue on?” she asked tartly.
“Please.” The more she spoke, the more he found out about this bold, tart-mouthed lady who’d fascinated him since he’d first seen her. “I have no desire to wed again, yet if I do not, my children would remain motherless.”
A humorless smile played about Patrina’s lips. “So, you would wed me to provide your children with a mother?”
He nodded. Only, the truth his mind shied away from was that he wanted her for far more than just as a parent to Charlotte and Danielle—he wanted her… for her. “You’d want for nothing. My only request is that you care for my children.” He finished, realizing how wholly inadequate such an offer was. Any woman would want more and Patrina certainly deserved more. A pressure tightened about his lungs as he awaited her response.
She stood in silence so long he suspected she didn’t intend to address his offer. He imagined outside of security, a young lady dreamed of love and happiness and laughter from a future husband. His coldly calculated offer was more an arrangement in line with the haute ton’s well-ordered world.