She felt her face grow rosy with offense. “Ah. You need a broodmare. And I am the most desperate candidate.”
He stared at her unhappily. “It really isn’t quite so crass as that, Poppy. I do require a woman who is able and willing to bear a child. But more specifically, I desire a wife with whom I can be honest about the fact that I have limitations. I lack capacity for the attachments and expectations that inevitably arise from marriage. I intend for my private life to remain private and free from obligation, and I want a wife who desires that same freedom and will respect my need for it. The fact that you don’t wish to marry me is what makes you a desirable candidate. That, and the fact that I think highly of you and can offer you something of value in return. It would be,” he concluded, “a cordial business arrangement affording independence to us both.”
A cordial business arrangement. She regarded this chilly figure, finding it strange that the more he spoke of matters of grave importance—marriage, life, death—the more remote and formal he became.
“And what of the matter of conception?”
He shrugged. “We would go about it in the usual way. I should hope, given our history, it would not be so unpleasant. And I should not ask for your favors once conception is assured, nor object should you grant them elsewhere.”
He said this all so bloodlessly she wondered if there was something truly wrong with him. Had she not seen the depth of feeling he was capable of in the woods, she would have believed he felt so blithely of such matters. But she didn’t. Not at all.
She would leave him to his fiction. She did not feel blithely.
“No,” she said.
“No?” he asked, visibly thrown by her refusal. “Is it the terms that bother you? Or perhaps you don’t desire children?”
“It isn’t that.” There was a part of her that had always mourned that the price of her independence was losing the chance to have a family of her own. The part of her that grew uncomfortably wistful around babies and large families. That saw small children toddling with their mothers and thought … that. Someone who belonged to her. To whom she belonged in return.
But she could bear not to have a family. What she could not bear was to inflict the paltry, distant kind of upbringing that she’d endured on her own child. An “heir” was no less a person than any other baby, and she would not subject a child to a life of being treated like some dreaded obligation.
And what if she had daughters?
“Perhaps I don’t strike you as maternal, but I lost my parents as a child—”
He cocked his head before she could go on. “What in my suggestion that you bear my child makes you think you don’t strike me as maternal, Cavendish?”
“The fact that this view is shared by everyone in Wiltshire? Even you call me Cavendish, like a man.”
“Cavendish,” he said softly, his coldness melting away all at once. “Trust that I have never doubted you are every inch a woman.”
She crossed her arms. “You are evading the point. I know what it is to be unwanted. I could not in good conscience agree to a scheme that would deprive my own children of a loving family.”
His eyes bored into hers, unflinching. “Our child would have as much a family as any other. I will of course look after my own issue, to the extent it is required, and you may be as tender and devoted a mother as you wish. My only requirement is that we afford each other space for private lives.”
His meaning was clear. She could love her child, but he would not. Just as he would not love her. She looked at him for a long time, trying to understand him. Trying to make out what he must think of her to believe she would accept what he proposed.
“And what guarantee can you provide that you will honor your word? Wives have no recourse from husbands under the law.”
He met her eye. “No,” he said. “You are correct. I suppose you will simply have to trust me.”
Trust him.
But that was just the point. She had no faith in others. She trusted just one person: herself.
A bit of shadow fell about his face, and the longer she hesitated, the more he seemed to falter. Finally, he let out a breathy kind of laugh. The kind one allows to escape when one has done something embarrassing, and one is the last to realize it. He quietly snapped the ring box closed.
“I understand. And I sincerely regret that your excellent work at Westhaven has caused you this inconvenience. I will not insult you by offering ‘rescue,’ but please know that should you require any assistance or funds, you need only write to me in care of Grouse.”
He gave her a tight smile and a nod and rose on his knees to stand, and the sight of it was so grim and terminal and sad that her heart made the decision for her, and she knew it was the wrong one even as she said: “Wait, Archer.”
He paused, half-crouched.
It seemed as though any number of futures danced in the air between them, and regardless of the choice she made, all of them were colored with shades of loss. Only one glimmered with the possibility of new-budding, springtime things. Of joy rising up amidst the sorrow like a weed.
God forgive her, she seized it.
“What if I wanted to build a nursery on the Thames?” she blurted out.
She avoided his eyes, as shocked as she had ever been by her own conduct. Despite her every instinct to the contrary, she was considering this notion he proposed. She had her scruples and her fears. But she also had a dream. Perhaps what he offered was as good as any other way of getting it. Perhaps she might get even more than she had ever dared to hope for.
He smiled. “I would see that you had every resource at your disposal to build a nursery wherever you desire.”
“I would not want you or anyone else interfering in my vision. I would insist on total control over my affairs.”
“This may come as a surprise, but I haven’t the slightest interest in plants.”
She found it within herself to meet his eyes. They were smiling.
“No one else has stumbled yet on the promise of an international subscription scheme for exotics. There is a hefty advantage to be won in being first. I want to break ground in time for winter planting.”
He raised his eyebrows at her. “Then we shall find a way. I’ll put my best men on it, at your direction.”
She closed her eyes and abandoned herself to fate. “I will require a ship fitted with compartments of my own design capable of transporting plants efficiently across the Atlantic.”
“I imagine you will get it.”
“And a conservatory in which I can grow exotic trees, with an unlimited budget for glass.”
“Then ours shall be notable among marriage contracts for enumerating the bride’s portion in windowpanes. Or mulch. Or whatever else your heart desires.”
It occurred to her that he would accede to everything she wanted. That she could think of nothing else to demand.
She opened her eyes. He offered her his outstretched hand.
In it was the ring box.
She took the only option she had left herself.
She plucked the ring from its nest of satin and put it on her finger.
Archer walked into the drawing room to the sound of his sister singing to her guests. High and determined and not within a trace of being in tune.
Her fingers landed on the keys with a discordant thwack at the sight of him.