To see you smile, to share a quiet coach ride cuddled up next to you, to trade harmless kisses with you… The longer Ash pondered his last outing with Della, the more his resolve to be nothing more than her friendly escort faltered.
“Let’s have one glass each of punch and lemonade,” he said. “We can share.”
“Meaning you will decide which you prefer and leave me the other. I have brothers, Mr. Dorning. Not as many as you, but enough.”
He leaned closer. “Meaning I will have an opportunity to put my lips to the rim of the glass in the same place your own lips have recently been.”
That was sheer buffoonery, the next thing to a jest, but Della wasn’t smiling. “Let’s find someplace quiet to eat. I prefer not to shout at a supper companion.”
Ash followed her from the gallery down the corridor to the guest parlor, which was even louder than the gallery had been.
“A loud room has advantages,” he observed. “Let’s try the library, which is around that corner and about halfway down.”
“A loud room is generally a crowded room,” she said, following his directions, “and I do not deal well with crowds.”
He’d noticed that about her. In the proverbial Mayfair crush, Della could usually be found in the cardroom, or among the sparse company of the wallflowers. She would spend time on torch-lit terraces or wandering a gallery, rather than mill about on the crowded edges of the dance floor.
“A loud room,” Ash said as she poked her head into the library and immediately stepped back, “is a room where a couple in conversation must sit very close together to hear each other. Let’s try the green room.”
“Good thought, but where is it?”
“Up one floor and immediately above the gallery.”
She took a sip from the glass of lemonade. “How do you know this?”
“I have a good sense of direction, and I have been a guest here once before.”
The parlor reserved for musicians to use for warming up was deserted. Ash arranged chairs around a small table and seated Della with her back to a cheery fire.
“The quiet is lovely,” she said, taking another sip of lemonade, “and I am actually hungry.”
“Do you object more to the noise or the crowding?” Ash asked some minutes later. Della had demolished two apple tarts and was making inroads on her cheddar slices.
“Both. I am short—”
“Petite, my lady. Diminutive, dainty.”
“Short, and I cannot see over crowds. I have two memories of my family losing me as a child. Once at a May Day celebration, once at market. I refused to go on any such outings again until I was nearly out of the schoolroom.”
“They lost you?”
She nibbled her cheese placidly. “They did not realize I was unaccounted for until they’d returned home at the end of the day. Quite lowering, to be so easily misplaced.”
“Lowering? I hope your governess was sacked.”
“My governess was not to blame. I was in the care of my older siblings, who thought it a great lark.”
On Ash’s worst, most dismal day, he could not imagine losing track of his younger sister, Daisy, no matter how crowded the village green, no matter how many other siblings were assigned to supervise her.
“How did this happen?”
Della made a face. “They each thought I was with the other. The footmen sent to look for me found me on the church steps as darkness fell. The second time it happened, I knew to simply go to the church and wait. This is why I will always have a shawl with me, and I will always have a flask in my reticule. Tea or lemonade usually, though I bring brandy if the evening might run long.”
“How old were you?”
She considered the last of her cheese. “Four the first time, five the second, maybe five and six? Nobody is quite certain.”
That her entire family had failed to remark the dates of these mishaps bothered Ash almost as much as the idea that Della still carried a flask against the day when she would again be misplaced.
“Well, I am glad to have you all to myself,” Ash said, though as the words left his lips, he realized that having Della all to himself was imprudent. They had time to finish eating, but a return to the general company was in order before their absence was remarked.
“I have been thinking of our last conversation,” Della said.
As had Ash, and of the way they’d parted. And of the sweet contentment of rolling along in a coach with Della tucked against his side. She was a desirable woman, but more significantly, she was dear. Fierce, outspoken, vigorous of mind, and energetic of body. Her company was a tonic, and Ash would miss her more than ever when he quit Town.
“What about that discussion has merited your consideration?” Ask asked, setting his empty plate aside.
“Have you decided not to marry because you think no woman would have you, or because you simply aren’t interested in having a wife on hand, with all the loss of privacy and tedium that entails?”
“Not interested?” Tedium? She thought wedded bliss would be tedium?
Della rose and faced the fire, meaning Ash was free to admire the graceful lines of her back and the way her hair curled over one shoulder.
“My brothers are faithful to their wives,” Della said. “Once they marry, they don’t stray. Before they marry, they are free with their favors, but when they find the right person… I suspect your brother Sycamore is the same sort. He will cut a very wide swath until he gives his heart. Then he will be a pattern card of domestic devotion.”
Ash rose, collected Della’s shawl from the back of her chair, and joined her at the hearth. “Are you asking if I’m cutting a wide swath, Della? If I’m wallowing in London’s many vices between my bouts of low spirits and simply enjoying myself too much to consider taking a wife?”
The firelight found all manner of highlights in her hair, even as it cast her features half in shadow. He draped her shawl over her shoulders, stealing a caress across her nape as he did.
“Something like that,” she said. “Because if your hesitation to marry is because of the other reason, you’re wrong.”
“What other reason?”
“If you think no woman would have you, you are much mistaken, Ash Dorning.”
He did not know what to think, because it appeared, unless his ears deceived him and his heart was equally misguided, that Lady Della Haddonfield was considering proposing to him.
He turned her by the shoulders. “If I were to marry anybody, any lady in the whole of God’s creation, I would account myself most fortunate and blessed to find myself married to you. But I cannot in good conscience ask that of you.”
“What if I am asking it of you?” She slipped her arms around his waist and leaned against him. “What if I am inviting you to try a life with me, Ash Dorning? If we don’t suit, you can set me aside, and we’ll live apart, enjoying cordial relations on necessary occasions. Many couples don’t remain together for most of the year.”
She was willing to be misplaced again, for his sake, and that broke his heart.
“You deserve better,” he said, never more certain of anything in his life. “You deserve to speak your vows with a man who can offer the whole bit, Della, until death, not until he’s overcome once again by the mulligrubs.”