Page 48 of The Trouble with True Love

He stirred, suddenly on the defensive. “I’ve never been married, that is true. Nor even in love, actually, but—”

“What?” she interrupted, staring at him as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You’ve never been in love before?”

“No.”

“Never?” She straightened on the settee, glanced away, set aside her tea, and looked at him again, still seeming quite confounded by this news. “Not even once?”

“No.”

She shook her head, laughing a little. “And of the two of us, I thought I was the one with the lack of experience in matters of romance,” she murmured. “Heavens, even I have been in love before.”

He stared at her, too surprised to point out that one could have a great deal of romance without falling in love. “You have?”

“Of course. His name was Samuel Harlow, and he was the best-looking man I’d ever met—well, except for you, of course. He—”

“Wait,” he begged, holding up one hand to stop her, for he needed a moment to absorb what he’d just heard. “You think I’m good-looking?” He paused and laughed in disbelief. “Youdo?”

“Oh, stop fishing for compliments. You know you’re a handsome man, and you hardly need me to tell you so.”

Well, yes, he supposed he did know it, and yet, from her, it seemed something of a revelation. “On the contrary,” he murmured. “In this case, I think I am in need of a compliment or two. Besides, we’ve become friends now, and one ought to compliment one’s friends. But I can see you’ve no intention of buttering me up any more today,” he added with a sigh of mock regret when she made no reply, “so carry on. Who was this Harlow chap?”

“Mr. Harlow arrived in our parish the summer I turned seventeen, and I fell in love with him the moment I laid eyes on him. We saw each other quite often, for he lived just two blocks from here. I also saw him at church, of course, and sometimes we would invite him to luncheon or tea with us afterward—Papa wasn’t as bad then as he is now. In those days, he didn’t usually start drinking until well after tea time. Anyway, whenever Mr. Harlow came, I was always the one to whom he paid his attentions. Me,” she added as if in surprise, pressing a hand to her chest. “Not Irene.”

Rex felt a surge of frustration at this self-deprecating comparison to her sister. He thought of how she’d looked a few moments ago, with the sun revealing her lithe, slim silhouette to his gaze, and he was sorely tempted to haul her over to his end of the settee and show her a few of the reasons a man might pay her his attentions. With great effort, however, he managed to refrain. “And you found such attentions surprising, did you?”

“Well, it had never happened to me before. Men are usually too occupied with staring at my sister to notice I’m even in the room.” She paused and laughed. “But then, of course, Irene would say something about her goal to achieve the vote for women, and we’d never see the chap again.” Her laughter faded to a thoughtful frown. “I sometimes think she said things like that on purpose, to drive them away because they admired her instead of me, as if afraid my feelings would be hurt.”

He didn’t want to talk about her practically perfect sister. “So, you fell in love with this man,” he said. “What happened next?”

“One day, we were in the vestry alone together. It was after some parish meeting for a charity bazaar.”

He lifted a brow. “Why, Clara, you naughty girl.”

Her tiny nose wrinkled up ruefully. “It wasn’t my intent to be naughty, but even if it had been, it wouldn’t have done me any good. There we were, alone together. A perfect opportunity, and he didn’t even kiss me.”

At once, Rex’s gaze moved to her pale pink lips. “He was probably just trying to behave himself,” he said, striving to think of all the reasons he needed to do the same. “Anything else would be conduct unworthy of a gentleman.”

Even as he spoke, arousal stirred inside him, making it clear his body didn’t care a jot about gentlemanly conduct.

“That’s what I thought, too, at first,” she said. “After all, we were inside the church.”

Rex studied her, thinking of all the shadowy corners in his own parish church back home that would be perfect for cornering Clara and stealing a kiss or two. “I’m not sure being in church would be much of a deterrent,” he said, his control slipping a notch. “To a determined man.”

“I rather think it is, at least if you’re the vicar.”

Those words were sufficiently astonishing to divert him from his rather irreverent fantasy. “You fell in love with a vicar?”

“I wasn’t the only one. Most of the girls in our parish were in love with him at one time or another. As I said, he was very good-looking. Church was never as full before he came. And you wouldn’t believe the number of knitted gloves and embroidered tea cloths he received at Christmas.”

Rex grinned, imagining the picture. She was a good storyteller. “No doubt.”

“Anyway, that afternoon in the vestry was rather a disappointment to me, but afterward, he continued to pay me a great deal of attention. He never showed any interest in the other young ladies in the parish, even the bolder ones who flung themselves at him. So, I thought... I hoped—” She stopped, and shrugged. “It was foolish.”

“What happened?” he asked when she didn’t go on. “He proposed to someone else, I suppose?”

“Oh, no,” she replied at once. “He proposed to me. But I refused him.”

“What?” Rex straightened on the settee, staring at her as she turned matter-of-factly to reach for her tea. “But you were in love with him, you said.”

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