Page 4 of To Marry and to Meddle
“She’s not even trying,” she said, uncertain whether to be amused or offended. “How stupid does she think I am?”
Lord Julian grinned down at her, the quick, fleeting flash of amusement across his face making him look younger than usual. “I think you should take it as a compliment. She clearly thinks you’re too intelligent to fall for her tricks, so she’s not wasting the effort of a convincing performance on you.”
“My goodness,” Emily murmured, her gaze flickering to theretreating back of the dowager marchioness. “Whatever am I to do with such an honor?”
“Walk with me instead?” he suggested.
“All exactly as you planned it, no doubt,” she muttered, but she took his arm once again as they resumed walking toward the lake.
“I should note,” Lord Julian said, “that I never once asked the dowager marchioness to abandon her chaperonage of us.”
“Mmm,” Emily said skeptically, thinking that this had all worked out rather too conveniently for Lord Julian’s purposes to be the workings of fate.
“I cannot help it if she is incredibly skilled at reading my thoughts,” he added, sounding smugly amused.
Emily gave a huff of quiet laughter, despite knowing she shouldn’t reward a gentleman for this sort of conspiring. “You have me alone, Lord Julian,” she said briskly, feeling that she ought to turn matters to whatever his aim was. “What is it you wish to discuss with me?”
Lord Julian drew to a halt; they had reached the lake’s edge, and Emily gazed out over its still surface, marred by the occasional ripple. On the opposite side of the lake, a pair of ducks paddled about in lazy circles, and the early September sunshine was warm overhead. Lord Julian loosened his cravat, making his only concession to the weather; the rest of him was as impeccably attired as ever in the height of fashion, a blue waistcoat making the blue of those arresting eyes stand out even more brilliantly.
He squinted in the bright afternoon light, the expression causing faint lines to appear at the corners of his eyes, and then he dropped his hand from his cravat and turned to face her, his height shielding Emily from the direct glare of the sun. She tilted her head back slightly to gaze up at him from under the brim of her bonnet.
“Lady Emily, I brought you out here because I’m very much hoping to convince you to marry me.”
It was not, Julian would freely admit, the most romantic of proposals. He’d never given much thought to how he would ask a lady to marry him, if it ever came to that—that appalling prospect had always seemed comfortably distant, and so not something that he expended mental energy on. More recently, when he had begun to consider it in earnest, his deliberations had been so calculated that thoughts of how he’d actually ask the question hadn’t even entered his mind.
However, if he everhadtaken the time to ponder this prospect, he was fairly certain he would have envisioned himself coming up with something a bit more impressive than standing by a lake in the blinding sunshine, sweat already beginning to dampen the back of his neck, stating the prospect of marriage as though he were proposing a business arrangement. He’d heard complaints that romance died as soon as the wedding vows were spoken, but he hadn’t realized this could happen before the lady’s hand had even been secured.
But then, this wasn’t about romance—that was rather the point.
He cast his gaze about and spotted a large oak tree twenty feet or so away and, without thinking, reached down to seize Emily’s hand. She followed without complaint, and when they reached the shade of the tree, he—in a complete breach of etiquette—flung himself down onto the grass and squinted up at her while she stood, framed by dappled sunlight, staring down at him suspiciously.
“Sit,” he ordered, not at all gallantly, patting the patch of lawn directly to his right. “It’s quite dry, you needn’t worry about your dress.”
“I doubt my maid will agree when I come back covered in grass stains,” she said, but nonetheless lowered herself—with considerably more grace than he had displayed—to the space next to him. Once seated, she loosened the ribbons securing her bonnet beneath her chin, and, with a furtive glance toward the house, tilted the bonnet back slightly, allowing the light to hit her face.
“My mother would be appalled if she could see me right now,” she said, bracing her hands behind her and leaning back on them. She inclined her face up toward the sun. Even in profile, he could see the expression on her face easing.
It was odd, he reflected—until that very moment, he hadn’t thought she seemed particularly tense ordinarily, and yet something had softened in her expression the moment she lifted her face.
She looked almost absurdly lovely as she did so, of course; everything about her was lovely, from the smooth golden hair, carefully curled around her face, to the rosy, unblemished cheeks, to the clear blue eyes that were currently shut against the bright sunshine.
But he was not marrying her because she was beautiful. That was merely an added advantage.
“Why?” he asked in response to her comment. “Alone with a gentleman of unsavory reputation?”
“No,” she said serenely, not bothering to open her eyes. “Freckles.”
Julian let out a chuckle at that, and saw the corners of her mouth curve up slightly, the only sign that she was pleased with herself.
“I like freckles,” he said.
“According to my mother,” she replied, “the sight of a single freckle upon a lady’s nose is sufficient to send a gentleman racing in the oppositedirection, dooming the lady in question to a life of spinsterdom.” She cracked an eye open, frowning a bit, wrinkling her smooth brow in a way that should not have been as appealing as he found it. “Is that a word?”
“Spinsterhood?” he suggested helpfully.
“Spinstery.”
“Spinstering.”
