Page 2 of The Proposition
And he had bluffed her into the one thing she wanted least in life—marriage. Boyle of course knew this, as did the others seated at the table in Claridge House, the Fry family estate. To Clemency’s right, her elder brother, William, sat with his beloved wife, Tansy. They were too engaged in newlywed whispers to notice that Boyle had taken complete leave of his senses. Mr. Saines, a clergyman and family friend, was seated beside Tansy, his attention fixed on the sherry. On the other side of the table sat Clemency’s sister, a widow, Honora, quiet but listening. Their aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs.Drew, had come and were sandwiched between Honora and Turner Boyle.
Naturally, Clemency’s parents presided over the meal at the head and foot of the table. Mr. Fry sat to Clemency’s left, while Lord Boyle had been placed immediately across from her.
“Y-Yes,” Boyle was now stammering out, fluffing his hair nervously. The tell. “Indeed.”
“Clemency dear,” her father was saying in a whisper, “have mercy on your fork.”
“If I must,” she bit out, placing it with a tremble back on the cloth. Mr. Fry was having one of his rare good nights, and Clemency was glad for his presence. She often found herself missing him, though for some years he had been likea ghost haunting their home, pale and only occasionally glimpsed.
“How silly! Truly ridiculous.” Mrs. Fry was not going to drop Lord Boyle’s forgetfulness. She had seized on it, the one interesting development in the whole of dinner. “Our Clemency! Can you imagine it, Mr. Fry?” she all but screamed down the table. “Can you imagine it? Our Clemency! Eager to marry! No, no, it took a stalwart, persistent knight to storm that castle, and thank God for that, and thank God for you, Lord Boyle!”
Moat. Bridge. Clemency wrinkled her nose.
Mrs. Fry dissolved into rapturous laughter, and a few at the table indulged her, just as ready for some distraction from the screech of forks and knives across the dinnerware. Poor Mr. Fry did not so much as chuckle, his frequent bouts of gout and grippe leaving him tragically humorless. Boyle, however, threw back his gingery head and laughed with all his might, though to Clemency it sounded rather more like choking.
Without realizing it, she had picked up the fork again, this time in her fist.
“Dear…” Her father touched her left forearm lightly. He was a frail man in his sixties, snowy-haired and with a lined yet pleasant face. He possessed the soft, white luster of a cut turnip. “You must relinquish the fork, sweet girl, before anyone realizes your murderous intent.”
Clemency snorted, grateful for her father’s intervention. They shared a brief glance, and then she was laughing in earnest. She couldn’t stop. It was all too funny, too, too funny. And horrid. One full-bodied guffaw led to another, for the noise and feeling was neighbor to sobbing, and that she very much wanted to do. Eventually, everyone at the tablenoticed that she was laughing at something else entirely, utterly in her own world; her face and neck reddened as the sound threatened to resolve into crying.
“Clemency?” her mother shouted down the table. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Boyle wince. “Are you quite all right?”
“Oh! Yes!” Clemency at last found her voice, out of breath. She stood, shaking. “I am all right. In fact, I am splendid. Just…” She clapped her eyes on Lord Boyle, and the swiftness of it caught him off guard. At last they met eyes, and she watched him blanch, and freeze, and swallow a deeply sour mouthful of something. She hoped it lodged in his throat. “Just magnificent,” she said, stepping unsteadily away from the table, rattling the cups and plates. “If you will excuse me, I suddenly very much need to be sick.”
Clemency fled the table, her vision blurry as she found her way to the sitting room, then to the grand front hall, and then to the stairs leading up and away. The bannister caught her before she could fall. She stayed there for a moment, finding her feet, then dragged herself up the steps. General chatter of alarm had erupted in her wake, but she didn’t listen, gaining her equilibrium and racing for her bedchamber, breaking through the door just as the first shuddering sob left her mouth.
Backing into the door and shutting it, she let the pain come. She had been holding it in for weeks, months, feeling it fill her up like smoke in a burning house. Just to be in Boyle’s presence was an insult. And yet she must try to marry him. When he first mentioned the possibility of an engagement, it had been the happiest moment of her life, his love, his assurances, making her feel as if anything was possible. She had always been labeled unmarriageable for her opinionsand her stubbornness, and deep down she had always wondered that maybe she wasn’t unmarriageable butunlovable.
Then, Turner Boyle had starkly declared his love for her, and like a fool, just for a short while, she believed.
He had come to her just after Christmas, taking Clemency’s hand beside the hearth in the east sitting room while the snow fell beautifully and silently outside. The whole house had seemed so quiet, as if it too held its breath while Turner Boyle smiled tearfully down into Clemency’s face and said the words.
The words. The night after the proposal, Clemency had written them down in her diary, wanting never to forget them. She knew them by heart of course, and now they struck her not as a declaration of love, but as a curse, a curse binding her to him.
Will you love me forever, darling Clemency, and make me the happiest man in the whole of England?
What a magnificent bluff! In hindsight, she should have seen the traps hidden in the field of those words. Pretty they were, and perhaps truly meant in that moment, but like everything to do with their relationship, it was all abouthim.
Clemency hurled herself onto the bed and beat her fists against the pillows. Her hair and face would be ruined for the dance, but that hardly mattered. She needed to let all of this escape before it flamed hotter and consumed her from the inside out.
If she could cut off the understanding, in an instant she would, but Turner Boyle was a baron, an heir, his fortune dwarfing her family’s. William had married well, but Tansy Bagshot’s once-promising inheritance was now dwindling, her father’s lucrative shipping business struck with tragedyafter tragedy, merchant vessels lost to storms and pirates. Unless a miracle turned the Bagshots’ circumstances around, William’s lovely wife might soon be penniless.
Their father’s ailments had kept him from meeting formally with Boyle to discuss the financial ins and outs of the arrangement, though she was assured by both men that it would all be seen to shortly. Yet over and over again, one or both of them stalled, leaving Clemency’s future hanging on the flimsy hook of mere words. In her heart, she wondered if her father kept postponing and dawdling because he simply disliked Boyle, money or no money.
Her sister Honora’s fate seemed similarly bleak, her husband dying unexpectedly, struck by a carriage in London. Their marriage had been so short that his family balked at her taking the majority of his inheritance. Honora had loved Edwyn Hinton mightily, and so he had loved her in return, but the Hinton family did not share his infatuation.
And of course, what a devil would Clemency be to let her sister be pressured quickly into another match? No, it fell to Clemency to secure their futures, and she had done it, against her own prejudices and hesitations, truly against her sense and beliefs, landing a baron. Lord Boyle.
Her fists beat harder against the pillow, so hard she almost didn’t hear the door opening and closing. A rustle of skirts and pitter-patter of slippers later, and her sister was there, stroking the hair back from Clemency’s forehead and sighing.
“Mother is concerned,” Honora murmured. Even before Edwyn passed, Honora had always spoken softly, now her voice barely rose above a whisper.
“Oh, hang Mother!I’mconcerned!” Clemency flipped onto her back, staring up into her sister’s face. Her browsmet in consternation. “He does not love me, Honora. He did! Oh, he did. But now…now…”
“Dearest,” Honora said, pulling Clemency up until she could hug her properly. “I thought something might have transpired between you. He does not gaze at you as he once did. What happened?”
“I do not know! I can only guess and conjecture. He will not even speak to me, Nora, and he will not drop me out of pity. How I wish he would just end it! I would rather be humiliated and scorned, and have the whole world laugh at me for daring to change my mind and fall in love. Miss Taylor wouldn’t even laugh at me now; she would feel only pity. Oh, but I should have taken her lessons more truly to heart.”
