Page 24 of A Rogue's Downfall
“You make a habit of refusing marriage offers, then,” he said. “Why? Were they rakes too? Or do you haveyour mind set against any marriage.”
“Neither,” she said. “I just have the silly notion that I would like to marry for love. Mutual love. I wouldfind it equally distressing to marry a man who wasindifferent to me when I loved him as to marry a manwho sighed over me when I could feel no more thanliking or respect for him.”
“Which was it with your two suitors?” he asked.
“One of them loved me, I believe,” she said. “With the other, as with you, there was a mutual indifferenceof feelings.”
“So,” he said, “you are a romantic.”
“Yes.” She looked at him and regarded his smile of amusement in silence for a few moments. “Most peoplefeel great embarrassment about admitting such a thing.Most people go immediately on the defensive. But it isromance that gives life its color and its warmth and itsjoy, my lord—Alistair. It is romance that lifts life frombeing a rather nasty accident into being a thing ofbeauty and meaning. Yes, I am a romantic. And yes,I will marry only for mutual love.”
And so, he thought, he need not worry about the morrow and what it would bring. For even if he wonhis wager—whenhe won his wager—she would notmarry him. Before she would agree to marry him, hewould have to be in love with her too. He was safe.Free. He could enjoy the day, knowing that he wouldbe free at the end of it.
Her cheeks were tinged with color and her eyes were glowing. Her lips were parted in a soft smile. It wasan attractive idea—a thing of beauty and meaning.Healmost wished for one moment that he was the sort ofman who could believe in love and in commitment tothe beloved. Instead of which he believed only in lustand commitment to his own pleasures.
“You will die a spinster,” he said, “rather than compromise your dreams?”
Her smile lost its dreamy quality. “Oh, I suppose not,” she said. “I would hate to have to impose mypresence on Cynthia and Royston for the rest of mylife. And I would hate to miss the experience of motherhood. I suppose that sooner or later I will settle forrespectability and amiability if love does not comealong. But that will have to be sooner rather than later,will it not? I am almost on the shelf already. It is horridbeing a woman and expected to marry so very early inlife.”
“Have you never been in love?” he asked. He found himself hoping that she would not have to settle for lessthan her dream. She wanted to love her husband andbe loved by him. She wanted children. It did not seema very ambitious dream. But she was three-and-twentyand had not found it yet.
“Yes,” she said flushing. “Once.”
“But he did not love you?”
“No,” she said. “And I fell out of love with him, too, once I got to know him better.”
And a good thing too, he thought. The bounder did not deserve her love if he had so carelessly rejected it.She could do better.
“What about you, Alistair?” She was looking up at him again. “Why are you still unmarried?”
“Because I have never felt any inclination to marry,” he said. “Because I do not believe in love. Because mylife is too full of pleasure to be given up to the chainsof marriage.”
“Pleasure,” she said. “Pleasure without anyone with whom to share it. I cannot imagine such a state.”
“Because you and I are very different,” he said.
“Which is probably the understatement of the decade,” she said. “What you began to do to me last night”—she flushed deeply—“is probably very pleasurable, is it not?”
He could still regret that that experience had not been carried a little further or even to completion. He hadrarely felt more aroused by a woman. His eyes strayeddown her body and he could remember the soft, warmcurves and the unusual eagerness he had felt to cutshort the preliminaries in order to sheath himself in her.
“It is the most pleasurable activity in the world, Caroline,” he said, watching her mouth, keeping his voice low.
The tip of her tongue moistened her upper lip with what he guessed was unconscious provocation. “Andyet,” she said, “you feel no closeness to the womaninside the body? There is a whole person there experiencing pleasure too—I have no doubt, you see, that yougive pleasure to your women as well as to yourself. Ihad small evidence of that last night.”
“Did you?” Dammit but he was in grave danger of becoming aroused again.
“If those pleasures could be combined and shared,” she said. “If it could be twopersonsinstead of just twobodies making love, imagine what it might be like. Theearth would move.”
“They would hear the music of the spheres together,” he said, smiling in amusement. And yet he was notaltogether amused. Whatwouldit be like? It would, hesupposed, be making love, a term he usually used todescribe what he did to women with great enthusiasmand great frequency, whereas in reality all he did was—Yes, the obscene word that leapt to his mind was farmore appropriate to the type of pleasure he took fromthe exertions of the bed.
“Which way shall we go?” he asked as their progress took them first over the sandy grass at the edge of thelawn and then onto the open beach, which stretchedfor a few miles in either direction in a wide goldenband. “With the others toward the bathing huts? Orthe other way, toward solitude?”
“The other way by all means,” she said, immediately resuming the brightly flirtatious mood she had demonstrated at the start of their walk. “How am I to makeyou fall in love with me if we are distracted with company? How are you to make me fall in love with you?”
“This direction it is, then,” he said, turning them totheir right. “I would have accused you of abject cowardice if you had made the other choice, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “Are you in love with meyet, Alistair? I am not in love with you though a fewhours of our twenty-four have already passed. My impression of you as a successful rake is fast dwindling.You had better reassure me.”
