“I won’t marry Miss Bessler,” he said. Strange how a choice that had so agonized him earlier now seemed so clear, so inevitable. “I want to be with you—if you will have me—for the rest of my days.”
“It sounds very pretty,” she said, an edge of what sounded like anxious anticipation to her otherwise flat tone. “But what are you offering me exactly?”
“An arrangement that I hope will suit both of us.”
They spun halfway around the servants hall before she spoke again. “You want me to be your mistress, in other words.”
“I know I offered marriage last time. I—”
“You don’t need to tell me why you can’t marry me,” she said brusquely. “I know. Last time I did not accept your offer for precisely those reasons.”
She smelled wonderful, of freshly peeled oranges and simmered cream. With a start, he realized that he was hungry—for the first time in two weeks. Marvelously hungry and ready to demolish the entire cold buffet.
“I could have compelled you to marry me then,” she went on. “You swore up and down that you would marry me no matter what.”
“Yes, you could have.” And he’d have honored his words if she’d held him to them. But the outcome of such a marriage—with resentment on all sides—would have been disastrous and they both knew it. “This time it will be a marriage in everything but name.”
Except there was no such thing as a marriage in everything but name. Without the blessing of the Church and the sanction of the Law, any other arrangement was illicit. He could not appear in public with her and she would have none of the rights and privileges conferred upon a spouse.
“For what it’s worth, I love you,” he said, not knowing whether it was enough to make up for everything he didn’t offer her. “And I will do everything in my power to make you happy.”
She looked away. “You asked me to leave, so I have made plans. And now you change your mind and ask me to abandon my plans. How do I know you will not regret this in a few weeks, when gossip reaches everyone’s ears and your respectability tarnishes?”
“Because the tarnishing of my respectability is nothing compared to the pain of losing you,” he said. “I will deal with the consequences as they come—I can bear almost anything, as long as we are together.”
She pressed her lips together. “I really don’t want to say yes.”
His heart floated on clouds. “But you will?”
She didn’t answer directly. “You look terrible,” she said.
“Middle-aged and lonely,” he answered. “We’ve wasted ten good years.”
She was silent for an entire minute. “We have, haven’t we?” she said.
And he knew then that she’d said yes. And it scarcely mattered at all that his good name would be bandied about and laughed at all over London, perhaps all over the country. Let the gossips have their day. They could not take away his happiness.
He had to relinquish her at the end of the dance. He danced next with Mrs. Robbins, and then with his other female employees, even the youngest scullery maid who hardly came up to his middle—a few minutes of personal contact to make up for the rest of the year, during which their existence would register only most tenuously among the demands of his daily life.
And in between the dancing he ate, solidly, almost lecherously. And the hunger in his heart, too, was fed and fed well.
She also danced and ate. She was born to dance; her gracefulness made Prior’s stiff steps look fluid, and even Simmons’s duckish lead look dashing. And she flirted, not so much with Prior, the two of them maintaining the dignity of a pair of uppers but with everyone else—the footmen, the undergardeners, the groundskeepers, even the stable hands.
He kept his distance, until he’d danced once with all the women present. Then, in true genteel fashion, he made known his preference by dancing with her another time, cutting in during her second dance with Simmons. “May I?”
Simmons bowed with Elizabethan flourish and yielded his place.
“He told me that Bertie used to pay him to weasel madeleines out of me. I was just debating whether to tell him that you kept his galoshes on an altar for ten years.” She smiled, speaking in a coquettish, French-accented English, flirting with him now.
“And hullo yourself, Cinderella,” he murmured. “You never told me she was a flirt.”
“Oh, she’s an awful tart, that one. Messieurs Grimms almost exhausted their household’s supply of washing soda scouring her story clean.”
He chuckled. “And did the Fairy Godmother come for a visit today?”
“I wish. Then I wouldn’t have had to spend an extra hour letting out all the seams so I could get into my frock.”
“It’s a beautiful gown.”
“This ratty old rag? Why, thank you. I had it made for eating out in Paris with Bertie.”
“Sounds like it was a fun affair.”
“It was, while it lasted.”
He felt inadequate. “I’m not as much fun as Bertie.”
“Maybe not—I don’t know yet—so you’d better love me more.”