Still, Lydia felt heartened. “It’s acceptable for men to…to visit women without being married. Like with Mrs. Hall, the other day. Are you telling me you don’t?”
“It has nothing to do with what is acceptable and what isn’t. I don’t wear gloves because I’m afraid that they might carry contagion. I’m not about to sheathe myself in a woman who could give me a disease. When I established myself here in Leicester, I determined that I wouldn’t have intercourse at all until I married.” There was a little smile on his face. “I didn’t think it would take quite so long, or I’m not sure I would have made such a hasty vow.”
“So you are looking for a wife? Good, God, Doctor Grantham. Sixteen months ago you reached girl number eleven in Leicester. What woman are you on now, number forty?”
“It…it hasn’t been like that.” He grimaced.
Lydia gave him her best wide-eyed innocent’s look. “I realize the search will be difficult, but surely somewhere in the entirety of Leicester, there must be at least one female who is so undiscriminating that she is willing to accept even you.”
“At least one?” He grinned broadly at her, understanding her teasing for what it was. “My. Praise like that will go straight to my head.”
“Do take it to heart. Even someone like you should be able to find a wife.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Even someone like me appreciates the sentiment.”
“Perhaps if you were a little less circumspect at displaying your income, you could convince number fifty.”
He laughed out loud. “You viper,” he said, but the words had no real heat to them. “It’s those defects in my character again. If you must know, I’d make a devil of a husband—always being woken at half two in the morning to go see someone who’s taken ill, telling my wife the truth no matter how inconvenient or unflattering it might be.” He shook his head and smiled at her. “Caring more about neatness than my personal wellbeing. Making terrible jokes.”
“You’re not all that terrible.”
“Thank you. I shall have that engraved on a plaque and presented to future candidates with your recommendation. The real problem is that I’m unfortunately constant in my affections. I’ve had my eye on one particular woman for more than a year. It wouldn’t be fair to marry anyone else with my attention thus engaged.”
“Oh, too bad,” Lydia said, shaking her head. “And she is not undiscriminating?”
“Alas,” he said, looking straight at her. “She is damnably clever, and I wouldn’t wish her any other way.”
The way he looked at her made her heart thump, her breath catch. For a second, those dark eyes seemed to have no end to them, as if she were looking into a hall of mirrors and seeing reflection upon reflection echoing into infinity.
For just one second, she felt a tug of yearning.
“I think,” Lydia said slowly, “you might have to lower your sights.”
“I’ve tried.” He gave her a rueful grin. “God knows I have. But the view to the heights is so inspiring that every time I convince myself I must move on, I’m charmed anew.”
It was almost impossible to conceive. For all his black humor, Doctor Grantham was attractive. Those velvety black eyes seemed to catch her in and pull her to him. He looked at her with a dangerous, wicked intensity. His lips were full and curled up in a smile. If he hadn’t been so set on another woman, she might have found herself dangerously taken with him.
“What of you?” he said. “What’s your excuse? Yes, yes, I know; you just threw Stevens over last month. But I would have thought that for the eleventh prettiest unmarried woman in all of Leicester, there would be a rush of men to take his place.”
“Do be serious, Doctor Grantham, and think of what you know of me.” Her voice lowered. “I did not become pregnant through immaculate conception. I had sexual intercourse. I am the farthest thing from a virgin.”
He raised his eyebrow at her. “I’m a doctor, Miss Charingford, and even I can’t always tell on close examination whether a woman is a virgin. Besides, the hymen is just a membrano-carneous structure situated at the entrance of the vagina. It is of substantially less physiological relevance to a man in the throes of passion than the vagina itself.”
“Yes, but…” She sputtered. “It’s not about the hymen itself, it’s about—”
“As it is, I’ve had sexual intercourse. And even though it has been too damned long since the last time, I don’t go about trumpeting the fact. You don’t, either. This is an irrelevancy, Miss Charingford.”
She simply sniffed in response to that. “You’re being difficult. I’m fickle, and I have a temper. I not only cried off from my last fiancé, I threw him over by tossing two glasses of wine punch in his face at a dinner party.”