“You may speak of whatever you wish,” he said. “I have heard from some friends that you’re a great lover of nature.”
He felt her fingers tense upon his sleeve. Well, she had spent the past ten minutes going on about aquatic animals. She hadn’t scrabbled about in any of the garden beds yet. Perhaps she wished to, and barely restrained herself.
“I do enjoy nature,” she said at last. “I find it very interesting.”
“In what way?”
She turned toward him, thinking. “In the way that it never stays the same. There’s always a mystery to it. Nature is connected to life. It is life, don’t you imagine? And look how complicated that can be. Life, I mean.”
Her face grew animated as she warmed to her topic. There must have been some surprise on his face, no matter how he tried to hide it, for she followed up weakly.
“Perhaps I think about these things too much.”
“Not at all.” He cast about for a proper response and hit upon a remembrance from his school days. “According to Socrates, an unexamined life is not worth living.”
“Ah, Socrates.” Her smile returned. “He believed nature was akin to divinity. It’s telling that so many philosophers have concerned themselves with nature’s mysteries. It’s endlessly interesting, don’t you think?”
I think, Lady Jane, that Lord Hobart probably lost his nerve after just such a conversation as this. He’d met Hobart on a few occasions, and remembered him as a small-minded fellow, unlikely to bear much interest in the mysteries of nature. For Townsend, the most interesting parts of nature revealed themselves in the bedroom. One found mystery and divinity indeed, if one bedded down with an adequately voracious woman.
A dangerous line of thought, that, as he strolled with his maidenly fiancée. She was still going on about Socrates, God save him.
“I suppose I am talking too much and behaving like a bluestocking,” she said, as if she’d heard his thought. “There, I shouldn’t have said that either.” Her ladylike mask fell away, revealing more honest anxiety. “I must admit I’m not the best at…”
She paused, biting her lip, and glanced back toward the house.
“What are you not the best at, Lady Jane? Vapid conversation? Have you studied philosophy when you ought to have been perfecting your witty banter?”
He was teasing, but she answered with a serious frown. “I was meant to marry a family friend, so I haven’t had much practice with courtship.” She gave him a sideways look. “I suppose you’re used to more well-spoken women.”
“If by well-spoken, you mean capable of prattling on about absolutely nothing for the better part of an hour, then yes. That’s not a difficult art. You can learn to be better at it if you like, Lady Jane, but when we’re alone, you may speak as you wish.”
What a kind and husbandly thing to say. He was warming to her strangeness, against all odds. She’d never have the grace or beauty of Ophelia, but she wasn’t unpleasant. They would rub along together well enough if she wasn’t a bore.
“What beautiful gardens,” he said, as they strolled past a ruthlessly manicured hedgerow. “Did you have a hand in any of the planning?”
“Not this section, no. The head groundskeeper won’t let me touch it, but I have my own garden nearer the house, one I’ve planted myself.”
“How wonderful.”
“I’m sure you won’t wish to see it, not at this time of year. It’s more colorful in spring.”
“Everything is more colorful in spring, isn’t it?”
Was his answer too curt? She was silent for long moments, then she said, “I suppose we’ll be wed by then. By spring.”
“It seems your father wants us wed at the earliest opportunity.” He didn’t say it meanly, or with sarcasm, but beneath her bonnet’s brim, he could see her delicate jaw go tight.
“Don’t you wish to wed?” she asked.
It was tempting to tell her the truth, that this had all been a terrible accident, that he did not wish to wed any woman but the one Wescott had stolen from him. But to admit he’d meant to offer for her sister, not her, in some quest for petty revenge…
He couldn’t do it, not after the tremor he’d heard in her voice.
“Of course I wish to wed you,” he said. “I wouldn’t have offered for you otherwise. I hope you didn’t find it impertinent, that I didn’t seek an introduction first.”
“Impertinent? Oh, no. Just a little surprising. If I may ask…” She stopped on the path, and he stopped too as she drew her arm from his. “Why did you choose to marry me, Lord Townsend? Is that too rude a question?”
She was not flirtatious, this one. She was not glib and teasing as other society ladies were. She was awkward and sincere in a way that unsettled him. He cleared his throat and removed his hat, turning the brim in his hand.
“It’s not rude, Lady Jane. I’m sure you’re due an answer.”
“No, you needn’t tell me. I shouldn’t have asked.”
It was a silly, pointless argument they were having, but it gave him time to frame a plausible lie to spare her feelings.
“If you must know, I heard of your plight during the events of last season, when your expected fiancé decided… Well.” He turned his hat again. “I heard you were poorly treated, and it incensed me. I felt the need to come to your rescue, to play the hero, perhaps.”
Her eyes were wide, amber-gold and utterly trusting. What a liar he was, and she believed every word. He looked across the gardens toward the fountain, returning his hat to its proper place atop his head. “It was forward of me, yes. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Oh.” She turned away, biting her lip again. “No, I don’t mind.”
“As a proponent of decency and honor, I saw an opportunity to come to your aid and I took it. Why, I had been looking for a prospective wife for some time when I heard of your plight.” Such lies. Unctuous, flowery lies, while his fiancée was guileless to a fault.
Another thought came into his head. Did the poor woman wish to marry him? He’d assumed, because of her desperate circumstances, she’d gladly accept his offer, but maybe she preferred to remain unwed at her country home, cataloguing fish, gardening into her spinsterhood, surrounded by the nature she loved so much. If she were to break their engagement, no one could fault him.
“Jane. I must ask you something now, in private, before we return to your parents’ parlor.” He took her delicate hands and squeezed them gently when he saw the panic in her gaze. “No, it’s nothing worrisome. It’s only that…this has all been so sudden. I didn’t speak to you before offering for your hand as I should have, and your father seemed to feel you did not need to be consulted about a marital agreement.”
A spot of color rose in her cheeks. “No, he didn’t consult me. But he knew I wished to marry. When Lord Hobart decided he didn’t want me after so many years of expectation, oh…” Her voice trembled before she steadied it. “It piqued my feelings very much.”
From the tears in her eyes, he’d done more than pique her feelings. He’d hurt her badly. She could be so easily damaged, this one. The union which had seemed merely inconvenient to this point began to seem perilous. Lady June would have been so much safer. She was shining and confident, and would have helped him exact revenge on Wescott. Lady Jane was a crystal vase at the mercy of his brutish, selfish fingers.