This was going nowhere. I said, “Forgive me, I’ve let fly things that don’t
rightfully belong in this conversation. Wipe that repelled look off your face.
No, don’t say anything. I’m talking right now.”
But he just couldn’t help himself. He shouted, “What do you want? To be like
that Stanhope woman and not bathe for months at a time and share your meals with
desert rodents and evil-smelling Bedouins? That’s bloody idiocy, and well you
know it.”
I stepped down from the chair and walked away from him. When I turned, we stared
at each other across the room. It was a long silence. I said finally, “Well,
then, since I’m not going to eat my breakfast with the villains in the desert,
then it would appear that I am in full agreement with you. I will marry, just as
I’m expected to. I will be a wife, just as I’m expected to be. I will oversee a
household, a responsibility that seems to be attached to women alone. No idiocy
at all. Nothing at all to be disapproved by society. “So, Peter, the only
problem seems to be in years.
You believe the earl is too old for me, and I wouldn’t care if he were a hundred.”
“Why?”
“Why what? That I don’t care about his age?”
“Yes.”
“His years are irrelevant to me. As I told you, he is kind. He offers me what I
want. I expect no more because there isn’t any more. All there is, and I know
this all too well, is a good deal less. I will take the earl as my husband and
count myself pleased at my bargain.”
“Are you telling me that you have fallen in love with this man?”
“No, certainly not. There is no such thing. There are other things, certainly,
but with luck and a modicum of honor on his part, I will never have to deal with
them.”
He walked to the bowed windows, pulled back one of the draperies, and looked out
onto the park across the road. He said finally in a meditative voice, as if he
were speaking to himself, “Devbridge, from what Craigsdale said, is a rich man.
Thus, I don’t have to worry that he is in need of your fortune.”
“No, he doesn’t even require a dowry.”
“Very well. You don’t love him. He gives you what you say you need and want.
Thus, I am forced to conclude what I originally said?you, Andy, need and want
another aged mentor. Can it be that the earl in any way resembles our martinet
of a grandpapa? Do you really see him as a substitute?”
“Ah, that was quite low, Peter, but I am not going to shout at you. You’re just
trying to shake me, rile me, make me say things that I don’t want to say. Are
you quite through now?”
“In your long line of things you were doing, you said marriage, wife,
housekeeper. However, you said nothing about presenting the earl with an heir.
As I told you, he has a nephew who is currently his heir. That is not the same
thing as having your own son as your heir. Doesn’t he want to breed one off you,
his new, ripe, not to mention very young and quite appetizing, bride?”
It was out of my mouth before I could bite down on those damnable words. “No,
there will be none of that, do you hear me? None. Ever.”
He cocked his head at me. “Why? Is he too old to perform his husbandly duties? I
thought a man had to be on his deathbed before he was incapable of taking a
woman.”
“Shut up.” I shook my fist at him and shouted, “I won’t listen to this. You’re
like all the others, aren’t you, Peter? Well, married to the earl I will not
have to worry about my husband parading mistresses in front of my nose or
bedding the servants. I shall be spared the humiliation of watching my husband
indiscriminately spread his favors among all my friends. The earl swore to me
that he would not touch me, that he didn’t want any children. He swore to me