They had always known there was this obligation upon them and neither of them had expressed any disagreement, and yet this was the first time they had spoken about their marriage openly.
“When will you ask me? I will not wait for you for years. I wish to be married and settled.”
There, his speaking openly had led her to do so too. This was the sentiment she had been hinting at ever since he’d returned—that she would not continue to wait.
“I cannot say, or rather I will not, I suppose, because I do not know; someday in the future. You will have to choose whether or not you wait.”
Uncertainty shone in the blackness at the heart of her eyes. “I do not know if I can wait.” Her hand slipped off his arm and she walked ahead.
Touché. He laughed internally, and followed.
When Henry entered the formal drawing room his father was already offering Alethea a glass of wine. The footman poured it as his father turned and asked Susan if she would like a glass.
Susan had removed her shawl. The dove grey colour of her dress suited both her hair and her eyes, and oddly her light grey eyes seemed more striking than Alethea’s blue as she looked at his father and accepted the glass he had taken from the footman to give to her.
Henry walked forwards as the footman poured another glass.
When Henry took the glass, his father’s gaze caught Henry’s and his eyebrows lifted.
His father had picked up upon the atmosphere too and deciphered it. Henry was in for a hard debate when the Forths had gone. His father would be of the same opinion as Alethea. Why are you waiting?
Wonderful. It had been on his initiation that the two families had come together. This meal had been his suggestion, and now he would not be able to bloody digest it. Perhaps he should have spelled his perspective out more clearly when he had written to Alethea from London. Yet it was nonsense for them to grasp at this gesture with such silly hope. In undertaking one rare act of thoughtfulness, which his father had been remarkably pleased by, he had knocked open a hornets’ nest.
Lord, though, he hoped his father had not thought the same. Had that been why he’d been so happy with the idea? Damn. This was not meant to be an enactment of the prodigal son parable. He had not intended the fatted calf to be slaughtered and a toast raised to the fact he had returned home and would remain forever. The intent had only been to see his aunt and uncle before he returned to London.
He sipped from his glass. Alethea had turned her back on him and walked across the room to speak with Sarah.
Wonderful!
Yet to be fair, if she fell out with him and married someone else, he would not grieve over it. His heart was not involved; it would not be broken. It would make no difference to him, other than that when the time came for him to take a wife he would have to look for one.
He looked at the back of her head. Her blonde hair was beautifully and perfectly styled, and then there was the curve of her narrow neck. She bowed her head a little as she spoke to Sarah and it presented the area of skin just above the neckline of her dress. He sighed. His heart may not care but other parts of him would very willingly become involved in a relationship with her.
He breathed in, what were her sentiments? Was it merely compliance with their families’ wishes or did she have some greater affection for him? Perhaps at some point he should ask her that, and that too should become open between them.
“Henry. You are quiet and brooding, neither of which are terms I would use to describe you. Is your arm hurting?”
He turned to face Susan.
It was uncharacteristic for her to approach him and speak to him voluntarily.
Those pale grey eyes were intensely grey tonight, thanks to her dress, which exaggerated the colour just as Alethea’s dress made her eyes bluer. But Susan’s spectacles also seemed to make her grey eyes shine with a vibrancy that had more depth than Alethea’s blue eyes ever did.
Susan had recklessness within her, she might deny it as many times as she wished, but she did, and a dash of rebellion that her sister never displayed.
Alethea may have just told him she was willing to marry someone else if he did not hurry up and place a ring on her finger, but that had not been rebellion, she had merely hoped to gee him up.
“My arm always hurts since I fell from my curricle,” he answered.
“I am sorry.”
He smiled, bless her, she did look genuinely sorry for him, too. Since their truce she had become far more tolerant of him, and he might keep teasing her over her rebellious nature but it was no more than a pale shadow compared to his, while her caring side… She out won him a thousand to one on her ability to care for things.
“I am not complaining, I am only stating a fact, not asking for your pity.”
She started to smile but her teeth pressed into her lip, to prevent it.
He leant a little forward and said near her ear, in a quieter conspiratorial voice. “You have no need to be sorry for me remember, I did it to myself.”
She laughed suddenly, only for a moment, but then she smiled fully. God, had she ever smiled at him before? If she had perhaps he had not seen it up close, but the vibrancy in her smile was quite striking. Alethea had always been the bright, exuberant one. But there was exuberance in Susan, too, it was simply hidden.
“How long before you may take off the sling?”
“Another week or so.”
“You will be well enough to attend the assembly in York then. Alethea will be pleased. You will go?” The last was half question half statement.
Alethea will be pleased…
Of course there was another way to glean the level of Alethea’s attachment to him, he could ask her sister. They were close, they must share confidences. “I am not so sure she will be pleased, she may prefer to use the occasion to flirt with others and throw me off. We have just fallen out because I believe your family had an expectation that I would have proposed prior to this evening, and I have just assured Alethea that she should not expect it during my current stay or indeed in the months following.”
The brightness in Susan’s expression extinguished. “Why?”
“Why will I not propose? Because I am not ready. Is it not better for me to wait until I am happy to settle? I am too young. I like my life in town.”
“You are so self-centered.”
Her words struck him, and spurred him into biting back. “And you are always direct.” He swallowed back his temper. “Will she be very hurt do you think?” That was not really the question he was asking.
“Of course she will. She will be cut by it. How can she not be?”
Cut in what way? Cut through the heart? “I have not told her I will never propose merely that she should not expect it yet.”
“Then that is even crueller. She is not young and you wish to keep her dangling on a line of hope, like a caught fish you are trying to tire.”
Susan was far too quick. “It is not like that. I am not doing it deliberately to vex Alethea or delay—”
“Merely thinking of yourself.”
Damn her. “I am being wise. I am thinking of us both. I do not wish her to be unhappy with me, and I would be unhappy if I married her now. Would that not make her unhappy?”
“You are as self-centered as ever, Henry.”
“And you judge