“I am three and twenty next month and in a year I shall be four and twenty, perhaps I do not wish to wait a year…”
He breathed in. The net was closing in on him. He could not run from it forever, he’d always known that, and yet he did not feel ready to settle, he felt a trap closing about him. But what she said was true, three and twenty was late for a woman to marry. He sighed out. “Why not come to town then this summer and spend time with me there? I still wish to wait a year, but then we may become better acquainted and you shall not feel so excluded.” There, he was not entirely selfish or irresponsible, he could think of her happiness too.
She stared at him, with her lips slightly parted. Her eyes caught the moonlight and shone silver. He had an urge to lean and kiss her but it was hardly in the manner of the moment and he would guess they were being watched.
“Very well,” she answered. Her lips pursed for a moment before she then added, “When should I come?”
“I intend to stay here as long as the assembly and then return to town. You may come anytime you wish. I shall write to you when I am there, and you may let me know when it is convenient for you to come in the company of your father and mother.”
“I should not have asked you that, should I? You do not own London. Of course I may go there whenever I wish, and when I am there I may dance with whomever I wish. I might allow any man who desires it to court me. You may wait a year, Henry. But I may decide not to.” She turned away leaving her cup of tea on the balustrade undrunk, and went back inside.
He smiled. Then laughed.
She had not answered his question, but he did not think her heart involved. He thought her feelings the same as his. There was attraction between them; but the rest was only common-sense; they suited one another and it was what their parents hoped for.
“What did Henry speak to you about outside?” their father asked Alethea as soon as the carriage door closed.
A tension had lingered throughout the evening because they had all assumed that Henry had intended to propose before tonight, and he had not.
Susan’s father had grumbled about, that boy, during their journey here, and now it seemed that he would continue the same theme of conversation on the way home.
“He asked me to wait a year, and then he said he will propose.”
“Indeed.” Their father grunted.
“It is the most direct he has been, is it not?” Susan tried to encourage a sense of hope.
“It is, and we agreed I might go to town for the season. He suggested it. May we go, Papa?”
Their father nodded. “Well that is at least something.” His hand lifted and his fingers twisted the end of his curled moustache, as his fingers always did when he was mulling over some thought.
“The season is only weeks away,” Susan’s mother responded. “We will need to prepare. We shall have to open up the town house, and have a ball. You must have a presentation there to gather introductions.”
Neither Alethea nor Susan had been brought out into London society; it had seemed unnecessary because Alethea had an agreement with Henry, and Susan had never requested to go and hunt for a husband. But if her family were to go to London then she supposed she must go, and therefore also face introductions.
When Susan and Alethea were alone later, lying in bed beside one another, whispering through the darkness, Alethea told Susan more of the conversation she’d shared with Henry. “You were right, though, it is the most direct he has been with me, and yet I feel as though he is manipulating me, I told him I would not play his game anymore. He said it is all to do with his feelings.”
“I have always said he is selfish.”
“I know, and I told him you have now convinced me of it.”
“What did he say?”
“That you have always had very little tolerance for him and I should not allow your opinion to sway mine. But it is not your opinion that is changing mine, it is him.”
Henry must lose his charm in the moments when he said no.
“I have told him that I will go to town, but if another man courts me I will let him. I have not promised to wait a year.”
Susan smiled into the darkness. “Was he suitably sent into a terror at the thought of losing you?”
“I am not sure he even cares. He asked me if I loved him, but he did not say he loved me.”
“What is the level of Alethea’s attachment to me?” He had asked Susan that too. “Did you say you loved him?”
“No. That would have been utter folly when he is dangling me like this.”
“Do you love him?”
“I do not know. I admire him greatly, he is very handsome, and I like his manner but I am not sure how deep being in love feels… I am not sure if I would even know. How do people know?”
Susan had no answer.
~
Once the library door had closed, Henry’s father asked, “What did you say to Alethea outside?”
When the girls and his mother had retired, his father had asked Henry to sit with him in the library. Henry had known immediately what would come next—a berating.
He was too old for this. “Is it any of your business, Papa?”
“I am hoping that it might be. Would you like a glass of brandy?”
“Yes.” If he must endure this.
His father turned to pour it. Henry leant back against a leather chair, gripping its top with his good hand, beside his hip.
“So what did you say? When is this proposal coming? It was clear to me tonight that Casper had expected it too.” His father turned holding two full glasses. “I think he is becoming as impatient with you as I am. Is Alethea?”
He walked over to where Henry leant on the chair and held out a glass.
“Thank you.”
“Well?” His father looked him in the eyes, and his eyebrows lifted, in the way he had of challenging while smiling. His father was so hard to read at times.
His eyebrows remained lifted, waiting for Henry to speak.
Henry was not inclined to, yet his father kept waiting. Henry had borne numerous interviews such as this over his years both at Eton, and then Oxford. He had regularly been in trouble as a boy, and then as a young man. His father’s way had never been to shout but merely to unnerve Henry, to make him feel guilty and accept the responsibility for his actions—it usually worked well enough. Until he had returned to Eton or Oxford and then the interview and the guilt had slipped from Henry’s mind.
Self-centered.
He refused to feel guilty now. “Alethea is ready to marry. I am not. I have asked her to wait another year. She told me she may or may not wait. But she is to come to town for the season where she will consider my request and other men.”
His father laughed, then smiled and shook his head. “She is a good woman for you, Henry. It is not that we wish to force you, it is just that she is—”
“Eminently suitable and conveniently close. I know. And charming, and sweet, and pretty—”
“And