She was. She gazed back at him with an open, interested expression, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
‘It’s been in my family since 1875, ever since it was built for my great-great-grandfather,’ he continued, turning back to look at the river again. ‘It’s the house where I spent all my holidays from boarding school and the home I intend to live in until I die.’ He paused for a moment, feeling his throat tighten as he remembered how he used to say it was the place where he and Harriet would always live, before—well, before his whole life was turned upside down.
Shaking off the tension this memory produced, he moved away from the window and sat back down on his chair.
‘In order to inherit the place, though, a covenant in the will states I have to be married within the next month.’ He tried not to grimace as he said it.
She nodded slowly. ‘Okay.’ Frowning now as if a little puzzled, she said, ‘Could I just ask—why the rush? Haven’t you known about this for a while?’
‘No. Apparently my great-aunt wrote it into her will a couple of years ago, but she was in a coma for eighteen months after suffering a massive stroke. I only found out about it three months ago when she passed away.’
He paused and swallowed, shaking his head as a wave of sadness at losing the woman he thought of as more of a mother figure than a great-aunt flooded through him. ‘I only inherit it if I’m married by my thirtieth birthday and remain married for at least a year, otherwise it gets passed on to my cousin, who is already married,’ he grimaced, ‘and the most immoral, wasteful, tasteless man I’ve ever met. He’d sell the place to the highest bidder in the blink of an eye.’
There was a heavy pause where he watched her eyes widen and her mouth twitch at the corner.
‘And before you ask, no, he wouldn’t sell it to me. We don’t exactly get on.’
‘I kind of gathered that from your description of him,’ she said with a smile.
He tried to smile back but he couldn’t quite muster the energy needed. Mirth was a hard response to summon when you were about to lose the only place in the world that really meant something to you. The place that held all your childhood memories and felt like an integral part of your history.
Your home.
He’d feel baseless without it, adrift, disenfranchised.
‘Well,’ she said, her eyes alive with what looked suspiciously like amusement, ‘that’s quite a conundrum you have there. It’s like something from a soap opera.’ Her mouth twitched. ‘And not a very good one.’
Rubbing his hand over his brow, he felt the tension this predicament had caused under his fingertips. ‘I’d have to agree with you.’
‘Your great-aunt sounds like a real character.’ Her eyes still sparkled with amusement but her smile was warm.
‘She was a little eccentric, yes.’
Crossing her arms, she peered down at him. ‘And I’m guessing no one you’ve asked so far has said yes to this rather unusual proposal?’
‘Correct. Not that there have been many suitable candidates.’ He leant back in his chair and mirrored her by crossing his own arms. ‘The fact we’d have to live together to make it look like we’re a real couple—apparently a solicitor will be deployed at random times to check on this,’ he added by way of explanation, ‘but not have a real relationship hasn’t exactly caught the attention of the women I’ve approached so far. I’m really only interested in getting married as a business arrangement; I’m not looking for true love.’
Her brow furrowed at this. ‘You don’t want to fall in love?’
‘No.’
There was a small pause before she asked, ‘Why not?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s just not for me, that’s all. Despite my great-aunt’s insistence that it was the best thing that ever happened to her, I don’t believe falling in love with someone can really make you happy.’ He sat up in his chair. ‘In fact, I think it does the opposite. It didn’t work out for my parents, or for a large population of the country, and I intend to learn from their mistakes.’
Not to mention his own near miss—though he wasn’t about to tell her about that humiliating experience.
‘Just out of interest, what does your temporary bride get out of this arrangement?’ she asked in a faltering voice, jerking him out of his scrambled thoughts.
There was a tense pause where they looked at each other and he weighed up what he’d be prepared to offer her if she meant what he thought she meant by that.
‘The candidate would be able to keep the rental cost on their property the same for the next five years,’ he replied slowly.
‘And would there be some sort of pay-out as soon as she’d signed the marriage register?’ she asked, her gaze intent on his now.
‘There could be, if it was a reasonable request.’
‘But she’d have to live with you,’ she appeared to swallow, ‘in your house?’
Noting the renewed flush of her skin, he could guess what she actually meant by that.
‘It would be a purely business arrangement,’ he reassured her, ‘which would mean she’d sleep in her own bedroom. There wouldn’t be any conjugal expectations. In fact, it would be a totally platonic relationship, to avoid any complications.’
‘I see,’ she said, her shoulders seeming to relax a little.
Despite his wish to keep sex out of the deal, he couldn’t help but feel a little miffed by her apparent horror at the idea of sleeping with him. Was it really that off-putting an idea? He shook off his irritation, telling himself not to be an idiot. The woman didn’t know him from the next man, so of course she’d be nervous about the idea of any expected intimacy between them.
‘We’d also both have to agree not to have any sexual relationships outside the marriage, again, to avoid complications.’
‘Okay,’ she said without expression, not giving him any clues about her feelings on that one. Would that be a deal-breaker for her? She was an attractive, sparky woman and he guessed she must get plenty of male attention. There was something really appealing about her, especially when she smiled.
‘One of the other stipulations would be that she’d need to take my surname for the duration of the marriage,’ he said, pulling his attention back to the matter at hand. ‘It would just be for appearances and she could change it back again afterwards, of course.’
‘Afterwards?’
‘After the divorce. There’ll be a pre-nuptial agreement to sign so she won’t be able to petition for money or property during the legal severance of the marriage.’
There was a pause in which the air seemed to vibrate between them.
‘Oka-a-ay,’ she said slowly, her voice sounding a little breathy now.
He frowned, panicking for moment that she might be stringing him along for a laugh.
Before he could start to backpedal, though, she fixed him with a steady gaze, her lips quirking into a wide smile—triggering a warm, lifting sensation of hope in his chest—then took an audible breath and said, ‘I’ll do it. I’ll be your wife.’