They’d met years before she’d made her official debut, when both Stuart and the Besslers had been guests at a weeklong house party at Lyndhurst Hall. He’d been alone in the garden, smoking a cigarette, thinking of someone else. And she’d escaped from the nursery to watch the dancing in the ballroom, indignant that a mature, clever girl such as herself wasn’t allowed to join the fun.
“Yes, we have indeed been friends a long time,” he said.
And it had been with pride and affection that he’d watched the lovely child—though she’d always insisted that at only a few weeks short of fifteen, she’d been no child—grow into an even lovelier young woman.
“That’s much better,” said Miss Bessler. “Now, won’t you please hurry and ask the question so I may tell you how delighted and honored I will be to be your wife?”
Stuart chuckled. It was as he’d thought. Mr. Bessler hadn’t been able to keep the news to himself. He took her hands in his. “In that case, would you make me very happy by consenting to become my wife?”
“Yes, I would,” she said firmly. She looked happy—and relieved, as if she hadn’t quite believed until this moment that he really would offer for her. Her hands squeezed his. “Thank you. We both know that I’m not getting any younger.”
He still thought her a young woman, because of the twelve-year difference in their ages. But there was some unfortunate truth to her words. At twenty-five, with eight seasons under her belt, she was far older than the usual adolescents on display in London’s ballrooms and drawing rooms.
“Not that it would change my answer, because I’m too practical and selfish to give you up,” she said, “but I do hope you haven’t proposed entirely out of pity, my dear Stuart—may I at last call you Stuart?”
“Pity is the last of my motives, Lizzy,” he said. “There is no one else in all of Society with whom I’d rather spend my life.”
He’d delayed looking for a wife until he was old enough to have sired the current crop of debutantes. He didn’t want a seventeen-year-old, either on his arm or in his bed. He needed a more seasoned spouse who would not be flustered by the demands of an MP’s household. Lizzy was a descendant of an old and highly regarded family, a statesman’s daughter, and a gracious and competent hostess. And she was beautiful. She was everything Stuart could sensibly hope for in a wife at this stage in his life.
There were, of course, his more insensible hopes—but he’d had to accept that some dreams were stillborn and some memories mirages.
“I don’t understand why you haven’t been whisked off to the altar years ago,” he continued. “And part of me still feels that I’m asking you to settle for an old man of somewhat dubious ancestry—”
“No. I only wish that it hadn’t taken you so long,” she said. One of her hands tightened over his, and she looked down for a second. “I only wish we’d been married years already.”
Her sentiment surprised him. True enough that there had been a time, near the beginning of their acquaintance, when she’d been a little infatuated with him. But by her first Season, when she’d become the belle of the ball, her sights had been set firmly and ambitiously above a mere lawyer and MP.
“In that case, you’ll forgive me for asking that the wedding take place before the opening of Parliament?”
The opening of Parliament was at the end of January. She regarded him again with mock severity. “I don’t know if I’ll forgive you entirely for handing a wedding of such magnitude to me with only two months to prepare—and for robbing me of a proper wedding trip.”
“I apologize in advance for the rush. When Parliament closes, we’ll go anywhere you wish. And as to the preparations, I’ll put Marsden at your disposal.”
She frowned. “Must we involve your secretary in this matter?”
“Only so that you may have time to sleep and dine and bathe once in a while.”
“But Mr. Marsden grates on my nerves.”
Women usually adored Marsden. Stuart lifted one of her hands and lightly kissed the back of it. “Let him help. I do not wish you to run yourself to the ground.”
She grimaced, then sighed. “All right, I will tolerate Mr. Marsden, but only to save you the worrying.”
He rose. “Shall we find your father and inform him that he will soon have me for a son-in-law?”
She tilted her head and batted her eyelashes. “Aren’t you forgetting something, sir?”
She expected him to kiss her. He sat down on the chaise longue again and pulled her toward him. She lifted her chin and obligingly closed her eyes.
He placed his hands on either side of her face. Her cheeks were as smooth as the finest powder. And when he leaned in closer, he smelled the fragrance of lily of the valley, the same perfume she’d worn ever since she turned sixteen.
His lips almost touched hers. He held still for a moment, then kissed her on the forehead instead. Strange that they should end up engaged, a middle-aged man too late to the Marriage Mart and a young woman who should have been out of it long ago.
“We are to be married now,” she chided him. “You must stop being so brotherly.”
Brotherly. Avuncular was more like it.