“The young earl’s father had married his mother bigamously,” she said, “with the result that the earl was illegitimate and no longer eligible for the title. It passed to you instead. What was—or is—your relationship to him?”

“Second cousin,” he said. “Harry and I share a great-grandfather, the venerable Stephen Westcott, Earl of Riverdale.”

“You did not want the title?” she asked.

“Why would I?” he asked in return. “It brought me duties and responsibilities and headaches in return for the dubious distinction of being called Earl of Riverdale and my lord instead of plain Alexander Westcott, which I always thought a rather distinguished name.”

Many men would have killed for such a title, she thought, even without a fortune to go with it. She was intrigued to discover that it meant little to him. The deference, even awe, with which his neighbors had treated him during tea was clearly not important to him. He would rather be back at his precious Riddings Park, where his life had been dull but happy enough, to use his own description.

Before she met him she had expected him to be a toplofty, conceited aristocrat—that was why he had been third on her list instead of first. She had expected it even more when she first set eyes upon him.

She realized suddenly how very alone they were in the close confines of his carriage, and she felt again all her unease at his gorgeous masculinity. For it was not just his perfect looks. There was something else about him that somehow caught at the breath in her throat and wrapped about her in an invisible but quite suffocating way. It was something she had never experienced before—but how could she have done?

“Did you ever consider marriage before you inherited the title?” she asked him.

He raised his eyebrows but did not answer immediately. “I did,” he said.

“And did you have anyone specific in mind?” She hoped the answer was no.

“No,” he said, and she did not believe he was lying.

“What were you looking for?” she asked him. “What sort of … qualities?” It was none of her business, of course, and his answer—if he did answer, that was—could only bring her pain or discomfort. He would hardly say he had been searching for a reclusive, awkward beanpole of a woman with a ruined face and an unladylike involvement in business—and almost thirty years old, could he?

“None in particular,” he said. “I merely hoped to meet someone with whom I might expect to be comfortable.”

It seemed a strange answer from a man who looked as he did and had had so much to offer before he inherited Brambledean. “You did not look for love?” she asked him. “Or beauty?”

“I hoped for affection in my marriage, certainly,” he said. “But beauty as an end in itself? There are many kinds of beauty, many of them not immediately apparent.”

“And could you be comfortable with me?” she asked him. “Could you ever feel affection for me?” She would not ask, of course, if he could ever find her beautiful.

He gazed at her for so long that she had to make a very concerted effort not to turn her face away. Would this dreadful afternoon never end? “I can only be honest with you, Miss Heyden,” he said at last. “I do not know.”

Well, she had asked for it. Had she expected him to lie? At least he had been gentleman enough to give a diplomatic answer. If this journey did not end soon, she would surely scream. But she could not leave it alone. “My money would come at too high a price?” she asked.

“There is great pain behind those words,” he said. “It is your pain that makes me hesitate, Miss Heyden.”

She felt a little as though he had punched her in the stomach with a closed fist, so unexpected was his answer. What did he know about pain? Specifically her pain? “It is too unattractive a quality?” she asked with as much hauteur as she could muster. She turned her head away.

“Oh no,” he said. “Quite the contrary.”

She frowned in incomprehension. But he did not explain and there was no chance for further questions. At last, at last, the distance between Brambledean and Withington had been covered and his carriage was drawing to a halt outside her own door.

“May I call again?” he asked her.

She would have been a fool to allow it. She opened her mouth to say no. Her emotions were so raw she felt as though she had real, physical wounds. The privacy of her room still felt a million miles away. But the whole of her future life might be hanging in the balance—in the simple difference between yes and no.

Ah, this scheme of hers had seemed so full of hope and possibility when she had concocted it. How could she even have imagined that it was possible?

“Yes,” she said as she saw the coachman outside her door, waiting to open it on a signal from his employer.

Three

The thing was, Alexander thought as he made the same journey four days later, that old dreams had an annoying habit of lingering long after they had no practical place in his life.

He was not made for dreams, for he had always felt compelled to put duty and responsibility before personal inclination, and the two were not compatible. He had put away dreams almost seven years ago when his father died. He had worked tirelessly to set things to rights at Riddings Park even though he had been a very young man at the time. He had made the mistake of reviving those dreams a year or so ago when Riddings was finally prospering, but then he had had to start all over again with Brambledean Court.

This time, however, the task was far more daunting. There were people’s lives and livelihoods at stake. And the only way he could do it was by marrying for money. He had tried to think of other ways, but there were none. Any mortgage or loan would have to be repaid. Any hope of winning a large fortune at the races or the tables would be risky, to say the least. It might just as easily yield a huge loss. No, marriage it would have to be.

The dream, when he had allowed himself to indulge in it, had been the eternal one of the young and hopeful, he supposed—that vision of something more vividly wonderful and magical than anyone else had ever experienced, the grand passion and romance that had inspired the world’s most memorable poetry. It was a bit embarrassing to remember now. He probably would not have found any such love anyway. But there lingered even now a yearning for something different from what he could expect, some … passion. It was not to be, however. Life had other plans for him.

He gazed out at the flowering hedgerows, at the trees whose leaves were still a bright spring green, at the blue sky dotted with fluffs of white cloud, at the sun warming everything below but with the freshness of spring rather than the more somnolent heat of summer. He could smell the good nature smells of the countryside through the open window, and he could hear birds singing above the crunching sound of the carriage wheels and the clopping of the horses’ hooves. Life was good despite everything. He must remember that. One could easily miss its blessings when one wallowed in what might have been. Dreams were all very well in their place, but they must never be allowed to encroach upon reality.

He had been planning to go to London before Easter, though the parliamentary session and the accompanying social Season would not begin until after. The Season was often known as the great marriage mart, and he had planned to shop there this year for a rich wife—ghastly thought, ghastly terminology, ghastly reality. As though ladies were commodities. But all too often they were. He could expect to succeed. He was, after all, a peer of the realm and young. There was, of course, his relative poverty, but it really was only relative. A little over a year ago he had been Mr. Westcott of Riddings Park, a prosperous eligible bachelor. He had been dreading the marriage mart. Was it possible he could be spared the ordeal by finding a wealthy wife even before he got there?