The Secret Mistress (With Bonus Short Story Now a Bride) by Mary Balogh

Author:Mary Balogh [Balogh, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Historical, General, Regency
ISBN: 9780440423324
Google: 5DuEWgOs-RwC
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-07-12T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

EDWARD CONSIDERED PASSING the drawing room doors and going straight up to his room. It would have been easy to do—the doors were closed. But he knew they were in there, all of them. He had asked the butler. His grandmother was late going home today—of all days. Juliana too.

He stopped outside the room, sighed, and went in. There was no real point in postponing the inevitable, was there?

“Edward.” His mother smiled at him.

“I’ll pour you a cup of tea,” his sister-in-law said. “Though it may be only lukewarm by now. I shall ring for another pot.”

“Don’t bother,” he said. “I am not thirsty.”

He was actually, but not for tea.

“It is no bother,” she assured him.

“Well?” His grandmother raised her lorgnette, but not all the way to her eye. She very rarely looked through it, having been blessed with exceptionally good eyesight for an elderly lady. “Was it a marriage proposal you were making, Edward? What did she say?”

“It was,” he said. “And the answer was no. And so that is that for the time being.”

“Lady Angeline Dudley?” his mother said, both looking and sounding shocked. “You offered her marriage, Edward, and she said no?”

“Oh, but, Edward,” Lorraine said as she pulled on the bell rope, “from the way she was looking at you last evening, I thought she was quite taken with you.”

“I am convinced of it,” Juliana said. “And Christopher agreed with me.”

“Apparently she was not,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back and forcing a smile.

“The girl is playing hard to get,” his grandmother said, pointing the lorgnette in the direction of his heart. “She cannot do better than you and she knows it and fully intends to have you, Edward, mark my words. She wants to be wooed. Girls do, you know, especially the most marriageable ones. They do not want to feel that they are nothing but commodities, and who can blame them? Every girl wants to be wooed. I did, and I was. Oh, your grandfather was a one, my boy. I could tell you tales to make your hair stand on end.”

“Edward,” Juliana asked after a short pause while the fresh tray of tea was carried in, “did you tell her you loved her?”

Dash it all, no, he had not. He supposed he ought to have. It was clearly what she had wanted to hear. She had asked him if he loved her, in fact, and even then he had missed his cue. He had attempted honesty instead.

“What does that mean?” he asked, taking a seat since obviously he was about to be plied with tea whether he wanted it or not. “I fully intend to cherish any lady I marry, to cultivate a friendship with her, to grow fond of her, to protect and defend her, to give her my time and attention whenever I am able, to remain faithful to the vows I make to her. Is that not what love is?”

“Oh, Edward,” his mother said, “you will make the best of husbands.

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