Harlequin Historical July 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 by Virginia Heath

Author:Virginia Heath [Heath, Virginia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

In the morning two days later, Marcella rode to the park, her groom trailing her. She was looking forward to seeing Dellamont, who had been unable to accompany her and Lady Margaret yesterday, but had promised his sister to attend her this morning.

As they trotted along, she mulled over the brief conversation she’d had with Austin Gilling when she stopped by the office to have tea with her father the previous afternoon.

Gilling had declined to join them, but as she was leaving, he rose from his desk to walk her out, asking how she was enjoying her debut. When she replied drily that she was enduring it, he said, ‘So you don’t intend to marry an aristocrat?’

Had she detected an interest deeper than politeness in that enquiry? ‘That was my mother’s dream, not mine,’ she replied. ‘I entered society to please her and Grandfather. My hope since I started assisting Papa at the office has been to wed someone from my own world...the world of engineering. Someone I esteem and trust.’

She could have hardly made her intention clearer without actually proposing to him. Hoping she hadn’t gone too far, she held her breath until he finally replied, ‘Sometimes it’s difficult to realise the sweet little girl who sobbed on my shoulder after her brother’s death has grown up. It was a...shock to learn you’d embarked on a debut.’

‘A shock to me, too. But even Papa agrees I must wed some time.’

Pausing by the door, his fair face colouring, he said, ‘I think it quite likely that your hopes for a husband from the engineering world will be realised.’

Then, bowing, as she left.

Had he been hinting he himself would help her realise it? Had she detected a change in the way he treated her—something deeper, more personal than the avuncular affection he’d always shown her since childhood? Or was that only her wishful imagining at work?

At the least, he’d seemed to say he had been shocked into recognising she was now a woman grown. Perhaps if he’d not decided what he wanted to do about that fact by the time she left society, the calls she hoped Dellamont would make to her father’s office would prompt him into further action.

Turning her cherished vision of wedding her childhood hero into reality. It was what she’d wanted for years now, wasn’t it?

If a certain virile, dark-haired, dark-eyed gentleman was currently distracting her from that vision, it was hardly alarming—he was, after all, handsome and charming. But like the Season she’d embarked upon, he was a temporary detour from the path of her life. The sugar icing on a delicious dessert, something to be enjoyed for the moment, but not the nourishing stuff that sustained one over the long years.

As she rode through the park gates, a rider on side-saddle in the distance waved at her. Recognising Lady Margaret, she waved back, her pulse kicking up a notch when she saw Dellamont on his black gelding beside his sister.

Might as well savour every

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