SC01 The Proposal by Mary Balogh

Author:Mary Balogh [Mary Balogh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780345533579
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Published: 2012-04-30T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Lauren joined Gwen in the library ten minutes later. She closed the door quietly and seated herself on a chair close to Gwen’s.

“We saw Lord Trentham stride away from the house in the pouring rain,” she said. “We waited for you to come back upstairs, but you did not. You refused him, Gwen?”

“I did, of course,” Gwen said, spreading her fingers in her lap. “It is what you all expected, was it not? And wanted?”

There was a slight pause.

“Gwen, this is me,” Lauren said.

Gwen looked up at her.

“I am sorry,” she said. “Yes, I refused him.”

Her cousin searched her eyes.

“There is more,” she said. “He has been the reason for your depression of late?”

“I have not been depressed,” Gwen protested. But Lauren just continued to look steadily at her. “Oh, I suppose I have been. I have been realizing that life is passing me by. I am thirty-two years old and single in a world where it is not comfortable to be single. Not for a woman, anyway. I have been thinking of looking for a husband in London this year. Or at least of considering anyone who cares to show an interest in me. Everyone in the family will be delighted, will they not?”

“You know we all will,” Lauren said. “But how would this decision have made you so low in spirits that you do not even want to talk?”

She definitely looked hurt, Gwen thought. She sighed.

“I fell in love with Lord Trentham when I was in Cornwall,” she said. “There. Is that what you want to hear? I … fell in love with him. And I discovered just ten days or so ago that I was not with child by him, and I was hugely relieved and mortally sad. And … Oh, Lauren, what am I going to do? I cannot seem to get him out of my mind. Or my heart.”

Lauren was gazing at her in silent amazement.

“There was a chance,” she said, “that you were with child? Gwen?”

“Not really,” Gwen said. “The physician told me after I miscarried eight years ago that I would never have children. And it happened only once in Cornwall. But that is not really your question, is it? The answer to your real question is yes. I did lie with him.”

Lauren leaned forward in her chair and reached out to touch the back of Gwen’s hand with her fingertips. She rubbed them back and forth before sitting back again.

“Tell me,” she said. “Tell everything. Start at the beginning and end here, with your reason for rejecting his marriage offer.”

“I have invited him to court me during the Season,” Gwen said, “with no guarantee that I will say yes if he renews his addresses at the end of it. That is not very fair of me, is it?”

Lauren sighed and then laughed.

“How typical of you to start at the end,” she said. “Start at the beginning.”

Gwen laughed too.

“Oh, Lauren,” she said, “how could I have resisted love all these years only

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