He had wondered if his mother had been having a word with Lady Livermere. The two ladies enjoyed more than just a passing acquaintance.
He had become aware of a buzz of sharpening interest around him as the evening proceeded. He was quite sure he had not imagined it. For of course he had been obliged to reserve a set of dances with as many of those young ladies as could be fitted into a long evening of dancing. He ought to have been glad. Without any real effort on his part he had been presented with a number of the Season’s eligible hopefuls, and at the same time signaled that this year he was in search of a bride. He might, if he had really wanted to avoid the bother of a protracted search, have made his choice before the evening ended, presented himself to the young lady’s father the following day, and made his offer before another evening came along. His betrothal might have been announced in all the morning papers the day after that. All the uncertainties of his existence might have become certainties.
It was not vanity that made him believe it would have been that easy. He had an earl’s title and fortune, after all. More than that, though, he was heir to a dukedom, and the incumbent was an old man well into his eighties. Ducal properties, all of them extensive and prosperous, were spread across large swaths of England.
Most of his dancing partners had been pretty. All had been young and graceful, with polished, pleasing manners. A few had been vivacious. One or two had appeared intelligent and had had some conversation—as far as one could judge in the distracting setting of a ballroom. All were eminently eligible. Only one had looked noticeably repelled by his facial scar.
As soon as the final set drew to a close, he had gone home to bed. How had his fellow Survivors done it—Hugo and Vincent first, and then Ben and Flavian? How had they been able to give up everything to take on a lifetime commitment that might well bring them nothing but misery, and, equally important if not more so, that might bring misery to their wives? How could they know? Or did they not? Did they merely hope for happiness and gamble the rest of their lives on a risky possibility?
None of them, as far as Ralph knew, had been forced into marrying out of any sense of duty. Well, Vincent had, perhaps. But none of them had stood in a ballroom, knowing that within its walls he must find his lifetime partner.
There had not been much of the night remaining after he returned home from the ball. He had spent it staring upward at the intricately ruched satin canopy over his bed thinking, not about any of the very real candidates for his hand that he had met in the course of the evening, but about the very ineligible Miss Muirhead.
Ineligible by her own admission. She was not technically illegitimate, of course, even if the rumors were true, since Sir Kevin Muirhead must have acknowledged her as his own at her birth, but she had the misfortune to have the distinctive coloring shared by Hitching and his legitimate daughter, which fact made it difficult not to believe what the gossips had said last year. And there was the other baggage she carried about too. Her sister, at the age of seventeen, had eloped with Freddie Nelson while his wife still lived, and then Graham Muirhead had got himself embroiled in a farce of a duel. Her father, instead of disowning his wayward daughter, had taken her back and then presumably paid the newly widowed Nelson a fortune to marry her before her child was born. Miss Muirhead meanwhile had been publicly humiliated and jilted and equally publicly denied admittance to Almack’s.
To call her ineligible was to understate the case. Ralph’s duty was to marry. And since he expected no personal satisfaction from marriage and therefore did not much care whom he married, it behooved him to please his grandparents and his mother by choosing a young lady who was both eligible and accomplished, someone who would adjust smoothly to her future role, someone over whose name not a whisper of scandal breathed.
He had met at least half a dozen perfect candidates at the ball. Yet he had lain awake thinking of Miss Muirhead and her absurd, impertinent suggestion that they agree to . . . What had she called it? A bargain.
Some bargain.
He had called on his mother the following day. Obviously she had spoken to Lady Livermere, though she had not been at the ball herself. She had heard of his triumph, of the buzz of interest and excitement he had caused, of the partners with whom he had danced. She had drawn up a select list of young ladies with whom it would be unexceptionable for him to strike up an acquaintance, soon to become a courtship. There was a neat dozen. He had danced last evening with four of them. She would invite four more, with their mamas, to tea one afternoon soon, along with some other ladies so that her purpose would not be vulgarly obvious, and Ralph would happen to call in upon her on that particular afternoon. The remaining four . . .
Ralph had stopped listening.
Four days after leaving Manville Court, he had found himself on his way back there to seek out Miss Muirhead. Suddenly her so-called bargain had looked like the best of his options. At least neither of them would be hurt by it. How could one suffer disappointment when there were no expectations? She wanted a husband and a home and family, a perfectly understandable ambition for any woman. He needed a wife and family. Neither of them expected or even wanted love or romance or any of those finer sensibilities some people of a romantic disposition deemed necessary for a good marriage. He had nothing whatsoever to offer along those lines, and she did not want anything. She was done with love.
He carefully kept his mind away from what George had had to say on the topic.
She was ineligible, yes. But unfairly so. In all the admittedly unsavory events in which she had been involved during the past six years, she appeared to have been quite blameless. And, he had recalled as a final point in her favor, she wanted to live a quiet life in the country. She wanted nothing more to do with London and its myriad entertainments. Neither did he.