“You are of age,” he said. “I assume you do not need your father’s consent. My mother may learn of our marriage after it has been solemnized. She would want a hand in the proceedings if she knew in advance. I would prefer to marry you without fuss or further ado.”
“Before you can change your mind?” she asked.
“I will not change my mind,” he assured her. “Why should I? If it is not you, Miss Muirhead, it will have to be someone else. At least I can be sure of not hurting you.”
Yes. He could be sure of that. Illogically, she felt hurt.
His eyes were very steady on hers and saw perhaps deeper than she had intended.
“I will not hurt you, Miss Muirhead,” he said. “It is a promise. After we are married, I will treat you with all the deference and respect due my wife and my countess. I have already drawn up a written agreement, which I will present to your father for discussion after our nuptials. It will give you all the future security you could possibly ask for, even in the perfectly likely event that I should predecease you. You suggested our bargain to me and I have accepted it on your own terms since they so nearly match my own. You are certain this is what you want?”
She uncrossed her fingers and moved her hands to the front in order to smooth out the skirt of her dress. For the first time she realized she was without either bonnet or gloves—just as she had been a few mornings ago.
She would have a husband, a quiet, secluded home in the country, children, security. Whatever else could she possibly ask for, when just a few days ago, even an hour ago, she had been looking forward to a bleak life of dreary dependence? And it had indeed been she who had suggested their very bloodless bargain.
“I am quite certain,” she said, looking up into his eyes.
“Good.” He nodded briskly. “Now we have only the hurdle of informing my grandparents to clear before I go to make arrangements with the vicar. For . . . tomorrow, I hope.”
Tomorrow?
She felt that somersaulting in her stomach again.
“They will not like it,” she said. “They will hate it. And they will despise me and see me as nothing but a fortune hunter. Perhaps they will even be right.”
His riding crop had been tapping against his boot again until it stopped abruptly and he looked around.
“Walk with me, Miss Muirhead,” he said, and he turned to stride across the grass in the direction of the falls and the steep stepping-stones beside them that she had descended earlier. He did not look back to see if she was following him, and that inherent arrogance, that assumption that he would lead and others follow, was more as she had expected him to be when she first met him.
She went after him and fell into step beside him. He made no attempt to offer his arm or engage her in any sort of conversation.
Climbing the steep path was very much more strenuous than going down. She had never done it in this direction before. She ignored the hand the Earl of Berwick offered to help her up the steeper, more perilous parts, pretending not to notice it. He did not press the point but went on ahead of her until they were up the steepest part and had only the rapids to pass before coming to level land. He had stopped walking to look back down, and Chloe stood beside him, the sound of rushing water half deafening her again.
“This was my favorite spot in the park when I was a boy,” he said, his voice raised. “I was strictly forbidden to come here alone, so of course I came all the time.”
She almost laughed. “It is dangerous for a child,” she said.
“Of course,” he agreed. “And for adults too. But children are far more surefooted than adults give them credit for, and the world was made for them to explore and challenge.”
“And for them to harm themselves in? Perhaps kill themselves in?” she said.
“Accidents happen.” He shrugged.
She looked at him. His eyes were squinting as he looked at something out in the fast-flowing river. His good profile was to her, and it struck her how very handsome he was. And it was not just his face and his dark hair. He had the perfect physique for his height and wore his riding clothes with casual elegance despite the dust that dulled the sheen of his boots. He looked restless, she thought, as though there were some power, some energy within just awaiting the opportunity to break free. It struck her that she scarcely knew him. And even that was an overstatement. She did not know him at all. Yet this time tomorrow it was altogether possible she would be married to him.
He turned abruptly toward her and held out his riding crop.
“Take this,” he said imperiously. And when she took it, looking at him in some surprise, he pulled off his riding gloves and thrust them at her too. “Take these.”
And he stepped out into the river, his right foot on a submerged stone while his left foot reached ahead to another.
The riverbed was sloping here. The water was flowing fast over a rocky bed. The falls began only a few yards away. If he missed his footing . . .
Chloe bit her lower lip and refrained from calling out a warning to him to be careful. Or from demanding to know what on earth he thought he was doing.
He stopped halfway across and bent over a group of stones that poked above the surface of the river. She could not see what he was doing, though his hand went once to the pocket of his coat. After that he turned and picked his way back toward the bank.
“Whatever were you thinking?” she cried when he was safe beside her again. She had no choice but to speak loudly in order to be heard over the din of the falls. “You could have killed yourself.”