Ravishing the Heiress Read Free

various descriptions kept on sprouting. But it could have been someone in the next house playing, so dimly did the music register.
    “Do I—do I give the impression of being forced, sir?” Even her voice didn’t quite sound her own.
    He hesitated slightly. “No, you do not.”
    “Why do you ask, then?”
    “You are sixteen.”
    “It is far from unheard of for a girl to marry at sixteen.”
    “To a man more than twice her age?”
    “You make the late earl sound decrepit. He was a man in his prime.”
    “I am sure there are thirty-three-year-old men who make sixteen-year-olds tremble in romantic yearning, but my cousin was not one of them.”
    They were coming to the end of the page; he turned itjust in time. She chanced a quick glance at him. He did not look at her.
    “May I ask you a question, my lord?” she heard herself say.
    “Please.”
    “Are
you
being forced to marry me?”
    The words left her in a spurt, like arterial bleeding. She was afraid of his answer. Only a man who was himself being forced would wonder whether she, too, was under the same duress.
    He was silent for some time. “Do you not find this kind of arrangement exceptionally distasteful?”
    Glee and misery—she’d been bouncing between the two wildly divergent emotions. But now there was only misery left, a sodden mass of it. His tone was courteous. Yet his question was an accusation of complicity: He would not be here if she hadn’t agreed.
    “I—” She was playing the adagio sostenuto much too fast—no moonlight in her sonata, only storm-driven branches whacking at shutters. “I suppose I’ve had time to become inured to it: I’ve known my whole life that I’d have no say in the matter.”
    “My cousin held out for years,” said the earl. “He should have done it sooner: begotten an heir and left everything to his own son. We are barely related.”
    He did not want to marry her, she thought dazedly, not in the very least.
    This was nothing new. His predecessor had not wanted to marry her, either; she had accepted his reluctance as par for the course. Had never expected anything else, in fact. But the unwillingness of the young man next to her on the piano bench—it was as if she’d been forced to hold a blockof ice in her bare hands, the chill turning into a black, burning pain.
    And the mortification of it, to be so eager for someone who reciprocated none of her sentiments, who was revolted by the mere thought of taking her as a wife.
    He turned the next page. “Do you never think to yourself,
I won’t do it
?”
    “Of course I’ve
thought
of it,” she said, suddenly bitter after all these years of placid obedience. But she kept her voice smooth and uninflected. “And then I think a little further. Do I run away? My skills as a lady are not exactly valuable beyond the walls of this house. Do I advertise my services as a governess? I know nothing of children—nothing at all. Do I simply refuse and see whether my father loves me enough to not disown me? I’m not sure I have the courage to find out.”
    He rubbed the corner of a page between his fingers. “How do you stand it?”
    This time there was no undertone of accusation to his question. If she wanted to, she might even detect a bleak sympathy. Which only fed her misery, that foul beast with teeth like knives.
    “I keep myself busy and do not think too deeply about it,” she said, in as harsh a tone as she’d ever allowed herself.
    There, she was a mindless automaton who did as others instructed: getting up, going to sleep, and earning heaps of disdain from prospective husbands in between.
    They said nothing more to each other, except to exchange the usual civilities at the end of her performance. Everyone applauded. Mrs. Clements said very nice things about Millie’s musicianship—which Millie barely heard.
    The rest of the evening lasted the length of Elizabeth’s reign.
    Mr. Graves, usually so phlegmatic and taciturn, engaged the earl in a lively