Read Online An Imperfect Proposal by Hayley Ann Solomon - Free Book Online

Diggory, his best friend, and one from Lady Luttlow. It could not have been a worse juxtaposition, and when he excused himself shortly to peruse them in his study, Amaryllis felt a deep sense of foreboding that lasted the whole morning and a good part into the afternoon, too, despite a vigorous ride and several games of charades.
    Stephen did not join them, though her eyes searched the horizons for him anxiously. She was too timid to enter his study uninvited, so she did not know that he sat there with a wry expression on his countenance, and his hands clasped bitterly across his brow. She did not know that he poured himself two glasses of brandy, nor that he scrawled and carefully franked two return missives.
    Lady Luttlow, of course, was begging him to return to London “for it is so tedious without you, my dear,” but there were also veiled hints that if he did not immediately restore their previous amicable situation she might be forced to bestow her pleasures elsewhere. This note, heavily scented and underlined in purple ink, quickly found a place in his lordship’s fire.
    The second, however, stung, for it contained laughing jibes about being caught in a parson’s mousetrap. There was even an enclosure from the Gazette about “a certain Lord R. who was in increasing danger of falling in love with his wife.” The ton apparently found the notion amusing and Stephen, who should have scorned both messages, fell instead into the trap of scorning himself.
    He had been weak, and selfish, and oh, so stupid. He had not only not kept the distance between himself and his wife, he had been as eager to close it as she. As eager as a greenhorn! He could squirm when he thought how careless he had been, how quickly Amaryllis had got under his skin, undermined his resolve, made him husband in deed as well as name.
    Well, that was not what he wanted! He wanted his freedom without constraints. He had been at pains to tell her so! Indeed, he had only chosen her because she was lonely and an antidote. He had never intended to marry a beauty that held him captivated by her every charm. She was bewitching and he simply refused to be bewitched. He had resolved long before the first stirrings of manhood that his would be a reasonable union, one founded on respect and integrity rather than love.
    Love, he knew, could be suffocating. His mama had loved his father and had exposed herself cruelly to a multitude of unkindnesses. If she had not felt so passionate, she would never have been so hurt. Stephen shook his head. The gossips were right! He was in danger of falling in love with his wife! He would be a laughingstock if he did not do something drastic.
    In this resolute state of mind, the earl sent his missives on to London and prepared himself for the trip back to his Mayfair residence.
    He expected tears or pleas and hardened his heart. In essence, he received neither, for Amaryllis had been expecting such from the start. It made it no easier for her, though, but she resolutely nodded and smiled and agreed that of course he must return.
    The girls pleaded with him to stay, but Amaryllis hushed them, and Stephen frowned, though in truth he had never spent a more delightful time than with these scamps and his own—had he but admitted it!—very dear wife.
    Again, that terrible yearning for children like Vicky and Clem, to start a family with Amaryllis, to have a child of his own . . . he closed his eyes firmly to such wishful visions. Amaryllis was becoming more part of his dreams than his own flesh and blood. He was placing more importance on her presence as a mother than on dreams of the heir himself.
    He was not a fatherly type. He didn’t know why he had ever thought he was. Foolishness! When his heir was born, he would be brought up properly in the nursery and presented to him on such occasions as were appropriate. But something in his heart mocked him. He got up from the table abruptly and disappeared