Read Online Slightly Married by Mary Balogh - Free Book Online Page B

keeper—or my sister's either. Even
they
say it themselves. But I am, you see. My father was one of the poor until marrying my mother made him into a fabulously wealthy man. He was a coal miner and married the owner's daughter. Did you know that, Colonel? I am not even close to being a lady by birth, you see, though I have been raised and educated as one. How can I not give back some of what I have done nothing to earn or deserve?”
    “A thoroughly bourgeois attitude,” he said, “though perhaps I do the bourgeoisie an injustice. Most of them spend their lives dissociating themselves from their past and cleaving to those higher on the social scale.”
    Which was exactly what Papa had done. Eve stared stonily at the colonel, and he stared back at her for so long that she grew uncomfortable.
    “Go home to your family, Colonel,” she said. “It is beyond your power to protect
me,
far less all those for whom I feel responsible. I will manage. I will survive. We all will.”
    He turned at last to stare into the unlit coals in the fireplace. He spoke brusquely. “There is a way of saving everything you hold dear,” he said.
    “No.” She stared, frowning, at his back. “If there were, I would have thought of it, Colonel. I have considered
everything,
believe me.”
    “You have missed one possibility,” he said, his voice cold and harsh.
    “What?”
    But he did not immediately proceed to tell her what it was. His clasped hands, she noticed, were tapping rhythmically against his back.
    “You are going to have to marry me,” he said.
    “What?”
    “If you are married before the anniversary of your father's death,” he said, “you will be able to keep your home and your fortune and the lame ducks too.”
    “Married?”
She stared incredulously at his rigidly straight back. “Even if it were not the most preposterous idea I have ever heard, there are only four days left. Before the vicar had even finished calling the banns, Cecil would have his portico half built.”
    “There will be just time if we marry by special license,” he said. “We will leave early tomorrow morning for London, marry the next day, and return the day after. You will be back here in time to thumb your nose at your cousin when he arrives to take possession.
That
at least will afford me some satisfaction.”
    He was serious, she realized.
He was serious.
And he spoke with all the confident assurance of a superior officer giving orders to his subordinates or his men. He was not asking her, he was
telling
her.
    “But I have no wish to follow the drum,” she said.
    He looked at her over his shoulder, his expression grim. “I am thankful to hear it,” he said. “You will not, of course, be doing so.”
    “You can have no wish to live
here
.” The very idea was ludicrous.
    “None whatsoever,” he agreed curtly, turning to face her fully. “You are being obtuse, Miss Morris. It will be entirely a marriage of convenience. It would seem that you have no wish to marry. You are no young girl, and you must have had numerous chances to attach the affections of a man of your own choosing if you had so desired. Obviously you have not done so. Neither do I wish to marry. I have a long-term career in the cavalry. It is a life hardly conducive to marriage and family. Neither of us will be greatly inconvenienced, then, by a marriage to each other. I will return to my regiment after spending the rest of my leave at Lindsey Hall. You will remain at Ringwood. We need never see each other again after I have escorted you home from London in three days' time.”
    “You are the son of a
duke,
” she said.
    “And you are a coal miner's daughter.” He looked haughtily at her. “I do not believe the difference in our stations precludes our marrying, ma'am.”
    “Your brother, the Duke of Bewcastle, would be appalled,” she told him.
    “He need never know,” he said without denying it. “Besides, I am thirty years old and have long been my own man,