Hugo chuckled, delighted to have reduced her to dithering idiocy.
But Arabella was frowning. “Why do you want to marry me?”
The frown transferred itself to Hugo’s countenance. “I should have thought the answer to that was a mite obvious, m’dear.”
Arabella brushed that answer aside. “I mean, besides the obvious.”
Hugo sighed and, closing his eyes, let his head fall back against the chair. He had asked himself the same question and knew the answer perfectly
well. But he had not shaped his arguments into any coherent form, not contemplating being called on to recite them. He opened his eyes and fixed his disobliging love with a grim look. “I’m marrying you because the idea of you flirting with every Tom, Dick and Harry drives me insane. I’ll tear anyone you flirt with limb from limb. So, unless you wish to be responsible for murder, you’d better stop flirting.” A giggle, quickly suppressed, greeted this threat. “Incidentally,” Hugo continued, “you don’t go around kissing men like that all the time, do you?”
Arabella had no idea of what he meant by “like that” but as she had never kissed any other man, except in a perfectly chaste manner, she could reply with perfect truthfulness, “No, of course not! That was only you.”
“Thank God for that!” said a relieved Lord Denbigh. “Kindly confine all such activities to your betrothed in future. Me,” he added, in case this was not yet plain.
Arabella lifted one fine brow but said nothing. She was conscious of his hands gently stroking her hips and wondered if it would be acceptable to simply blurt out “yes”. Then, she felt Hugo’s hand tighten about her waist.
“And one thing more,” he said, his eyes kindling. “No more Maria Pavlovska. Ever.”
Arabella grinned. “No?” she asked wistfully, her voice dropping into the huskily seductive Polish accent.
Hugo stopped and considered this plea. “Well,” he temporized, inclined to be lenient, “Only with me. I dare say I could handle closer acquaintance with Madame Pavlovska.”
Arabella giggled and Hugo took the opportunity to kiss her again. This time, he let the kiss develop as he had on other occasions, keeping one eye on the door, the other on the windows and his mind solely on her responses. Eventually, he drew back and, retrieving his hands from where they had wandered, bringing a blush to his love’s cheeks, he gripped her about her waist and gently shook her. “You haven’t given me your answer yet.”
“Yes, please,” said Arabella, her eyes alight. “I couldn’t bear not to be able to be Maria Pavlovska every now and again.”
Laughing, Hugo drew her back into his arms. “When shall we wed?”
Tracing the strong line of his jaw with one small finger, Arabella thought for a minute, then replied, “Need we wait very long?”
The undisguised longing in her tone brought her a swift response. “Only as long as you wish.”
Arabella chuckled. “Well, I doubt we could be married tomorrow.”
“Why not?” asked Hugo, his eyes dancing.
His love looked puzzled. “Is it possible? I thought all those sorts of things took forever to arrange.”
“Only if you want a big wedding. If you do, I warn you it’ll take months. My family’s big and distributed all about. Just getting in touch with half of them will be bad enough.”
But the idea of waiting for months did not appeal to Arabella. “If it can be done, can we really bemarried tomorrow? It would be a lovely surprise—stealing a march on the others.”
Hugo grinned. “For a baggage, you do have some good ideas sometimes.”
“Really?” asked Maria Pavlovska.
———
For Martin Rotherbridge, the look on Lizzie’s face as he walked into the back parlour was easy to read. Total confusion. On Lizzie, it was a particularly attractive attitude and one with which he was thoroughly conversant. With a grin, he went to her and took her hand, kissed it and tucked it into his arm. “Let’s go into the garden. I want to talk to you.”
As talking to Martin in gardens had become something of a habit, Lizzie went with him, curious toknow what it was he wished to say and wondering why her heart was leaping about so uncomfortably.
Martin led her down the path that bordered the large main lawn until they reached an archway formed by a rambling rose. This gave access to the rose gardens. Here, they came to a stone bench bathed in softly dappled sunshine. At Martin’s nod, Lizzie seated herself with a swish of her muslin skirts. After a moment’s consideration, Martin sat beside her. Their view was filled with ancient rosebushes, the spaces beneath crammed with early summer flowers. Bees buzzed sleepily and the occasional dragonfly darted by, on its way from the shrubbery to the pond at the bottom of the main lawn. The sun shone warmly and all was peace and tranquillity.
All through the morning, Lizzie had been fighting the fear that in helping Amanda Crowbridge she had unwittingly earned Martin’s disapproval. She had no idea why his approval mattered so much to her, but with the single-mindedness of youth, was only aware that it did. “Wh…what did you wish to tell me?”
Martin schooled his face into stern tines, much as he would when bawling out a young lieutenant for some silly but understandable folly. He took Lizzie’s hand in his, his strong fingers moving comfortingly over her slight ones. “Lizzie, this scheme of yours, m’dear. It really was most unwise.” Martin kept his eyes on her slim fingers. “I suppose Caroline told you how close-run the thing was. If she hadn’t arrived in the nick of time, Max and Hugo would have been off and there would have been no way to catch them. And the devil to pay when they came up with Keighly.”