“Well, this will prove his mistake.” Julia dusted off her gloves and straightened her shoulders. “I’ll not stand in his way if he wants Miss Faraday. She would undoubtedly be better for him.”
Imogen nodded slowly. “Perhaps you are wise to be cautious. Reading between the lines from what Teresa Long has confided over the years, Melanie is sure to cause trouble in Valentine’s marriage, especially if she doesn’t approve of the wife.”
Julia shivered. Melanie presented two faces to the world—a proper lady every matron over forty adored, and the critical schemer, utterly vicious in private. She’d do anything to avoid a confrontation with her. “She certainly would.”
Four
“I cannot believe she told you I proposed, and after she turned me down flat.” Valentine dropped into a generously padded chair in his parlor and groaned as pain flared. Being injured was bad enough. Being injured because he’d been an utter dolt and beast in the bargain pained him more. “Does she deliberately want to humiliate me before the whole of Brighton?”
Sir Peter Watson merely smiled. “Judging by her scowl—a match to your own at this moment, by the way—I think your offer offended her sensibilities.”
“Offended her? I was trying to do the right thing,” he protested. He’d been watching for her all day, undecided on how to act when he did see her though. Mostly he wanted to ask how she’d knocked him down in the first place. She had the making of a worthy wrestling partner if she’d been born a man. “Infuriating minx. I think I should not have bothered to worry for her reputation. She is more than capable of defending herself should there be a need.”
“You’ve had three months to do the right thing with regards to the scandal and didn’t. I hardly think a little nighttime visitation called for a marriage proposal, unless you were already considering it.” Sir Peter raised a brow. “The real reason, now. Out with it.”
Valentine sighed. “We were alone.”
Sir Peter grinned. “And?”
“And nothing.” Embarrassment filled him. For one brief moment he’d forgotten he was a gentleman and kissed her. If not for her stunningly swift reflexes, he might have done more. He was not proud of his behavior. “I was attempting to do what is right.”
“And her response to that was to knock you down?” Peter laughed. “Come now, surely you gave her just cause for that action.”
Valentine had so hoped Julia had not shared the events of their whole meeting, but it seemed she’d not been discreet with their friends and had told them everything. “I never so much as touched her.”
“Such fibbery.” Sir Peter shook his head and grinned. “You tried to kiss her.”
A flush of heat filled his face but he wouldn’t confirm or deny the accusation.
“She went to see you last night, at Imogen’s suggestion I must add, to mend fences so you and Linus could stop avoiding each other.” Sir Peter seemed to neither need nor wait for his response. In fact, he seemed delighted by how the evening had ended. “I will offer my congratulations. You have changed her opinion of you, my friend. That is very much in your favor for a positive outcome.”
He shifted in his chair to ease the pain of his bruise. “I don’t see how.”
“The problem with Julia—and all of our sisters, really—is that we were brother figures to them all their lives. We watch
ed over each other’s sisters without ever noticing they were growing up before our eyes and I assure you, they did the same to us.” He grinned. “You’re no longer a man to dismiss as merely her brother’s friend now, or opponent. You, my friend, are a prospective suitor at last.”
“I was her brother’s friend. Linus won’t even acknowledge me lately.”
Sir Peter spread his hands wide. “Marry her and Radley will be reasonable again.”
“That is the poorest reason to marry Julia, let alone any woman.”
“Then what other reason could there be to propose? You don’t love her, do you?”
“I don’t.” His sudden reversal in opinion, to ask for her hand last night, seemed inexplicable even to him in the cold light of day. A marriage would certainly restore Julia’s battered reputation and the company did prefer married men in their ranks. However, neither reason should have been enough to make him blurt out a proposal. He wasn’t that shallow a man. He’d thought he’d known his own mind.
When he married, Valentine wanted something warmer than his parents’ cold alliance. A woman immune to outside influence would be desirable too. Whether his father approved mattered little if he had his way and went into trade, although he imagined life would be more harmonious if he wed someone the women of his family approved of. Melanie already expected him to marry Julia. She’d railed at him for not seeing the need immediately after the race.
Sir Peter regarded him with a smile. “Well? Why the offer of marriage?”
Indeed why? He’d been affected by her energy last night. The excitement in her eyes as they’d tussled. She had the determination of a man beneath her curves, and that strangely appealed to him more than proper women did. “I like her energy.”
“She never does stay still,” Sir Peter agreed.
“I don’t mean that exactly. My sister says Julia willfully ignores propriety but I don’t think that’s entirely true.” He thought back over the past weeks and years of their acquaintance. “Julia is different to every other woman I know. Louder, impulsive, but never mean-spirited. When I agreed to race against her, she was so feverishly excited that she would at last discover her physical limits. She does understand what’s expected of her. She just doesn’t want other people’s expectations to hold her back, and neither do I. I don’t take after my family in that regard.”
“Your family could be a problem.” Sir Peter slapped his back. “Sounds like you have your work cut out for you. Good luck convincing her to take you on. With parents like yours, and that acid tongue of your sister’s in the mix, you might have only a slim chance.”