“Ungrateful?” she hissed, doing her best to keep her expression from twisting with the intensity of her emotions. She forced a smile instead. After all, she didn’t wish anyone to think she was going to murder the duke on the dance floor. “Those are alloldmen.Veryold men. Each of them is old enough to be my grandfather.” She bit out her words in tight breaths through her teeth, which were exposed by a smile she feared might appear as a grimace. “Every single one of them is overseventy.”
He waggled his brows at her, pleased, clearly convinced of his superior cognition. “Indeed. You have caught my point. I have done my due diligence. All of them possess excellent cognitive function and have no history of decline in their families. Yes, the lot all have a tendency to die in their sleep. No long illnesses in the last four generations.”
The sensation of flying? It vanished, and she felt herself square upon the ground. She’d placed her future into the hands of an arrogant lout. “Sir, I do not plan on being a nursemaid, thank you very much. And the idea of having to kiss Lord Taunton!”
She shuddered.
Of course, all people deserved love and affection. But she was not prepared to engage in such activities with those who had achieved such ripe years.
His own face then grew most strange at her words. A look that she could not quite interpret shadowed his features before he said swiftly, “We shall not discuss that. That is not important. Surely, those gentlemen would not even contemplate the possibility of kissing a young lady your age.”
She scowled. “You clearly do not know the machinations of old men.”
“Do you know the machinations of old men?” he asked, clearly horrified.
“You’d be surprised,” she replied tartly. “Every young lady is warned about the machinations of old men and the surprising determination of their libido that lingers until death.”
He all but gaped at her. “But if you marry one of them,” he protested, “you will have money, and likely freedom, imminently.”
Imminently? Ha! He was supposed to be clever. A great matchmaker. Right now? She was not certain if she would trust him to tie her slipper.
“You want me to wait until one of them dies?” She gasped, appalled.
He had clearly not given this suitable contemplation.
“Yes,” he said, defending himself and his ridiculous plan. “Is that such a very terrible thing? Any one of them will do. They all have a great deal of money, and when they die, you’ll be free and your widow’s jointure will—”
“Please cease,” she bit out, then drew in a fortifying breath. She stared up at his beautiful face, truly mystified. “I’m amazed, Stone. I came to you for assistance. Well, that’s not true,” she corrected. “I came to be furious at you, and you offered assistance. And thisassistance,” she continued, only just managing to hold herself in check, “is perhaps more appalling than the fact that you brought my sister and Deptford together to ruin my plans.”
She stopped on the dance floor, dropped his hands, and was grateful that the music came to a close at that very moment. Regardless, she was so horrified by his idea of assistance, she might have left him there without another word. And then she’d truly have ruined any chance at a good marriage.
For such a scandal would be impossible to explain away.
One did not leave dukes standing by themselves in the middle of dance floors in a fit of pique.
“I cannot do as you suggest,” she said firmly, thankful for the buzz of conversations surrounding them. “I will not marry an old man and pray that he drops dead.” She narrowed her gaze. “Also, I don’t know if you realize, but old men have a tendency to live for a very long time when one wishes them to die. Have you paid no attention to fortune hunters in the past? Old people can sense that sort of thing, and then they refuse to perish, and frankly I cannot blame them.”
With that, she turned on her heel and started to storm away with as much decorum as she could manage.
She paused, turned back, did her best to walk gracefully to his side. She glared up at him, forced herself to smile, lest everyone know of their quarrel, and said, “I am most disappointed in you. I thought you better than this.”
And then she drew in a deep breath, faced the crowd, and hurried through it, her hopes dashed. She was going to have to do this herself, and it was going to be most upsetting, most challenging, and…lonely.
For she did not have the skills that were generally required of a young lady in need of a husband.
Her poor mother, through no fault of her own, was failing her, her brother was failing her, and now the Duke of Stone had failed her, as well. The only thing she could do was rely upon herself, as she should have done from the very beginning.
Chapter Six
In all of James’s life, he could never recall an episode with a young lady going so…badly. He had severely miscalculated, which was quite a surprise, because frankly he never miscalculated.
He’d always had a very good understanding of people, and that was one of the reasons he was so marvelous at putting them together. From his first success at Oxford with his college don and a widow in the town, he’d known he had an aptitude for making people happy.
He’d never forget the rush he’d felt as the two had fallen into marital harmony. It had lifted his spirits so much he’d been determined to repeat the performance. And he had done so more than twenty times. And each couple had thus proved a success. Some sent him cards on the birth of their children. He was a godfather six times over.
He was very careful about the kinds of people he matched, and suddenly he was wondering what the devil he was about. What had he been thinking? Had he simply focused on Jack’s marriage as a means to an end and not the actual marriage itself?
That gave him pause.