“Your mother was a legend in the ton.”
Her mouth dried. Yes, her mother had been a legend. Her father had made that clear to her time and time again. She swallowed once more. “I think I am more like my father,” she said.
An ice-cold fear raced down her back as she realized that Turnbridge was expressing a sentiment that might be secretly held by many in the ton. Oh, she was perfect. But there was fear that her bloodline was not.
After all her mother had grown quite ill and died suddenly. And there had been rumors, rumors that she had not been sound of mind, that she had gone into a deep depression.
But anyone who knew her father intimately understood why that depression had been, anyone who lived with him would be depressed and full of darkness.
Melancholia was impossible to avoid with him nearby, but it was so much easier to blame her mother.
She beamed up at Lord Turnbridge.
“Would you care to take a turn in the garden with me?” he said, softly.
She nearly stumbled but caught herself. “I beg your pardon?”
“The roses, they are exceedingly sweet this evening. And I have something I should like to ask you,” he said softly.
“I should like that very well indeed,” she replied, her heart skipping a beat. For this is exactly what a gentleman should say before a proposal.
But then she thought of Mr. Courtney.
As Lord Turnbridge then took her into the crowd and began making his way towards the door, her stomach suddenly tightened. “Can you not ask me here,” she said.
“In this crush of company?” he replied tightly.
“Yes, you see, I am not supposed to be alone—”
He beamed down at her then clucked indulgently. “Are you insinuating that I am not a gentleman?”
Her stomach twisted and she rushed, “Oh no,” she said. “It is merely my father, you see.”
He blinked, his face crestfallen. “You do not wish to come with me, to hear my question?”
“Oh, of course I do,” she said honestly, even as her heart began to beat not with excitement but with trepidation.
“Then come with me,” he urged. “You shall like the question that I ask you. I promise you that, Lady Elizabeth.”
She nodded and drew in a shaking breath.
This was her chance.
She so wished him to ask her to marry him. He was one of the few gentlemen on her list of acceptable offers, someone well read, someone well bred, someone who would not be unkind to her at every turn.
And so, she gave a slight nod of her head. “Of course, since whatever you plan requires a private audience. Let me just go and tell—”
He squeezed her hand and smiled. “Please. I do not think I can wait another moment. The question is bursting out of me, but I cannot bear to ask it here. Come, Lady Elizabeth, come away and be mine.”
Be mine.
It was perhaps the most romantic thing she had heard in all her life.
And she found herself longing to go with him. This! This was what she had explained to Mr. Courtney. Turnbridge was her path out of her father’s house.
She took a few steps forward and she followed the marquess out into the hall, ready to be whisked to the garden and proposed to as the diamond of the Season should be.
Yet, she did not feel joy… in fact, her palms were sweating under her gloves and the strangest prickle was lifting the hairs at the base of her neck.