He nodded, as if he had expected as much, seemingly pleased if the small smile that lifted his lips was any indication. Frowning, not at all certain where this strange line of questioning was leading, she opened her mouth to excuse herself and hopefully escape his unnerving presence, when he spoke again.
“My wards have pronounced emphatically that they prefer to reside on Synne as well.”
How was she expected to respond to that? Finally she decided on, “That’s…good?”
“It is.”
His enthusiasm took her aback. She glanced over her shoulder. The house was not fifty feet away. If she raised her skirts above her knees and ran, certainly she could reach her waiting carriage in a matter of minutes.
Before she could do so, however, Mr. Hawkins stepped closer. Her gaze snapped to his, all thoughts of fleeing evaporating like mist.
“I wonder if you wouldn’t mind living here at Caulnedy,” he murmured.
So focused was she on the huskiness of his voice as it vibrated over her skin, she didn’t immediately comprehend what he had said. When she finally did, however, she pulled back sharply.
“Stay here at Caulnedy? I don’t understand. You mean as a type of companion to your wards?” Which was such an unexpected idea she could not decide how she should react to it.
In the next moment, he suggested an even more unexpected notion. One that quite literally stole the breath from her body.
“Of a type. Though what I had in mind was a bit more permanent.” He moved closer still until she was certain she could feel the heat of his body in the small space between them. “I would have you stay here as my wife.”
Chapter 5
Ever since that one horrific, defining moment when Ash’s life had burned down to painful cinders, when he had come home early from term after defending himself from a beating by his schoolmates and found his mother bruised and near death, he had lived his life by taking chances that others normally would not. It had led him to absconding with his mother in the dead of night, making his way to London after her death, joining Beecher in a business venture that outwardly had all the earmarks of failure.
And so when a young, unmarried woman whom his wards seemed to actually like was dropped in his lap like a bespectacled gift from the heavens, and shortly after he had decided it might be wise to marry in order to keep the girls in line, he was not about to ignore it.
Miss Pickering, however, was looking at him as if he’d grown a second head.
“You wish me to be your wife.”
“Yes,” he responded with that same certainty that had always precluded an important crossroads in his life. This was the right move; he felt it in his bones.
She gaped up at him, her sweet pink lips parted in shock. A shaft of heat shot through him at the sight, but he hastily buried it. This union, should she agree to it, would be a marriage of convenience and nothing more. No matter how delectable the woman in question might be.
“This is madness,” she said. “You don’t know who my family is. You don’t know my financial situation. You know nothing of my interests except that I like to study insects. In truth you don’t know anything about me.”
Itwasmadness. A mere half hour ago he had considered taking a wife. And here he was, proposing to the very first woman he came into contact with. If it had been anyone else doing the same, he would have thought they were meant for Bedlam.
Yet when he recalled how happy the girls had been when he’d come upon them with Miss Pickering—something he had never seen in all the time he had known them—he knew his swift decision to marry this woman was the right one.
“I know you are an unmarried female, and I am looking for a wife,” he replied. “And I know you like my wards, and they like you. That, to me, is more than enough.”
But she was shaking her head. “I have spoken to you for a total of perhaps twenty minutes,” she said in disbelief.
“Many marriages have begun on less.”
But she didn’t seem to have heard him. Her eyes, which had been glazed with shock, suddenly turned icy, narrowing. “Did someone put you up to this?”
“What? No.”
“Are you attempting to teach my parents a lesson through me?”
What the blazes had put such a thought in her head? “I don’t even know who your parents are.”
“Then why propose so suddenly?” She was growing more agitated by the second. She began to pace, her skirts snapping in the dry grass. “It’s absurd. It’s a mad scheme of the first order. It’s—”
“Serendipity.”