Джорджетт Хейер - The Reluctant Widow

“No, I do not forget it, but I think you must forget the circumstances of—of my father’s death!”

“I remember them perfectly, but what they have to do with you, I fear, will always remain a mystery to me.”

She was silenced, but after a moment managed to say, “I am persuaded your sisters would not say as much. Only think what a shock it would be to them to learn of such tidings as your betrothal to me!”

“If I know anything of my sister Georgy,” he responded, “she has already written to tell both Eliza and Gussie, and very likely Harry too, that Ned has fallen head over ears in love at last.”

She blushed rosily in the darkness. “Oh, no! do not say so! She cannot have thought such a thing!”

“Well, she said I was very sly, but that she would not tease me.”

“I must not listen to you!” Elinor said, much shaken. “Oh, it is the most ridiculous thing! You only met me a week ago, and then you constrained me to marry your horrid cousin!”

“It is a fortunate thing that I did not know you better, for if I had I should certainly never have done so.”

She uttered a laugh that broke in the middle. “Odious, odious man!”

“I depend on you to teach me to be less odious. I shall be very happy to learn of you.”

Elinor gathered her forces together. “Lord Carlyon!” she began.

He interrupted. “Do you know, it has of late become an ambition of mine to hear my name on your lips instead of my title?”

“Certainly not!” said Elinor with resolution.

He was silent.

“And when I think of the hateful way you have of calling me Mrs. Cheviot, when you know I dislike it,” added the widow, quite ruining her effect, “I wonder that you should ask it of me!”

“Very well. When we meet in public, I will call you cousin, as Nicky does. But here, in the privacy of my carriage, I need not scruple to say, Elinor, I have fallen very deep in love with you, and I beg that you will honor me with your hand in marriage.”

“You are talking a great deal of nonsense and you will thank me one day for not attending to you!” said Elinor in a scolding tone.

“Now you are being uncivil,” he said imperturbably. “I shall have to teach you how to reply to a declaration with more propriety, my little love.”

She trembled. “Oh, no! Pray—Oh, will you only think for one moment! If you were to marry me, everyone would say you had done it to obtain possession of Highnoons!

“Certainly not. You are going to sell Highnoons, and we shall not trouble ourselves to put it into any but reasonable order. It will go for a song, I dare say. If any money is left when Eustace Cheviot’s debts have, been paid, you will buy your bride clothes with it, and so we shall be rid of the whole concern. Have you any other objections to put forward?”

“Oh, if only I knew what I ought to do!” Elinor cried.

“You had better let yourself be guided by me, for I have no doubts at all on that subject.”

“Oh, my lord, how can I help believing that you have made me this offer because of some nonsense I have talked—the merest raillery!—of your having ruined all my prospects?”

Carlyon moved, and firmly pulled the agitated widow into his arms. “You know, I never thought you could be such a simpleton!” he said, and kissed her.

Elinor tried rather halfheartedly to thrust him away, but finding this an impossibility, appeared to resign herself, merely saying, when she could say anything at all, “Oh, Edward, no!”

“Elinor, I have spent a great part of my life in listening patiently to much folly. In my sisters I can support it with tolerable equanimity; in you I neither can nor will! Will you accept of my hand in marriage, or will you not?”

“Recognizing that his lordship’s disordered intellect was beyond mending, the widow abandoned the attempt to reclaim his wits, leaned her cheek thankfully against his shoulder, and said with the utmost meekness, “Yes, Edward, if you please! I would like it of all things!”