Mary Balogh: Gentle conquest

He was beautiful, she thought, and then realized with some revulsion just what adjective her mind had chosen to describe him. What woman wanted a beautiful man for a husband? Handsome, yes. Rugged, perhaps. But beautiful?

It was while she was frowning at the thought that the earl turned his head rather jerkily and looked directly into her eyes. He looked sharply away again, his fair complexion decidedly flushed.

Good God, Georgiana thought irreverently, he is shy.

RALPH MIDDLETON, Earl of Chartleigh, sat on a straight-backed chair in his room, staring into space, a riding crop swinging idly from one hand. He had left off his mourning again, at his mother's bidding. He was wearing a close-fitting coat of blue superfine, biscuit-colored pantaloons, and gleaming black white-topped Hessians, the fashionable purchases of the day before. Crisp white lace was visible at his throat and wrists. His fair curly hair, newly combed, was looking somewhat less unruly than it had appeared to Georgiana two days before.

There was really no point in sitting here ruminating, he told himself, not for the first time. Wheels had been set in motion, and it was beyond his power to stop them. In exactly forty minutes' time he was expected at Curzon Street to pay his addresses to the Honorable Georgiana Burton. Her father had assured him the day before that she would receive his offer favorably and had proceeded to talk in great detail about settlements.

Since the death of his father little more than a year before, Ralph had been somewhat dreading the approach of his one-and-twentieth birthday. It would precede the end of his studies at Oxford by barely a month. He would be an adult, equipped by age to take over his responsibilities as Earl of Chartleigh and head of the Middleton family. He had not felt old enough. He had felt inadequate. He had never wanted such a life for himself. If only time could be suspended and he could have stayed at Oxford. There he had felt thoroughly at home with his books and with people like himself, people who delighted in talking about important ideas rather than about fashions or the latest scandal. There he had felt as if he had a mind of his own. He had his own ideas and opinions, and his companions, though they might argue hotly with him, respected him too.

He had never felt quite accepted at home. It was a dreadful admission to make about one's own family. He used to look at his father sometimes without recognition. How could that man possibly be his father, the man who had begotten him? There was some slight physical resemblance, he knew, but there was no similarity whatsoever in character and personality. His father had been larger than life, doing everything to excess. Ralph had been somewhat afraid of him; he had known that his father despised him. He had felt inferior.

His mother had always dominated the whole family, though she was firmly of the belief that his father had ruled single-handed. She dominated through her complaints and her hints and suggestions. As a child, Ralph, always dreamy and somewhat absentminded, small in stature until he suddenly shot up in his fifteenth year, unaggressive, had allowed himself to be dominated more than the others. He knew as he grew older that his mother did not always rule her family wisely, but it had always been easier to give in to her than to argue. Obedience to her became almost a reflex action.

He had never been very close to his brother, three years younger than he, though there was an undemonstrative affection between the two. Stanley was very much like his father: confident, aggressive, physically active, very obviously masculine. To be fair, though, he had to admit that Stanley appeared to have a warmer heart than the late earl.

Gloria was perhaps the only member of the family of whom he was really fond. Although she looked like their mother, he could see much of himself in her. She was six-and-twenty and had considered herself betrothed to the vicar at Chartleigh since she was twenty.

The countess opposed the match. The vicar was merely the younger son of some obscure baronet. She constantly found excuses to force the couple to postpone their wedding. And Gloria took it all with great meekness. The only sign of firmness she showed was in remaining constant to her betrothed. She had consistently refused to be attracted to any of the brighter matrimonial prospects her mother had presented her with before their year of mourning had forced them into seclusion.

Somehow, in the year since his father's death, Ralph had reconciled himself to the fact that his life of free choices was at an end. He had hoped to stay at Oxford even after his graduation. He had not expected his father, so full of vigor, to die for many years. That life was out of the question for him now. But if he was to be the Earl of Chartleigh, he was to be so on his own terms. He had never approved of his parents' life of selfish privilege. His estates and all the people dependent upon him had meant nothing to the late earl beyond a source of seemingly endless income. Ralph had found it hard to love his father.

It was not going to be easy, the life he had chosen for himself. It would undoubtedly be lonely. His mother would never accept his need to understand the workings of his properties and his need to see all those dependent on him as people. His brief mention of Chartleigh the day after his return from university had confirmed his fear that his mother would interpret his interest as weakness. They had always thought him weak because of his hatred of inflicting pain-even on poor hunted animals. Perhaps they were right.

Ralph sighed, realizing that in five more minutes he must move if he were not to be late at Lord Lansbury's home. He certainly had one glaring weakness, one that had troubled him somewhat for a few years but which had now been drawn well to the fore. He was unnaturally shy of women.

Mama had suggested to him a week before that it was time he was married. He owed it to his position to take a wife and begin to set up his nursery, she had said. And she even had a bride all picked out for him, a girl she knew by sight only, a girl he had never met.

He had been horrified. The idea of marriage had occurred to him before, of course, but it was a thought rather like that of death. One assumed that one must come to that time eventually, but it seemed comfortably far in the future. He had never had anything to do with girls. He had had the opportunity. There were plenty of students at university who frequented taverns where the barmaids were pretty and accommodating. Some of them had persuaded Ralph to go along with them one night. Their obvious intention had been to help him lose his virginity. They had picked out for him a very petite and very pretty little barmaid, and she had been very obviously willing.

After a few drinks he had become bold enough to look at her and had felt the stirrings of desire. She had come to their table frequently, swishing her skirts against his legs each time, looking provocatively down at him out of the corner of her eyes, leaning over the table to pick up empty tankards so that he could have a clear view of an attractive mole far down on her generous breasts. Ralph had realized afterward that his companions must have paid her in advance to seduce him. He had shamed himself by lurching to his feet suddenly and rushing from the tavern, his face burning. He had been teased mercilessly for a long time after that.

And now here he was, Ralph thought, about to propose marriage to a girl. Was he mad? How could such a thing possibly have come about? He knew he was not the weakling his family thought him to be. He was quite calmly determined to live his position according to his own conscience. But he had never considered personal matters. When his mother had mentioned marriage to him and pointed out his duties to provide his family and dependents with a countess and with an heir, he had felt almost like a child again. It was very hard to withstand his mother's persuasions unless one had a moral conviction to aid one's resistance. He had no moral conviction against marriage. Indeed, he agreed with her. It was necessary for him to marry. But not yet, surely.