Seven Years to Sin(40)
“Good that you aren’t speaking,” she went on, “because you should be listening. I married a Sinclair male and raised two more; I know precisely how you are built.”
He’d stopped pouring at the halfway point, but decided to continue to the rim. “We are built differently from other men?”
“Some men choose their mates with their reason, weighing the benefits and detriments in a purely analytical manner. Others—like your friend Alistair Caulfield—respond to physical attractions. But Sinclair men choose from here”—she tapped her chest above her heart—“and once the choice is made, they are hard to dissuade.”
Michael tossed back the contents of his glass in two gulps.
Elspeth made a chastising clucking noise with her tongue. “It was years before your grandmother truly accepted me. She thought I was too hardheaded and intractable for a woman, but your father would not be denied his choice.”
“I wonder why she thought that.”
“And Jessica … I love her as if she was my own child, but I had reservations about her in the beginning. She is the type of individual one can never truly know well, but Benedict would not be gainsaid.”
“And he was very content.”
“Was he? Why then was he still making such grand efforts, like the bequeathment, to reveal a deeper side of her? It is the nature of love to wish to possess the other person completely—body and soul. I think it likely that he would have eventually grown resentful of her inability to share herself. Regardless, their match is no longer a concern. You are the one who is attached to an inappropriate love interest. You are the one who requires a new object of affection. It is the best way to recover from unrequited love.”
“I have larger issues to address.”
“Perhaps you could have remained a bachelor previously, but no longer.”
Michael stared down at the tumbler in his hand, tilting it to and fro to catch the light from the large window to his left. Of all the duties he’d acquired along with the Tarley title, it was the need to wed and bed a suitable spouse that most pained him. He would be tying himself into a fraud he would have to perpetuate for the rest of his life. Just the thought of it was disheartening and exhausting.
“See to Lady Regmont,” he said grimly. “Give her whatever counsel or sympathetic ear she may need, for as long as she may need it. In return, I will make myself available to your matchmaking.”
Elspeth’s mouth curved. “Done.”
Chapter 12
Jess strolled along the deck with her arm linked with Beth’s. The ocean breeze was strong, filling the sails and hurtling the ship toward its destination. Still, the pace was not swift enough for the abigail.
“I grow weary of the ocean and this vessel,” Beth grumbled. “And we ’ave weeks yet to endure.”
“Oh, it’s not so odious as that.”
The brunette looked at her with a mischievous smile. “You ’ave a ’andsom distraction to ’asten the journey.”
Jess attempted to look innocent. “Not that I would ever admit to such.”
Through her interactions with Alistair, she’d come to a new understanding of the pervasive infatuation most young women experienced in adolescence. Jess had never experienced it herself until now. She thought about Alistair with alarming regularity, both awake and while dreaming.
“Remind me of your fellow in Jamaica,” Jess said, hoping for a respite from her fascination.
“Ah … my ’arry. A sweet and randy man. The best kind, I say.”
Jess laughed. “How naughty you are!”
“At times,” Beth agreed, unabashed.
“Sweet and randy, you say? No one told me to esteem such qualities.”
“You were told well enough to catch yerself the comeliest gentlemen I’ve ever seen,” the abigail shot back. “O’course the prettier they are, the ’arder it is for their women.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“They are treated differently. More is expected of them, yet less is expected of them. They are excused from some things and ’eld to a ’igher standard for others.” Beth looked at her. “No disrespect intended, milady, but you should know.”
Jess nodded. She did know.
“So what you ’ave,” Beth explained, “are men who know greater freedom with fewer consequences. They are forgiven more often than not. And we women cannot seem to stop caring for them anyway, which ’urts. If I’ve a choice between men—one ’andsome and charming, one sweet and randy—I’d choose the sweet one. I know I’d be much ’appier.”
“You are a wise woman, Beth.”
Beth shrugged. “Lessons ’ard won. But I’m grateful for them all the same. Although, to tell the truth, I’d likely break that rule o’ mine for Mr. Caulfield. There’s ’andsome and then there’s men who make yer toes curl. Something to be said for that.”
“Yes, he does do that, does he not?” Which made it so deucedly hard to resist him and the consequences that would assuredly follow a liaison with him. She had yet to find suitable justification for such risk. A few hours of pleasure seemed too flimsy.
“You needn’t frown so, milady. Yer safe enough.”