A Kiss For Midwinter (Brothers Sinister #1.5)(3)

“Be that as it may. One never knows what a woman might find off-putting. I’d rather cast my net broadly than miss altogether. And, as it happens, I have a few defects in my character.”

For instance, he was fairly certain that his list of local beauties, arranged by degree of physical attractiveness, was not something that members of the opposite sex would find particularly compelling. Also, he had decided it would be best not to mention his main reason for wanting to marry—that he thought it expedient to procure a regular source of sexual intercourse without risking syphilis.

“Defects?” Toford squinted at him. “Huh. Strange, irrational creatures, women are. Miss Charingford is what number on your list?”

There was the problem. “Eleven. Well, ten, sometimes—but only some of the time. Miss Perrod is usually ten. But at some angles, in some lighting…” He shrugged. “You see my conundrum. If I want to talk to the ten loveliest young ladies, I might need to include Miss Charingford. But if I do, I’ll have eleven, not ten. Both results make my hands itch.” He rubbed them together, but it didn’t help. That unpleasant sensation he felt in the palms of his hands was an illusion, a mere echo of that same itch somewhere in his brain.

“Maybe,” Toford said, “maybe you should talk to her—not for the list, mind you, but just as a way of seeing her up close. Evaluating whether she should be included or not.”

“Ah,” he said in relief. “Good thinking.”

Which was how he found himself walking around a park a few days later, with Miss Lydia Charingford on his arm, wondering how quickly he could extricate himself from the conversation. Closer examination revealed that she was number eleven. Most definitely eleven, with those freckles that he hadn’t noticed from a distance and that too-wide smile. Furthermore, she fussed with the ribbons of her gown and responded to his conversational overtures in monosyllables.

“This is fine weather for September,” he tried.

“Is it?” She stared straight ahead, her mouth pinched in a way that could have sunk her to twelve.

“Yes,” he replied. “It is.”

They walked on in blighted silence.

“Much has changed in Leicester since my absence,” he tried again. “That’s a new façade on the hat emporium, is it not?”

She didn’t even look in the direction that he pointed. “Is it?” she asked.

Her terse responses brought out the devil in him. He’d not been lying when he said he had a few defects in his personality. He turned to her and spoke with no effort at politeness. “Did you know that before I spoke this sentence, you had uttered twenty percent of the words in the conversation? Now we are much closer to ten percent. It won’t do, Miss Charingford. It won’t do.”

Beside him, she tilted her head. “Won’t it?”

He clenched a fist, annoyed beyond measure. He’d used up his rather limited store of polite conversation already, and she wasn’t even trying. In fact, she was looking up at him resentfully.

“I think it will do,” she said. “I think it will do very well. I know what you are thinking, Doctor Grantham. You’re thinking that I’m easy prey.”

“I’m thinking that?” He wrinkled his nose.

She looked about, as if to verify that nobody was nearby. “That because you know of my faults, of what has happened to me, that I’ll be susceptible to your blackmail and flattery.”

“Blackmail!” he repeated in surprise.

“I don’t care what you think of my moral decay,” she hissed. “I am still alive, and I intend to remain so. I refuse to be ruined. If you try anything, you’ll be sorry.”

It was the look on her face that sparked his recognition—that defiant, accusing glare directed at him once more. It made him catch his breath, remembering the girl from five years ago. He’d worried about her after he left. Every time he’d seen an unwed mother or a prostitute in those intervening years, he’d wondered what horror his silence had brought to her.

The answer, apparently, was…nothing. Holding his tongue hadn’t had any consequence. Because she was here, accepted by all. She’d not only survived, she’d managed to do so with her reputation intact.

And she was glaring at him. “So stop measuring me for your bed, Grantham,” she told him. “You aren’t going to have me.”

He stared at her, collecting his confused feelings. He hadn’t recognized her, but she’d recognized him—the difference between fifteen and twenty, apparently, being far greater than the difference between twenty-one and twenty-six. She was being uncivil to him on purpose. She thought—oh, God—she thought he was trying to—

“Rest easy, Miss Charingford,” he said. “I wasn’t attempting to seduce you. I had come to no conclusions about your virtue. I was only talking to you because you were the eleventh prettiest young lady in Leicester.”

Faint dots of pink appeared on her cheeks. “Oh?” There was a dangerous tone to her voice now. “Eleven, am I?”

“That is—I mean—” He looked away. “Shite. I didn’t mean to say that.”

She didn’t gasp at that obscenity. “Work your way on to number twelve,” she snapped. “Number eleven wants nothing more to do with you.”