Notorious Pleasures (Maiden Lane #2)(10)

“It also may not grow.”

She shrugged, looking pensive. “All marriages are gambles of a sort. One tries to even the odds by choosing wisely—a man who is well liked, comes from a good family, and is kind.”

“And the Readings do have a lack of madness in the family that is somewhat refreshing in aristocratic lineages,” he murmured.

She wrinkled her nose up at him. “Would you rather I marry into a family with a history of madness?”

“No, of course not.” He frowned, trying to articulate why her rather cold-blooded decision to marry his brother bothered him. Lord knew he wasn’t worried about Thomas’s heart. “You said yourself that a love match is ideal. Why not wait to make one?”

“I have waited. I’ve been out for over six years.”

“You’ve been looking for true love all this time?”

“Maybe.” She shrugged, obviously irritated. “Or something like true love. Besides, how long would you have me wait? Months? Years? I’m four and twenty. I have an obligation to marry and marry well. I cannot wait forever.”

“An obligation.” The words were sour on his tongue, though the thought wasn’t new. Didn’t all ladies of her rank have an “obligation” to make a good match?

She shook her head. “What if I met my true love at sixty? What if I never meet him? There is no guarantee that I will. Would you have me remain a spinster on some faint hope?”

He glanced at her curiously. “You believe that you do have one true love?”

“Perhaps not one true love, but someone, surely. I think… yes, I think that we are each certainly capable of falling in love—perhaps deeply in love—and that somewhere out there is a person who will reciprocate that love.” She wrinkled her nose, suddenly looking self-conscious. “You no doubt find talk of true love foolish.”

“Not at all. I do know romantic love is real. I’ve seen it, after all.”

“And do you think a rake such as you could fall madly, deeply in love with one woman?” Her words were meant to mock, but her tone was serious.

He shrugged. “Perhaps, though it sounds a deucedly uncomfortable state to find oneself in.”

“Then you’ve never been in love?”

“Never.”

She nodded. “Nor have I.”

“A pity,” he said, pursing his lips. “I wonder how it would feel? To be swept away by a grand passion? To give everything for only one person in the world?”

Her lips curved wryly. “So idealistic for a rake. Really, you do spoil my prior understanding of what the word entailed.”

“This is my social face,” he said lightly. “Don’t confuse it with the animal beneath.”

She looked at him searchingly for a moment before nodding as if coming to a conclusion. “I’m hardly likely to do that considering how I first found you.”

He smiled to cover a twinge of disappointment.

“But if you’re so idealistic, my lord,” she said, “about the connubial state, then why aren’t you happily married with a score or more of offspring?”

“I’m idealistic about love, my lady, not marriage. To be tied to one lady for the rest of my life, surrounded by small, grubby urchins?” He shuddered in mock horror. “No, I shall gladly cede the matrimonial state and all its attendant duties to my brother.”

“And if you do one day find yourself in love?” she asked softly. “What then, my lord?”

“Why, then, all shall be lost, my lady. A rake’s life crumbled to ruins, a splendid specimen of the bachelor state brought low by the bonds of matrimony and a delicate hand. But”—he lifted an admonishing finger—“that is, as you yourself have pointed out, very, very unlikely. My one true love may be a lady living in farthest China. She might be a crone of ninety or a babe of two. I may never meet her in this lifetime, and I thank God in advance for that fact.”

He’d teased a slight smile onto those soft lips, and his heart beat faster at the sight. A smile—a genuine smile—from this woman was like total nudity from another. And what a very odd thought that was.

“Why, my lord?”

“Because”—he bent so close that his breath moved a wayward red curl by her ear—“while I may be far from perfect in your eyes, I do assure you that my life is perfect as it is. I enjoy my rakish ways, my freedom, and my ability to, er, dally with as many ladies as I might want. For me, true love would be a complete and utter catastrophe.”

HERO STARED UP into Reading’s roguish light green eyes. He’d used a euphemism instead of the crudity he’d employed in the sitting room, but his words were no less shocking because of that.

She swallowed, imagining a legion of ladies sprawled across his bed, his well-muscled buttocks thrusting in that mesmerizingly rhythmic movement. Dear Lord, she should be offended at the vision, but instead she wanted to press her palms to her cheeks to cool the heat rising there. She watched as Reading’s eyelids drooped and his wide mouth opened to say something that would no doubt scandalize her even more.

Fortunately, they were interrupted.

“Might I have my fiancée back?” Mandeville said in a voice that was a little too hard-edged to be jovial.

The teasing gleam left Reading’s eyes, taking with it any softness in his face. What remained was an expressionless and rather daunting mask. Without his habitual humor, Reading might have been the type of man others followed into near-hopeless battle: a leader of men, a statesman, a visionary.