The First Proposal - Chasity Bowlin Page 0,21
it. “You appealed to her vanity and her desperation to be part of the inner circle… in short, you were gloriously manipulative. And to be perfectly clear, I only applaud that tactic when used on my sister. If you attempt to do so with me, it’ll go very badly for you.”
Algernon began unpacking the picnic hamper. “I assumed as much. You prefer brutal honesty and a good old fashioned bribe. Tea cake?”
She narrowed her eyes until they were little more than slits, a perfect reflection of her current mistrust of him. “I see exactly what you’re about! Ply me with sweets the same way I do those irascible children, will you?”
He placed one of the cakes on a delicate plate of fine bone china and handed it to her. “Will it work?”
“Very likely,” she replied flatly and accepted the proffered sweet. “Tell me, Mr. Dunne, what is all of this about?”
"It's about getting to know one another… After all, if we are to decide our futures by Saturday, we should have a better understanding of one another first, don’t you think?”
She had taken a small bite of her tea cake and the sugary icing glistened on her lips. Temptation, Algernon thought, was the very devil. Looking away, he reminded himself that it was courtship and not seduction that was on his agenda.
“Very well. What is is that you would like to know about me, Mr. Dunne?”
Everything. “How is it that you came to be living in your sister’s house? And how on earth is it that the two of you, night and day as you are, can even be sisters?”
“Well, we can be sisters because we had the same parents. As to our differences, well… I spent much more time with our father and Daphne was a favorite of our aunt—my father’s sister. She was always going off with her to Bath or here to London. She even took her to Paris once. But I was too outspoken and opinionated for her. So I stayed home with my father and helped him catalogue rare books and translate ancient texts… and I loved doing those things. I tend to be very bookish by nature.”
He frowned. “That can’t be easy in your sister’s house with all those children under foot. I daresay they interrupt your reading time dramatically.”
She laughed again, dryer and a bit less mirthful that before. “Indeed, I would say being a bookish sort in Daphne’s house is nigh on impossible. The only books present are those used to instruct the children. She detests reading and says that having all those books around turned me into a spinster and she will not allow such a thing to happen to her daughters. So no books. And the boys may read all they like if they go off to school.”
“If?” Algernon questioned. “If they go off to school? Does your sister have no notion of what the proper education can mean in a young man’s life?”
“I daresay she does not.”
“It isn’t just about learning,” he said. “For those of us like myself, and like your sister’s husband and their sons, without a title it is all about connections and those connections, for better or worse, are formed at school when we are boys. To deny her sons an education is to decimate their futures. Surely she must see that?”
“You have met my sister. Do you think she’d be able to see anything that doesn’t directly line up with her own point of view, Mr. Dunne?”
“Algernon.”
“Really? No one calls you anything else?” she asked.
He sighed. “My sister, when we were children, called me Algie.”
Her expression was utterly horrified. “Algernon it is.”
He laughed at that. “You could always call me ‘darling’, or ‘my love’… or ‘the handsomest man in all of England’.”
“Only England? And here I thought you were overly confident,” she quipped. “And you should call me Percy. I detest being called Persephone.”
“Enough about me and my unbearable handsomeness, Percy. which is incidentally what one calls a spaniel and not what one should be forced to call a beautiful woman! You were telling me how you came to be residing in that extension of Bedlam next door.”
It was her turn to sigh heavily. “My father passed away and I discovered that he’d been so focused on ancient texts and rare books that he hadn’t bothered to make any sort of arrangements for my future. I had no marriage portion, nor prospects honestly, and no annuity. The estate and all the funds with it