The First Proposal - Chasity Bowlin Page 0,43
I rather like the idea of having a best friend who is a duchess.”
Aurora shrugged. “I’m not certain we will marry.”
Percy had been casually sorting through a bin of embroidered ribbons. She stopped and whipped her head around. “What do you mean that you aren’t certain you’ll marry? You love him. I know you do. I can see it in the way you look at him.”
Aurora’s expression hardened. “I do love him… but he does not love me. Or he doesn’t love me enough to want me for his wife, because he’s never asked me to marry him.”
Percy stared at her friend, seeing the deep hurt that perceived rejection caused her. “He does love you. I know he does. There must be a reason.”
“Whatever it is, he hasn’t chosen to share it with me and my pride will not allow me to ask,” Aurora said. “But I don’t wish to discuss it further. I did tell Algernon that I would have you home precisely at two o’clock because he doesn’t want you to be overly tired.”
Percy reached back into the bin and pulled out a length of blue ribbon embroidered with gold stars. “He acts as though I am the only woman in all of England to have ever carried a child.”
“Oh no. He acts as if you are the only woman in all of England who has ever carried his child. And that makes it substantially worse… How does it feel to be loved and cherished above all things?”
Winding the ribbon about her fingers, Percy placed it in the basket she carried with the other small items she’d selected. A smile played about her lips. “It’s very wonderful. And I’m eternally grateful that you turned down his proposal.”
“That was not a proposal. It was a half-cocked notion that was quickly dispelled,” Aurora answered smartly. “You my, dear friend, were his first proposal. His only proposal.”
“As he was mine. I think I’m done with shopping… I can’t find a single thing for Olivia. What do you get for a woman who has everything?” Percy asked.
“You’ll find something,” Aurora said.
Percy paid for her few items and they left the small shop. They walked toward her home on Park Lane where she and Algernon stayed while in town, still next door to her sister. Aurora’s carriage awaited her there. And as they made their way down that idyllic street, she became aware of a commotion ahead of her.
“Oh, dear,” Aurora whispered.
“Bailiffs,” Percy surmised. Several large men were carting items form Daphne’s house. Daphne herself was standing in the foyer wailing hysterically, the sound carrying down the street. “They’ve lost everything.”
“Not everything,” Aurora quipped. “She has her children, after all. Perhaps if she can stop obsessing about what is fashionable and focus on her family, she will be happier for it.”
“I don’t believe Daphne is capable of happiness,” Percy observed. “But I want to be wrong. It’s a shame. And the children, horrid though they may be, are not really at fault. They simply mimic what they see from her.”
“Then heaven help us all.”
When they’d reached their destination, Aurora said her goodbyes and climbed into her waiting carriage. Percy climbed the steps, entered the house, and headed directly for the garden. Algernon was there, working on his roses.
“You lost that bet,” she reminded him.
“So I did,” he agreed. “And paid a pretty penny at Tattersall’s for it. But I’m not working on this particular rose for the sake of a bet.”
She’d closed the distance between them and he dipped his head to give her a hard, quick kiss. “Then what are you doing it for?”
“These are cuttings from the same bushes I’d been trying to graft on the day I met you,” he said. “And when it finally blooms, this new breed of roses shall be called Persephone.”
“I thought you loved roses,” she groused. “Don’t saddle them with my horrid name.”
“I can’t very well name them after your lovely arse, can I?”
She grinned. “You say that now… more than my belly is growing thanks to your child. I won’t even be able to fit through the doors before long.”
He pulled her close. “Then we’ll have them widened.”
If she hadn’t loved him before, she would have in that moment. “Leave your roses for now… I have something else for you to tend to.”
It was not an invitation that had to be issued twice.
If you enjoyed THE FIRST PROPOSAL be sure to see where it all began in THE LAST OFFER. And look for Aurora’s story in THE ONLY LOVE which is now available for preorder.
About the Author
Chasity Bowlin is a USA Today Best Selling Author who lives in central Kentucky with her husband and their menagerie of animals. She loves writing, loves traveling and enjoys incorporating tidbits of her actual vacations into her books. She is an avid Anglophile, loving all things British, but specifically all things Regency.
Growing up in Tennessee, spending as much time as possible with her doting grandparents, soap operas were a part of her daily existence, followed by back to back episodes of Scooby-Doo. Her path to becoming a romance novelist was set when, rather than simply have her Barbie dolls cruise around in a pink convertible, they time traveled, hosted lavish dinner parties and one even had an evil twin locked in the attic.