The Marquess Who Loved Me - By Sara Ramsey Page 0,78
anything. Charles’s mother never did like me. It still seems we’re no closer to learning the truth than we were before. And I would just as soon have not seen Lady Folkestone again.”
“But you said you would have been a good daughter for her. Why?”
His question caught Ellie napping — but then, it wasn’t a sentiment she had intended to share. She had said those words to Lady Folkestone because she knew that her confession wouldn’t be remembered, but Ellie had momentarily forgotten her audience. She wanted to shrug off his question, but she forced herself to think over her response — not the one she wanted to give, but the one that might be a real explanation.
Nick waited, not rushing her. There was a solidity to him that she had never noticed before. Either he hadn’t had it as a boy, or solidity wasn’t something that had appealed to her younger view of romantic love. It was a solidity she could lean on, build on…not that she should be thinking of that, when his question was about the marriage she’d stupidly agreed to rather than the one she should have waited for.
“You know, I don’t know why I said that,” she said. “But Lady Folkestone was never bad, just difficult. And I don’t think I had enough patience for her. I was so wrapped up in waiting for you to come home that my ‘grief,’ such as it was, wasn’t enough for her. And then I needed to make myself ineligible so that Father wouldn’t try to marry me off again — and I succeeded in making myself seem irredeemable. It’s little wonder she came to hate me.”
“So you were more devoted to my memory than his?”
Ellie rolled her eyes. “You know the answer to that. I won’t puff you up by saying it again.”
His grin was puffed up enough already. “Tell me that Charles knew you preferred me.”
“I don’t know what Charles knew. He knew that by winning me he had scotched your chances. He seemed pleased by that.”
“Bounder,” Nick muttered. “As though the title and estate weren’t enough.”
“They may not have been,” Ellie said. “You should have seen these properties when I married him. Charles had the title, but I believe he would have preferred your wealth.”
“You can’t say he was jealous of me.”
Ellie shrugged. “He never said it. But he pursued me like a collector, not a seducer. And while my dowry was respectable, there were bigger prizes than me that season if he would have taken a lower-born bride. Still, getting one over you was a cost he seemed oddly willing to bear. Folkestone would be a crumbling ruin by now if you hadn’t inherited it. My dowry could only patch the damage, not reverse it — an odd choice to make, unless his jealousy overrode his prudence.”
Nick didn’t respond. But his amusement, such as it was, looked like the faint pleasure of recalling a bit of history that was long dead, rather than the visceral satisfaction of besting an enemy.
“Do you not care about Charles’s role in our past anymore?” she asked.
It was another of those questions she shouldn’t have asked. He leaned back in his seat. “If he were still alive, I would care. But we both know he married for spite and money, not love. The question I have is why you said you could have been a good wife to a man who would only use you.”
“And other men wouldn’t have used me? Isn’t that what aristocratic marriages are? I would have been a good wife. It was what I was raised for. I would have given him children, hosted the right parties, behaved appropriately, and had a serene, if unsatisfying, life with him. But I couldn’t be a good wife so fast, and Charles died before I accepted him. And his mother…”
Nick cut her off. “What do you mean, before you accepted him?”
She hadn’t meant to say anything. Nick hadn’t asked about her other lovers, just as she hadn’t asked about his. But on this question, about the cousin he hated, she wanted him to know the truth. “We never consummated our marriage.”
She didn’t plan to explain further, but Nick didn’t let it go. “How did you avoid it? Charles wasn’t the type to leave an advantage unexploited.”
Ellie frowned. “Charles wasn’t evil, you know. He was hardly different from most peers — a little selfish, a little too convinced that it was talent and not an accident of birth that