Kingsland out to the drive where his coach waited. It wasn’t until they settled inside, sitting opposite each other, the vehicle rumbling over the street, that he spoke. “Why didn’t you tell me that you need to marry before you’re five and twenty in order to gain an inheritance?”
It was not what she’d expected him to ask. She’d thought he might inquire about her time on the terrace with Griff. She wondered when and where he’d learned the information. Obviously tonight, probably from Griff. “I didn’t want you to feel the pressure of the deadline, to think you had to marry me before you had decided that you wanted me for your wife.”
“If we didn’t marry before you turned twenty-five?”
“A part of me thought it might be a bit freeing.” She looked out the window. “It’s begun to seem a trivial matter on which to marry.”
“I’ve known lords to marry for much more trivial matters than an inheritance.”
“You don’t even know what it entails.”
“It doesn’t matter. By its very nature, an inheritance implies that it is something of worth, whether monetary or sentimental. It is something you should have. I’ll speak with your father in the next few days.”
For a second there, it felt like her heart had stopped beating. After all these years of yearning for the cottage to be her own, she wasn’t certain she’d ever fully accepted that it would be. He’d been a last resort. Perhaps she hadn’t told him about the conditions because she hadn’t wanted them to influence her decision to marry him, had tried to pretend they didn’t exist. She’d wanted to marry him because she desired him. But she didn’t know if she’d ever grow accustomed to his arrogance, his entitlement, and his belief that losing wasn’t for him. “It’s been nearly a year since you called out my name, but the reality is that with all the businesses you’ve had to see to, we’ve had very little time to truly get to know each other.”
“I know enough to deduce you’d be an excellent duchess. Besides, I mentioned when I announced your name that we would marry before the next Season ended. I’m one for keeping my word. And in doing so, we’ll both benefit.”
“Yes, I suppose we shall.” She should have been excited beyond measure by the prospect. Instead, she felt another sort of clock was ticking, one that involved Mr. Griffith Stanwick.
Chapter 19
Griff didn’t have to look at the clock on the mantel to know that it was a little after two, because his club had gone still and quiet. Even in his office, sitting at his desk, going over his accounts, he could hear the hum of activity, feel the shimmering thrill of interest returned, and sense the moment when two lonely souls realized that for a few hours at least, the loneliness would cease to matter. For a lucky few, it might dissipate forever.
While he’d never considered his club to be a matchmaking service that would lead members to the ringing of wedding bells, he suspected one couple might be headed in that direction—if the daughter of an earl could convince her family to accept the son of a tradesman, who was in trade himself and thriving at it.
That was always the key: getting the family to accept the one chosen. Now with his past and being owner of this scandalous club, he’d taken marriage completely off the table. Not that it mattered. As he’d watched Kingsland escort Kathryn from the terrace earlier in the evening, the tightening in his chest until he could scarcely draw in a breath had confirmed that his heart had been claimed, and he doubted it would ever be untethered and free enough to be given to another.
Footsteps echoed along the hallway: Gertie delivering the night’s take. As they went silent, he glanced up. Only it wasn’t Gertie at all. At the vision in green hovering in the doorway, he shot to his feet. “What are you doing here? We’re closed up for the night.”
Lady Kathryn Lambert smiled a saucy smile, one filled with temptation and promise, the sort the women who visited here were hesitant to give the first night but were more willing to offer by the third or fourth, once they were comfortable with all the flirtation that had been absent from their lives until that point. But from her, it came naturally, a turning up at the corners of her mouth, a flash of white. “I know. Billy granted