An Infamous Proposal Read Online Free PDF Page A

feel you do Bounty an injustice to include him among the octogenarians.”
    “Do you feel you do my discrimination justice to imply I would offer for a gentleman who is fifty if he’s a day and has a daughter older than I am?”
    Hansard seldom blushed, but he did feel a little heat about the ears. “I feared the circumstance of your aunt Hildegarde’s imminent visit might have pitched you into unusual behavior.”
    “It did,” she said, and met his gaze coolly. “After your categorical refusal, I am not likely to repeat my error.”
    “I apologize for last night. I was a little surprised—”
    “No, Nick, you were gasping in shock, like my old mare Belle with the heaves.” Emma realized that this unbuttoned conversation was displeasing Nick and added politely, “I want to thank you for rescuing me from making a wretched mistake by refusing me last night. I realize we would not have suited in the least. I have decided that I shan’t marry until I meet some gentleman I can esteem—as you gentlemen say, since you are afraid of the word love. Meanwhile, I can look after myself.”
    “You have braced yourself for Hildegarde’s visit, then?” he asked lightly. This had always seemed an excuse to him.
    “Miss Foxworth has a cold. Aunt Hildegarde is a practicing hypochondriac. She won’t come when there is illness in the house. Miss Foxworth will be in no rush to recover, I promise you.”
    “Very sly, Emma.”
    “I have the disadvantage of being a lady. We must use our wits to save ourselves as custom and the law give all the authority to the gentlemen. Had you proposed to me, it would have been considered right and proper. And by the way, about last night...”
    “Let us agree it didn’t happen,” he said dismissingly.
    “We can’t sweep an elephant under the carpet. It happened, and there is just one other thing I ought to have explained last night, only I was so nervous when you pokered up like an outraged spinster that it slipped my mind. I quite forgot about Mrs. Pettigrew. Naturally I did not mean you would have to break with her, for, of course, I meant only a marriage of convenience.”
    “Very flattering. I understood you meant possibly no marriage at all. If I recall aright, there was some talk of your jilting me.”
    “Yes. Perhaps you would have gone along with my scheme if you had known my true intention?” she asked daringly.
    “That would certainly have made it more palatable,” he replied, and watched as her jaw squared in anger. “But then I have my own reputation to consider as well. Folks would be bound to wonder why you broke it off. I would be castigated as either a monster of depravity or some other sort of scoundrel.”
    “Or Lady Capehart would be called a jilt, no better than she should be,” she pointed out.
    “That is another possibility. And speaking of ladies’ reputations, I must mention that you are slandering an unexceptionable lady to imply Mrs. Pettigrew is my mistress.”
    “Indeed! It is news to me that unexceptionable ladies send their gentlemen callers home at three o’clock in the morning. I saw you riding down the road at that hour the night before you went to London.”
    “What were you doing up at three o’clock?”
    “Watching you come home from Mrs. Pettigrew’s. And looking at the moon,” she added with a wistful expression. “It was a full moon. The park looked silver and black. It was beautiful.”
    Nicholas found himself gazing at Emma. She had a faraway, romantic look in her eyes. He shook himself to attention and said, “As you are interested in what I was doing, I’ll tell you: I was attending the foaling of Bounty’s broodmare. If the foal was a filly, he was to sell her to me. It was a colt.”
    “Odd Bounty didn’t mention it.”
    “Odder that you should,” he retorted. “There are some things ladies do not discuss with gentlemen, Emma.”
    She gave a demure smile. “So you told me, last night.”
    “And you have decided to