Page 21 of A Lady of Conscience

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James walked the streets of Bath for over an hour, his emotions in turmoil. He was stunned. Hurt. Perhaps even angry, though whether at Hannah Heywood or himself he couldn’t tell.

When he thought of it, he couldn’t even remember quitting the Heywoods’ house. He had no recollection of retrieving his hat and gloves from the footman, or of departing from Camden Place. It was only Hannah’s words that remained.

I do not wish to marry you.

Of all the eventualities James had accounted for, an outright rejection hadn’t been one of them.

His pride was to blame. He’d been so certain of being accepted.

Though perhaps not entirely certain.

When he’d entered the drawing room and seen her there, looking so quiet and self-contained, an unaccountable tremor of doubt had assailed him. It was that which was to blame for his botching his proposal. If he had, indeed, botched it.

Again, he couldn’t quite remember.

He thought he had spoken to her frankly, acknowledging the obstacles, but asserting his belief that together they could overcome them. He’d told her that he admired her, hadn’t he? That he thought only of her?”

James raked a hand through his hair in frustration.

“Marriage isn’t a waltz,” she’d said. “I don’t desire to be led. When I marry, it will be to a gentleman who values me as I am.”

An acrid sensation took root in James’s chest. He had botched it, hadn’t he? He’d implied he didn’t value her. That he didn’t want her for his partner.

And yet, he couldn’t shake the unhappy suspicion that she’d have refused him regardless. From the moment he’d sat down beside her in her parents’ drawing room, she’d been pulling away from him, attempting to stop him from saying what he’d come to say.

He felt like a prize fool.

By the time he returned to his family’s house near the Circus, receiving hours had begun. The sound of feminine laughter drifted down the stairs, punctuated by Ivo’s deep baritone voice.

James was in no mood to join his family in entertaining afternoon callers. Passing his hat and gloves to an obliging footman, he crossed the hall, heading for the billiard room. He’d nearly reached it when his father’s voice sounded behind him.

“James,” he said. “Back at last?”

James grudgingly came to a halt. He turned to face his father. “As you see.”

Lord Allendale was dressed for home in tweed trousers and a loose-fitting sack coat. He stopped outside the doors to the library. “And how was Miss Heywood?”

James wasn’t generally surprised by his father’s prescience. This time, however, it gave him a decided jolt. “What makes you think I saw her?”

“Aside from the fact that you unexpectedly appeared at a ball last night, where you waltzed with her and dined with her, and then left without dancing with a single other lady?” His father’s smoke gray eyes glimmered with a flash of wry humor. “Nothing at all.”

James suppressed a scowl. “If you already have the answers to your questions, why do you bother asking them?”

“I don’t have the answers. I merely make assumptions based on what I know of my children—and on what I’d have done in the same circumstances.” The earl opened the door to the library, gesturing for James to precede him inside.

James was in too foul a mood for conversation. He nevertheless obeyed his father’s unspoken command. Abandoning any idea he’d had of billiards, he stalked into the library.

His father followed him, shutting the door behind them. “You called on her, I presume.”

James crossed the thick red and gold carpet to the tall shelves that lined the wall opposite. They were stocked with all the titles one might expect to find in a gentleman’s library—great leatherbound tomes on history, philosophy, and geography. He absently scanned the spines. “Yes.”

“Did you propose?”

“I did.”

“And?”