Page 4 of Their Wildest Dreams

“Harriet would never agree.”

“Again, very swift. One might almost think you had considered marrying her before.”

He ignored that. “She would not take kindly to any arrangement that involved us bartering her future and Alderley’s in the same breath!”

“Only if we behaved as though we had.” Lady Denham turned to Alderley. “The eastern acreage could be settled upon Harriet and the children of the marriage. Denham would pay the debt, and the estates would have a common interest. Harriet would have the security of knowing that land could never be gambled or mortgaged away again.”

“She would have more than security,” Benedict said. “If she agrees to this, she must have a voice in its management.”

His mother’s expression gave nothing away, but he knew her well enough to see her satisfaction. “Naturally.”

Alderley looked from one of them to the other. “You have thought of this before.”

“Not in connection with your debts,” Lady Denham said. “I had hoped they might find a reason to marry that did not involve Sir Thomas Selby.”

Benedict stared at her. “Harriet and I have never spent ten minutes together without disagreeing.”

“You spend a remarkable amount of time seeking her out in order to do so.”

The observation was unwelcome because it was true. He had joined Harriet’s card table the night before without invitation or necessity. At every gathering, he knew where she was. He knew when she laughed, when she grew bored and when she was about to say something likely to offend a person who deserved it.

None of that meant he wished to marry her.

He looked again at the notes on his desk. “Does Harriet know?”

Alderley hesitated. “I do not believe so.”

“Then she must be told before anyone speaks of marriage. All of it,” Benedict insisted. He’d be accused of many things by Harriet, but never, he hoped, of treating her with such blatant disrespect.

“Of course,” his mother said.

“And if she refuses,” he amended with a caveat, “the matter ends. No one is to ask her a second time or remind her what the refusal will cost. I’d prefer her to at least have the illusion of choice.”

Lord Alderley’s face showed the strain he had been fighting to conceal. “I would not force her.”

“You will not need to. She will understand what happens to the tenants if Selby takes possession, and she will hold herself responsible whether that is reasonable or not.” Benedict gathered the notes and returned them to the case. “That is pressure enough.”

His mother watched him carefully. “And what of you?”

“What of me?”

“If Harriet agrees, will you?”

Benedict should have needed time to answer. He had always expected to marry, but no particular woman had occupied that expectation. A wife had been part of the future in the same vague way as his father’s title and the duties that would come with it. Harriet could never be vague. She would have an opinion on every decision he made and would express it whether he asked or not. Peace, as he understood it, would cease to exist.

He could think of no other woman whose presence he would miss.

“Yes,” he said. “If Harriet agrees, I will marry her.”

Chapter

Two

Harriet spent the morning in her father’s estate room.

She was not supposed to possess a key, but the lock had been unreliable since she was a child. There were few secrets left for her to uncover. The ledgers confirmed what she had already learned from Selby’s conversation with her father. Alderley owed more than the estate could pay. Repairs had been delayed because there had been no money for them, rents had fallen when crops failed, and the loans taken to cover one bad year had ensured the next would be worse.

The door opened behind her. Harriet closed the ledger but did not pretend she had not been reading it.