The Counterfeit Gentleman by Charlotte Louise Dolan Page B

than Mr. Rendel, Bethia added, “With the wis dom of hindsight, I can see that I should never have made it clear to them at the beginning of this Season that I was ab solutely adamant about refusing them. It would have been safer to have played them off against each other and kept all three of them dangling after me until I was of age.”
    “And when will that be?”
    “Not until the end of September,” Bethia said, her voice little more than a whisper. Surely he must see how much she needed him to marry her?
    “A good four months,” he replied thoughtfully, and then his glance caught and held hers, and once more she was un able to look away.
    Could she survive four months without this man beside her? Could she survive a month? A week? Even a day?
    Although it had not been mentioned, her proposal of that afternoon hovered between them. I think you shall have to marry me. Silently, she pleaded with him to take her offer seriously.
    “It was not the punch talking,” she said finally. She knew she was blushing again, but she met his gaze squarely, try ing with her eyes to communicate what was so difficult to say a second time.
    When he did not reply, she said, “You yourself pointed out that the easiest way for me to be safe was to marry.”
    “But I was not proposing myself as the bridegroom.”
    “But—”
    “I cannot marry you,” he said, and his voice carried such conviction, the room at once became colder and the dark ness outside the cottage seemed to ooze in through the very stones.
    “I s-see,” she said finally, feeling quite sick at heart. “You are already married. I had not considered that.”
    Looking at the entrancingly beautiful young girl standing so near him, Digory fought a battle with his conscience. How easy it would be to let the falsehood stand—to let her go on thinking that he was a married man.
    It would be even easier to take what Miss Pepperell was offering—to accept her proposal and thereby acquire a wellborn wife and a great fortune.
    He cared nothing for her grandfather’s money—he had enough of his own, safely invested in government consols. But it had felt so right to see her lying in his bed, and he knew that if he made the slightest effort, he could undoubt edly turn her gratitude into love.
    A few hours ago he had risked his own life to save hers, and in a few more hours he would do it again. Yet he could not in all honor claim that she owed him anything.
    “I am not married,” he said, knowing that only honesty was possible between them.
    “Betrothed?” she asked, as persistent as a gnat.
    “I have no previous attachments,” he said bluntly, and his honesty was rewarded with a dazzling smile.
    “Then why do you say ‘cannot’?” she asked, her voice as low and seductive as that of the most practiced courtesan. How she had managed to arrive at the age of twenty with out having been married—or seduced—he could not for the life of him fathom.
    “Because I am not a gentleman,” he said fiercely, at tempting to use anger to blunt his growing desire. “I am a smuggler.” Retired now, but he did not tell her that, knowing it would only serve to weaken his argument. Honesty, he was coming to realize, was a risky business. While he could not lie to her directly, it occurred to him that it would be prudent to conceal much of the truth from her.
    “Some people call smugglers ‘the gentlemen, ’” she said with another of her smiles, this one as innocent as a child’s.
    “Only those who are foolishly romantic.”
    “I do not see that your occupation should stand between us. Once we are married, you will be able to give up smug gling and become a gentleman of leisure.”
    It was obvious that he was going to have to tell her the whole truth—or at least more of the truth—in order to make her understand why marriage was impossible. “I am also a bastard, and marrying you will not make that stigma go away.”
    Miss Pepperell blanched, as if he had struck her,