She nodded. “You think she was pregnant with your brother’s son.”
“I don’t know the truth of it, and it does no good to tell.”
“And so you try to help the boy go to a good school and save the mother from a bad husband.” She saw the truth now. He was the one who cared for the estates, who watched over the tenants, who did the work while everyone glorified the wild brother. “Why do they talk of him like that? Why don’t they see you?”
He chuckled. “Because my brother was handsome and kind. He was also wild and larger than life. We all adored him. The Cornish love a tall tale, and he fit the bill in every sense.”
“But you are the one who does the work.”
He turned toward her. “I am the one who leaves to go to the Continent. I am the one who lives in a crumbling castle and brings strange people to visit.”
She smiled. “Shouldn’t they tell a tall tale about you?”
He shook his head. “They don’t. They reserve it for you.”
Was this why he’d come home angry? Because people talked about her instead of him? He didn’t seem to be a vain man, but it had to be hard to be so overlooked in his own home. “Don’t you see?” she pressed. “I am merely an extension of the tale about you. Just as your brother’s stories are because you kept the consequences small. You took away the gun that could have killed the children. You rebuilt the barn and fixed the well. You—”
“I don’t need you to explain my place in my home,” he interrupted. “I need you to explain your place here.”
She touched his face. “I have no place except what you decree.”
“Really? And what if I decree that you are my mistress?”
Here it was, the question she’d been pondering for the last two weeks. She’d told herself she was working on his ledgers. She filled her afternoon with painting pictures she had yet to show him. But at night when the stars came out, she wandered upstairs and thought about him. And she knew that Bessie Dove-Lyon had been right. She had been hiding these last five years in the Lyon’s Den. If she ever wanted to live, she needed to grow beyond what she’d been doing.
But where was her path now? If she had grown beyond the Lyon’s Den, where was she to live? This was the question that had brought her up to the ramparts every evening. And only one answer came back. An impossible answer, to be sure, and yet, she’d thought of nothing but it.
She wanted to stay with Daniel, but how?
Not as a mistress. She had seen the uncertain life of those women. Thanks to her time at the Lyon’s Den, she knew how a mistress faced disaster at every turn. Everything was dependent upon the master’s whim. If that were her choice, she had a better—a safer—life as the Abacus Woman in the Lyon’s Den.
So she would not be his mistress. In England, that left one other choice.
“Daniel,” she said, her voice serious. “I want to be your wife.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Daniel’s mind lurchedinto a strange position. His body didn’t move. He didn’t even breathe. But his brain seemed to jolt in his head as the world tilted around him.
Marriage? To Li-Na?
She said it as if it were the obvious and most logical choice, which was in direct odds to the kind of impassioned declaration he was used to getting from women. He’d spent his time in London when he was young. He’d had debutantes drop their handkerchiefs at his feet and bat their eyelashes at him from behind their fans. He’d even kissed several while they declared their absolute delight for his attention. A few even said they loved him.
At least they did until their fathers disdained his presence. He was a younger son, after all, with no land to recommend him. He had yet to discover his knack for buying and selling art. He didn’t even go to the Continent until he realized that many young ladies were catching his eye in the hopes that he would introduce them to his older, titled brother.
In short, he was not the kind of gentleman that practical Englishwomen wanted. Until he became rich. And then he had women throwing themselves at his feet in every country. They all said they loved him, but he knew they really loved his income. So he set them aside in favor of art.
Li-Na was the only woman to interest him in years. And here she was speaking as if it were easiest thing for them to marry. Despite her past. Despite her as a foreigner. Despite all those normal British complications when the son of an earl chose to wed. It was as if she didn’t know that the son of an earl could not marry someone without a specific pedigree.
“I am not going to marry,” he said, the words falling out as if he intended to say them. Which he had not.
“Why not?”
He didn’t have an answer that made any sense.Because women only want my titled brother? Because they look to my riches and not me?“Because even as a second son, my marriage is a transaction of families, a connection for political considerations or entry into higher society. But I have no interest in either of those things.”
“Neither do I.”
Of course, she didn’t. She wasn’t connected, and he’d already tried to tempt her with money to no avail. “But those are the reasons to marry. At least they are for a man in my position in England.”