He looked up. “First of all, I think it would be helpful to know what sorts of qualities you are looking for in your ideal husband.”
She blinked. Catherine had never thought about her husband search in terms of qualities one could list, as though she were going to market for ingredients for soup. She’d always imagined she would know when she met him by how he made her feel. But she supposed the season was referred to as the marriage mart for a reason.
“Well, I suppose I should like him to be friendly.”
“Friendly,” Lord Kirke repeated warily. He made the word sound like “scoundrel.”
She nodded, very amused by this.
“Like a... spaniel?”
“Notunlikea spaniel,” she clarified. “Pleasant. Cheerful. Loyal. Always happy to see me. Like that. I think that would be very pleasant.”
“Comes when he’s called, and can fetch you a pheasant you’ve shot, a face-licker, that sort of thing?”
“I hear nothing to object to in that list of things, though no one has ever licked my face. Perhaps I’d like it. I should hate to dismiss it out of hand. I’ve come to London for new experiences, after all.”
Every time his eyes creased at the corners with amusement, she felt as though she’d won a prize.
“As admirable as your spirit of adventure is, Keating—a word of caution about saying such things candidly to your dancing partners. You’re liable to open up regrettable conversational avenues. A London ballroom isboilingwith hidden peccadillos.”
“Is that so?” She was alarmed and intrigued. “Isn’t it better to find out about them as soon as possible?”
“You’ll want to save some mystery for marriage. A lifetime is a very long time.”
“I suppose you ought to know, having lived most of your life already.”
It was a risky joke. But he mimed being stabbed in the heart, to her delight.
“It’s to do with London and obscene wealth,” he explained. “People’s habits mutate in unusual ways when they’ve no useful occupation.”
“Nothing a little work in the mines wouldn’t cure, I’m sure,” she said.
He grinned, and her heart soared. “Precisely. Very well. You’re looking for a friendly chap. What else? Should he have money?”
She flushed. “Well. That is. I should hope so. How will we feed the children otherwise?”
“No need to be coy about money, for God’s sake, Keating. What other reason is there to marry?”
She was amused at this baldly unromantic notion of marriage. “Have you ever been married?”
She regretted asking at once. She was worriedher question had been insensitive or too bold. What if he was a widower, and his heart had been irreparably broken?
What if she simply disliked the answer, for... some odd reason?
She realized her breath was held and her heart had taken up an odd slamming rhythm.
But he just snorted softly. “No. Can you imagine the sort of husband I’d be?”
She studied him, attempting this as earnestly as if he’d made a literal request.
“It’s not the easiest thing to do,” she admitted, hesitantly.
His smile was difficult to interpret.
She found she simply could not quite slot him into one of her favorite cheerful images of a potential husband: passing the fried bread around the table while the sun poured through a kitchen window. Or standing quietly, his arms wrapped around her, as they watched the sun go down. Despite his fine manners and his title, he didn’t seem the least bit domesticated. He wasn’t at all like the merry, teasing young men she’d imagined courting her.
But she thought the top of her head would reach to just beneath his chin, and she could almost, even now, imagine how her cheek would feel pressed against the wool of his coat, and how his hands would feel on the flat of her back.