Apparently that was incorrect.
“Are you mad?” she demanded. They were on the Milan-bound train. He was growing rather sick of trains. By the looks of her, so was she. She turned a tight circle in the compartment and then kicked the door, exhaling through flattened lips as she turned on him. “Really, Alex, have you lost your mind? Two days ago, you would not . . . and now we are supposedly married!”
He fell back onto the mattress, bracketing his eyes with a hand. He had already exceeded his weekly quota for the care and soothing of enraged womanhood. “It seems likely,” he said. “Madness, I mean. You will have to blame yourself for it.”
“What possessed you? Did I give you any impression that I would expect you to stand for me? Do you not think I heard you last night? Your speech about suffocating? Do you think I would ask this of you?”
He sighed. She made him sound like a martyr, which seemed highly unfair. He loathed martyrs. His mother had been a martyr, an endless slave to the whims of his lungs. I used to love London in the season . . . of course, Alex cannot take the air there, and so we keep in the country year round. Perhaps when the twins come out . . .
“Sit up! You cannot mean to go to sleep! Tell me why on earth you would have made that preposterous claim, and explain to me what we are going to do about it!”
Aside from the obvious fact that he’d shagged her silly last night, and was waiting with the barest thread of patience for another opportunity? Yes, aside from that small detail, the why was simple enough. “You would not have been running about, sans chaperone, had I not suggested the adventure.” True. “Any harm that befalls you as a result is therefore my responsibility to defray.” Also true. “There was no other alternative to what I did.” Even now, he could not think of one.
“You might have said nothing. Did you think of that? I told you—ruin was my aim!”
He smiled despite himself. Her hiss was audible, sharp as a snake’s.
“You do not believe me?” she demanded. “Last night you seemed to take me at my word. Last night, we did as we pleased without worrying about others’ opinions. Today you come out the moralist. Surely I’m owed a reason for it?”
He sighed. “Gwen, last night and this morning are two separate matters. I would not have mentioned last night, but you may bet every pence of your three million that Lady Milton has headed directly to the telegraph office.”
“So? What of it?”
“So, you may say that you won’t mind infamy, but I reserve the right to doubt.” One’s essential traits had a way of reclaiming a person. “You’re a pleaser, Gwen.” Her instincts would pull her back to the narrow path, no matter how much she might come to genuinely revile its constraints. And even if he was wrong—he would not be responsible for putting her to the test.
A savage pain in his foot made him spring upright.
She was holding a chamber pot over his toes.
“Did that please you, Alex?” she asked with a very sweet smile. “Shall I please you again?”
He swung his legs to safer ground. “Had it been anyone else—anyone but that woman—I might have tried . . . I don’t know, to purchase their discretion. But . . .” Bloody hell. He trailed off as astonishment overtook him. Running a hand over his face, he admitted it to himself: he was lying. He was damned cheerful about this turn of events.
He eyed her with new intent. Gwen Ramsey. Queen of the Barbary Coast. He’d take her there for a holiday. Make her sing. She’d enjoy making the lie a reality.
Perhaps now was not the best time to introduce this idea, or admit his own sudden good cheer. She looked furious. He cleared his throat. “As I said. Anyone else. But Lady Milton?” He shrugged. “She ardently admired her son’s profile. And I was personally responsible for changing it.”
Her shoulders sagged. “Yes,” she said, and returned the chamber pot to the floor. “Richard told me how you interceded for him in that fight. But that is beside the point, Alex. What are we to do now?”
He laughed softly. The sound was odd, a bit—all right, he could say it; the sound was a bit hysterical. And he felt odd: boneless, supremely light, thoroughly enervated—as if some great weight had lifted off him. A beginning, indeed. “We find a chaplain,” he said.
“What?” Her brown eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.”
“Perfectly,” he said.
“But—” She sank down on the chair opposite. “But Alex,” she said softly. “What if we don’t suit?”
He sat up at that. How in the hell could she doubt they’d suit? Had she not been there last night? The past weeks? “You’ve known me over half your life,” he said dryly. “Do you expect any surprises? If so, I assure you, all my skeletons live well outside the closet, creating tales that regularly terrorize the Ramsey clan. Handy, that.” She looked pale as parchment, truly and deeply horrified. A laugh rose in him, rusty; it seemed to catch on something in his chest as it passed onward. “All right, cheer up. If we don’t suit, we’ll find a lawyer. Three cheers for the Marriage Reform Bill. Gerry voted against it, of course.”