He said to the squire, “Miss Tarabotti's personality is a large measure of her appeal. Can you see me with some frippery young thing whom I could push around at any opportunity and cow into accepting all my decisions?”
Lord Maccon was not explaining himself for Alexia's family's benefit but for hers. Although, he certainly did not want the Loontwills to think they were forcing him into anything! He was Alpha enough for that. This whole marriage thing was his idea, curse it. No matter that it had only just occurred to him.
Squire Loontwill said nothing in response to that. Because he had, in fact, assumed the earl would want just such a wife. What man would not?
Lord Maccon and the squire were clearly birds of entirely different feathers. “Not with my work and position. I need someone strong, who will back me up, at least most of the time, and who possesses the necessary gumption to stand up to me when she thinks I am wrong.”
“Which,” interrupted Alexia, “she does at this very moment. You are not convincing anyone, Lord Maccon. Least of all me.”
She held up her hand when he would have protested. “We have been caught in a compromising position, and you are trying to do the best by me.” She stubbornly refused to believe his interest and intentions were genuine. Before her family had interrupted them, and during all previous encounters, no mention of marriage had ever passed his lips. Nor, she thought sadly, had the word love. “I do appreciate your integrity, but I will not have you coerced. Nor will I be manipulated into a loveless union based entirely on salacious urges.” She looked into his yellow eyes. “Please understand my position.”
As though her family were not watching, he touched the side of her face, stroking the cheek her mother had hit. “I understand that you have been taught for far too long that you are unworthy.”
Miss Tarabotti felt inexplicably like crying. She turned her face away from his caress.
He let his arm drop. Clearly, the damage done could not be mended with a few words from him in the space of one disastrous morning.
“Mama,” she said, gesturing expansively, “I will not have you manipulating this situation. No one need know what has occurred in this room. So long as you all hold your collective tongues for once.” She glared at her sisters. “My reputation will remain intact, and Lord Maccon will remain a free man. And now I have a headache; please excuse me.”
With that, she gathered what was left of her dignity and swept from the room. She retreated upstairs to the sanctity of her own boudoir to indulge in a most uncharacteristic but blessedly short-lived bout of tears. The only one who caught her at it was Floote, who placed a sympathetic tea tray on her bedside table, including some of Cook's extra-special apricot puffs, and issued orders with the household staff that she was not to be disturbed.
Lord Maccon was left in the bosom of her family.
“I believe, for the moment, we ought to do as she says,” he said to them.
Mrs. Loontwill looked stubborn and militant.
Lord Maccon glared at her. “Do not interfere, Mrs. Loontwill. Knowing Alexia, your approbation is likely to turn her more surely against me than anything else possibly could.”
Mrs. Loontwill looked like she would like to take offense, but given this was the Earl of Woolsey, she resisted the inclination.
Then Lord Maccon turned to Squire Loontwill. “Understand, my good sir, that my intentions are honorable. It is the lady who resists, but she must be allowed to make up her own mind. I, too, will not have her coerced. Both of you, stay out of this.” He paused in the doorway, donning his hat and coat and baring his teeth at the Loontwill girls. “And, you two, keep quiet. Your sister's reputation is at stake, and never doubt that it drastically impacts your own. I am not one to be trifled with in this matter. I bid you good day.” With that, he left the room.
“Well, I never,” said Mrs. Loontwill, sitting down heavily on the couch. “I am not sure I want that man for a son-in-law.”
“He is very powerful, my dear, no doubt, and a man of considerable means,” said Squire Loontwill, attempting to establish a silver lining of some kind.
“But so rude!” persisted his wife. “And all that, after eating three of our best chickens!” She gestured limply at the carcasses in question, a blatant reminder that, whatever it was that had just occurred, she had clearly emerged the loser. The chickens were beginning to attract flies. She pulled the bell rope for Floote to come and clear them away, peeved with the butler for not disposing of them sooner.
“Well, I shall tell you one thing. Alexia is definitely not attending the duchess's rout tonight. Even if I had not already forbidden her, today's behavior would have sealed it. Full-moon celebration or not, she can stay at home and think long and hard on her many transgressions!”
Mr. Loontwill patted his wife's hand sympathetically. “Of course, my dear.”
There was no “of course” about it. Miss Tarabotti, knowing her family's propensity for the dramatic, followed suit by keeping to her room most of the day and refusing to leave it even to see them depart that evening. Appreciating the tragedy of it all, her two sisters made sympathetic cluck-clucking noises outside her closed door and promised to bring back all the latest gossip. She would have been more reassured if they had promised not to engage in any gossip of their own. Mrs. Loontwill refused to speak to her, an occurrence that did not tax Alexia in the slightest. Eventually the house fell silent. She breathed a prodigious sigh of relief. Sometimes her family could really be very trying.