A Certain Magic by Mary Balogh Page A

and thanking him for the tea. Sir Clayton turned to offer his arm to Alice.
    “My dear Mrs. Penhallow,” he said. “Pray, do me the honor.”
    She smiled and took his arm. They led the way among the blooms, admiring them and smelling them until she was aware after twenty minutes that there were only three couples proceeding along the walks between the tall bushes. Piers and Miss Borden were nowhere in sight.
    ***
    He supposed he could do a great deal worse, Mr. Westhaven thought as he took Miss Borden on his arm and followed the others to look at the rhododendrons. He would certainly be the envy of a large portion of the male population of London, Jarvis Carpenter, for example. And even Lansing, despite his continued fawning over Allie.
    What he should do was marry her without giving himself time to think about the matter. He did not believe she would be averse to the match, despite what she had said to him on that first evening at the theater. Indeed, she seemed to favor him even over the far younger Carpenter.
    He should offer for her, marry her, install her at Westhaven Park, get her with child, and then know that his main duty to this infernal new position of his was done. It would not be a bad marriage. She would doubtless be good to look at for years to come, and she would not interfere with his main pleasures: reading and riding and overseeing his lands when he was at home. Indeed, she seemed to be a girl who would be eager to please.
    “Oh,” she said now, “this reminds me of home. The lovely smells of home.” Her voice was filled with longing.
    “Does it?” he said. “Is it not strange how smell can evoke memories more than any other sense?”
    She was not unlike Harriet, except that Harriet had not been quite as shy. Indeed, she had liked to chatter on occasion, though she had been awed to silence by his mother, and by Web and Allie, though they had tried their best to set her at her ease. But there was a likeness—a similarity in size and form, a sweetness, a childlike innocence.
    Harriet had been very sweet. He had married her on a whim because he could not bear the thought of going home alone again. But he had grown fond of her. And he had felt all the responsibility of knowing that she was deeply in love with him.
    Poor Harriet.
    But did he want to repeat that sort of relationship? The necessity of conversing with his wife as he would with a child? The inability to share any of his inner self with her?
    The boredom?
    But did it matter? Was life that exciting anyway? At least if he married and had children, he would satisfy his mother and Lord Berringer. And himself, too. He thought he would rather enjoy having sons of his own. And daughters, too. Perhaps especially daughters.
    “Am I walking a little fast for you?” he asked the girl now, bending his head to hers as he noticed the gap between them and the others widening.
    “Oh, no,” she said. “I am just enjoying the flowers so much.”
    And how could one not feel drawn to a child who admired flowers? he thought with a wave of inner amusement. 
    Of course, there was always the other side of the coin, the side that had made him restless for days, ever since he had invited himself up to Allie’s sitting room after the Partiton ball. There was always the knowledge of what marriage should be in its ideal form.
    She had described it for him. A certain magic, she had called it. He could scoff at what she had said, and indeed he did. She had described perfection, and perfection is impossible to achieve in this life.
    Or so he would have thought if he had not himself been witness to such a perfect marriage—Allie’s own. Being with them had always filled him with a yearning for a similar sort of love. He had tried to find it, but he had never come close.
    Perhaps he might have if he had not been preoccupied for so many years by his own infatuation with Allie. It had always seemed unfair to him that Web had confided his