Amanda Scott - [Dangerous 03] by Dangerous Illusions Page B

for I was the first to whom they each dared to propose marriage.”
    “But then—”
    “Oh, no.” Lady Ophelia chuckled. “If you are seeing me as their bone of contention, it was no such thing, for although they each proposed, both knew that I had no intention of marrying any man. I believe they merely put the question to me in order to practice their courting methods, so to speak. Neither one could possibly have had serious intentions.”
    Deverill protested. “But surely, ma’am, no gentleman would propose marriage to a lady without being entirely serious about it. Why, where would he be if she accepted?”
    Dryly she said, “Gone to his banker, no doubt, to puff off his increased estate. I was a very great heiress, you know, for although my brother inherited the title and estates, Papa divided his extremely large private fortune equally between us.”
    “But then, surely both men had excellent reason to pursue you, and each must have been sorry when you turned him down. Are you quite certain—”
    “I voiced my opinions and intentions then as clearly as I do now, sir. There can have been no misunderstanding. Moreover, I can tell you that it would have upset your grandfather no end if I had accepted his offer, for he was one who believed, along with Mrs. Malaprop in that otherwise rather humorous play of Mr. Sheridan’s, that ‘thought does not become a young woman.’ Most men despise learned females, you know, and your grandfather was no exception. According to Lord Thomas Deverill, an intelligent female was one who could sew, run a household properly, and produce healthy children. Your grandmother was perfectly capable of all that. I believe she produced six children for him.”
    Deverill laughed. “Seven, ma’am, although six of those were females, but surely—”
    Tartly, Lady Ophelia said, “Well, Ned Tarrant had only St. Merryn, who now has only Charles to succeed him. And Charles and Davina, though they have been married eleven years, have only our dear Charlotte to their credit. Did you know, by the bye, that your grandmother was an aspiring authoress before she married?”
    “Good God, no!” He sounded appalled.
    “It is perfectly true, nonetheless. Tom did not approve, however, and so of course she gave up her ambition and devoted herself to pleasing him. Not that her sacrifice was any great loss to the literary world, for her only novel was an utterly unreadable romance—kittenish and cute, just like Harriet herself.”
    “Aunt Ophelia, what a thing to say!”
    “Well, I know it was, for she gave me the manuscript to read, and I waded through only the first thirty pages before I told her I could stomach no more. Maudlin stuff, all morals and sweet sentiment about a sadly wronged heroine with no backbone whatever, who tried to solve her problems by poking and prying into other people’s lives. Utter twaddle. Why, my own journals are more worthy of publication than that was. My point, however, is that Harriet ought to have been allowed to continue to write if it pleased her, and the fact that Tom utterly forbade it proves that he cannot truly have wished to marry me.”
    Deverill looked perplexed. “I collect that you were not then closely related to the Tarrant family, ma’am. How did that connection come about, if I may ask?”
    “My brother’s daughter, Letitia, married Daintry’s papa,” Lady Ophelia said. “And I can tell you, St. Merryn—Ned Tarrant, that is, not your papa, Daintry—behaved as if he had got a point more than Tom Deverill when she did. Ned always was looking to line his pockets, so I suppose that, having married a woman with an income of seven thousand a year, then managing to arrange for his son to marry into the Balterley family, he thought he’d won.”
    “He did marry better than my grandfather,” Deverill said. “At least, if my grandmother was an heiress, I never knew it.”
    “She wasn’t,” Lady Ophelia said, “but she had always had a soft