Miss Lindel's Love by Cynthia Bailey Pratt Page A

married already. Sometimes they don’t wish to be married or at least not to be married to a girl of much beauty but low station.”
    Maris shook her head at the complications people put in the way of an essentially simple matter. “It sounds very odd and most uncomfortable for everyone.”
    “Men don’t find it so. They find it very convenient. Certainly there are many lowborn girls who choose the ducats in hand of a wealthy lover rather than let their beauty be wasted on the streets.”
    Putting all her confusion aside, Maris returned to her former point. “Your mother shouldn’t have suggested such a thing. Lord Danesby would never...”
    “No, I doubt he would. His reputation is not all it should be perhaps, but no one has ever said he cast out lures to unmarried girls. Too afraid of being trapped into matrimony, I would guess.”
    “If he doesn’t interest himself in unmarried girls,” Maris said, trying to fit her new knowledge into her image of Lord Danesby, “does that mean ... ? No.”
    “That married women are fair game? Indeed. Last year, he and Mrs. Armitage were notorious. Of course, she’s no innocent either. Her passion for Alastair Lament two years ago was shockingly blatant. They say she was so careless that even her husband began to suspect. Then Lamont married that little American creature and Mrs. Armitage set her cap for Danesby. He never had a chance of escaping her toils. She’s still quite handsome,” Lilah admitted kindly, “if terribly old. She must be at least forty.”
    Maris, her mind whirling with new thoughts, didn’t remember whether she said good night before she left. Undressing in her room, she lay her dress carefully over the back of the chair before hurrying into bed. Pulling the covers up to stay warm, she changed under the blankets. She couldn’t tell if the room had suddenly grown colder or if it was just her.
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” she scolded herself, blowing out the candle. “Did you expect him to live like a monk on a mountaintop while he was waiting for you? He’s a man and the flesh is weak. It says so in Mark or maybe it is in Matthew.” Her feet were too cold to carry her out of bed to check the reference.
    “Mrs. Armitage?” she thought in some disgust. “She’s so hardened. What on earth could he see in her?” She was rather pretty for, as Lilah said, an older woman. Perhaps she had all the seductive powers of a Salome. Certainly she was more appealing than a washed-out blond virgin who couldn’t open her mouth without making some ghastly faux pas.
    Maris never ceased to be amazed by how readily her own mind could put her in the wrong. Point by point it examined the sophisticated perfections of a Mrs. Armitage compared to the awkward and obviously homespun charms of a country miss. In every instance, save for youth, Maris came out the loser. After all, what good was youth? Everyone could fool her, everyone could patronize her and, with justice, everyone could and probably did laugh at her. Lord Danesby would never lower himself to think of her as a possible bride. The wisest course would be to put him right out of her thoughts.
    He had been kind to her that evening. He had seemed to enjoy her conversation, though she could not now recall all that they’d discussed. She remembered him laughing at something clever she had said. His laugh, even in memory, enlivened her like a sudden ray of sun breaking through bed curtains to wake a lazy lie-a-bed. She’d been unable to resist the tug of his hand on hers as he led her away to dance.
    Not even the remembrance of Mrs. Armitage’s odious behavior could spoil Maris’s memories of this evening. Maris puzzled over the coincidence for a moment. Mrs. Armitage had said that Maris had been making sheep’s eyes at Lord Danesby but surely that had been before he’d talked to her. True, she’d been present in the cathedral but surely too far away to see Maris’s expression while speaking to his