Author: Sara Bennett
Category: Historical
Go to read content：https://readnovelfree.com/p/39974_15
“Jasper and your grandmother seem to be getting along very well,” Valentine said from the room behind her.
“Yes.”
“Is your grandfather alive?”
“No.” She cleared her throat. “He died a long time ago, before I was born. My grandmother has been a widow longer than she was ever a wife.”
“And she never remarried?”
The Devil's Son - ParanormalCheck out the best interactive novels on Whispers: Interactive stories.
“No, the single life suits her. She comes from a generation when marriage had little to do with love.”
“Does it ever?” he asked in a quiet voice.
“I suppose not. It’s just that…” Marissa found her tongue growing tangled, “well, my friends would rather not marry at all if they cannot find a man they…they admire enough to…to love.”
“And what about you, Miss Rotherhild?”
He wanted her to bare her heart to him? Marissa wondered how on earth she had strayed into this topic. But perhaps it was a chance for her to reaffirm the Husband Hunters Club and their aims. She took a breath and turned to face him, her back to the window, her fingers gripping the sill behind her.
“I admire your friends for their idealism,” he spoke first, his gaze on hers steady and unreadable, “but unfortunately the world we inhabit does not value love in the making of a marriage.”
“That may be true of some people, Lord Kent, but not all.”
He raised a cynical eyebrow. “In the world we move in marriages are made through practical considerations—wealth, land, family connections. Love matches are accidental, or else unhappy failures.”
“George says—” She bit her lip.
Valentine raised his other eyebrow. “What words of great wisdom has my dear brother spoken on the matter, Miss Rotherhild? Come, do enlighten me.”
“Only that if you are going to spend most of your life with someone then surely it is better if you are fond of that someone.”
“But then again might it not be better if one did not give one’s heart too deeply to one’s partner? Death is indiscriminate and if one’s partner were to die, the pain would be almost more than one could bear.”
He sounded bleak and suddenly Marissa remembered that Valentine had been married himself. Here she was blathering on about love and marriage and it was obvious he had loved his wife and still suffered deeply from her loss. How could she be so stupid? Nevertheless, as she opened her mouth to apologize, it occurred to her that his argument was flawed, and really she could not let it pass.
“So you believe one should encase one’s heart in ice and avoid feeling too deeply in case one is hurt?”
“It makes sense.”
“Or bury your emotions by taking on a task so intellectually stimulating that you never miss love at all. Something like a…quest to find the Crusader’s Rose?”
His eyes narrowed, his mouth thinned.
Marissa’s fingers gripped the sill harder, waiting for his anger to wash over her.
Footsteps came hurrying toward the room and Jasper appeared, flushed, his hair standing on end, and then her grandmother arrived behind him, wide-eyed and gasping for breath.
“Kent, you’ll never believe it,” Jasper burst out. “The utter gall of the man. The sheer arrogance—”
“Jasper…”
“It defies belief, Kent. If I could have caught him I swear I would have—”
Valentine poured a glass of brandy from the decanter, handing it to his friend. “Drink this, Jasper, and then tell me, slowly, what on earth you’re talking about.”
Lady Bethany had tottered to a chair and collapsed into it. “How very…exciting,” she managed. “I don’t think I’ve attempted to run like that since the Earl of Southmoor cornered me in an arbor at Vauxhall Gardens.”
Thankfully, Jasper found his voice and interrupted her wicked reminiscences.