Free A Second Spring by Carola Dunn

Clifford will not know what I am really like.”
    Phyllis stared, astonished. “Good gracious, Eleanor, once he has come up to scratch and you are safely married, what has that to say to anything?”
    So that was why poor Bertie had married her. He had mistaken a carefully constructed façade for reality, and discovered the reality too late.
    Was Nell prepared to play the same trick on the unknown Lord Clifford? It was not as if she had any desire to make him live beneath the cat’s paw. She would make him comfortable, as she had Papa, and perhaps he’d allow her a little freedom in exchange. He would want children, at least an heir. No more dying of envy whenever she saw a woman with a babe in her arms. No more wondering whether she should marry a man she did not care for, solely for the sake of children.
    As Phyllis nagged on, anything seemed preferable to staying at Brantwood.
    * * * *
    “I believe Lady Eleanor is in the music room, my lord.”
    Benedict thanked the butler with a nod and made his way towards the music room. In five days at Brantwood he had yet to speak to Lady Eleanor alone. The Derringtons were all that was hospitable. There were other guests, many of them interested in purchasing the young earl’s fine carriage horses. Days were filled with shooting parties, outings on horseback with the ladies in carriages, a hunt with the South Berkshire. Every evening there were more guests to dinner, followed by music and cards and billiards.
    He would have thought no one guessed his real purpose were it not for Lady Derrington’s constant hints and determined chaperonage of her sister-in-law.
    He was well satisfied with what he had seen of Lady Eleanor. She seemed at ease among her brother’s guests and, he gathered, had played hostess to admiration in her equally hospitable father’s time. Her dress was neat and proper, neither dowdy nor excessively fashionable. Her face was pleasant, distinguished neither by daunting beauty nor plainness. She was neither fat nor thin, and she moved with grace. When she played Haydn or Scarlatti upon the spinet in the drawing room after dinner, her touch was light and sure. Benedict looked forward to musical evenings in his own home.
    If Lady Eleanor had a fault, it was that she was rather too quiet. On the other hand, Lady Derrington talked enough for two, enough to convince him the last thing he wanted was a garrulous wife. He had decided to propose.
    His interview with Lord Derrington proved most satisfactory. Lady Eleanor possessed a considerable fortune in her own right—naturally he would settle it upon her and her children. He had no need of her money but at least it proved she wouldn’t be marrying him for his wealth.
    He was not ill-looking. He had every intention of being a considerate husband, and he’d provide her with a family and an establishment of her own. What more could any woman desire?
    The music-room door was closed. As Benedict opened it, a flood of sound engulfed him, urgent, demanding, troubled. Startled, he stepped forward. The music came to a sudden halt.
    Lady Eleanor sat at the pianoforte, her hands still on the keys. She stared at him as if turned to stone by his sudden appearance.
    “What were you playing?” he asked to put her at her ease, advancing towards the instrument.
    She jumped up, closing the music. “A new piece, Lord Clifford. I fear I have by no means yet mastered it. Were you… were you looking for me?”
    “Yes. I have something particular to say to you, Lady Eleanor. Will you not be seated?”
    “No, thank you,” she said with an odd hint of defiance. Tall and elegant in leaf-green sarsenet trimmed with white Valenciennes, she moved to the window where she gazed out at a glinting April shower.
    For the first time, Benedict felt a hint of awkwardness. After all, he had never before proposed marriage. But gentlemen did it every day. It was nothing out of the ordinary. There was even a prescribed form of sorts—stuff about