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“I’m looking for more candles. We may as well try to keep as warm as we can.”
Elizabeth watched in some amusement as he began to light them. “I feel like a sacrificial lamb placed at the altar,” she quipped, seeing the semicircle of light.
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Raising his arms, he rested his head in his hands and gave vent to a heartfelt sigh. He was honest enough to admit that for a newly betrothed man he certainly wasn’t experiencing untold joy; honest enough to admit, too, that Mary wouldn’t have been his ideal choice for a wife. He liked her very well, probably more than any other woman he had ever known. She was both kind-hearted and amusing, and for all that she spoke with a pronounced West Country accent she was far from uneducated.
It had been she who had penned the letter to his London solicitors in response to the one they had sent informing him of his brother’s tragic demise. He had also learned from Sergeant Hawker that she had spent many hours with him improving his reading and writing skills. But this, he was only too well aware, was hardly sufficient reason to suppose that she would make a suitable wife for a baronet. The truth of the matter was, of course, that she was totally unsuitable. She could have no notion of what was expected of her. Those vicious society tabbies would have a field day at her expense when they discovered her former station in life.
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