She made another attempt to disengage herself. “No, indeed, how should I? I am sure I wish you may, but it cannot concern me. It is not on the score of your more advanced age that I find myself obliged to decline your offer, but our different situations, my own feelings—I beg of you, let us speak of this no more!”
An idea dawned on him; his rather protuberant blue eyes gleamed with intelligence. “I see how it is!” he said in his hurried way. “I am a clumsy fellow, I do not make myself plain! But it is marriage, you know, that I am offering you—everything in proper sailing trim, upon my word of honour!”
“I did not mistake you,” she said in a suffocating voice. “But you must perceive how impossible such an alliance would be! Were I to consent to it can you suppose that there would be no opposition from your family?”
“Oh, you mean my brother, the Regent! I do not know why he should oppose it. He is not at all a bad fellow, I assure you, whatever you may have heard to the contrary. There’s Charlotte to succeed him, and my brother York before me. You may depend upon it he thinks the Succession safe enough without taking me into account. But you do not say anything! You are silent! Ah, I see what it is, you are thinking of Mrs, Jordan! I should not have mentioned her, but there! you are a sensible girl; you don’t care for a little blunt speaking. That is quite at an end: you need have no qualms. If there has been unsteadiness in the past that is over and done with. You must know that when the King was in his senses we poor devils were in a hard case—not that I mean anything disrespectful to my father, you understand—but so it was. We have all suffered—Prinny, and Kent, and Suss, and poor Amelia! There’s no saying but that we might all of us have turned out as steady as you please if we might have married where we chose. But you will see that it will all be changed now. Here am I, for one, anxious to be settled, and comfortable. You need not consider Mrs. Jordan.”
Miss Taverner succeeded at last in drawing her hands away. “Sir, if I could return your regard perhaps the thought of that lady might not weigh with me, but surely she must be considered, cannot be put quite out of mind?”
“Oh,” said the Duke earnestly, “I was never married to her, you know. No, no, you have that quite wrong! There are no ties binding us, none at all!”
She could not forbear giving him a look of shocked reproach. “No ties, sir?”
“You mean the children, do you?” said the Duke eagerly. “But you will like them excessively! I do not believe there can be better children in the world.”
“Yes, sir, indeed I have always heard—but you do not understand me! It is not on that count that I—pray believe, sir, that what you propose can never be! You must marry some lady of rank, some princess; you know it must be so!”
“Not at all, not at all!” declared the Duke, puffing out his cheeks. “There can be no objection, no hitch of any sort. You are not to be thinking this is cream-pot love, as they say, because, when I am married, you know, Parliament will make me a grant, and I shall pay off my debts, and be all right and tight. We shall do delightfully!”