Alex stared down at her. This wasn’t going the way he pictured. He thought the interview with her father would be the most difficult part of proposing to Charlotte Daicheston. He had dreaded the explanations, the discussion of his first, horrible marriage—for God’s sake, he never even wrote his own father with the details. But the duke had been genial enough, listening carefully, asking a few sage questions, nodding here and there. And at the end he shook hands with Alex and said he had his blessing, and Alex had thought that was it. If he pictured anything, it was Charlotte melting into his arms, madly grateful at the idea of becoming his wife. Swaying toward him, the way she did last night. In fact, he had counseled himself not to allow the whole proposal to get out of hand—he wasn’t going to take his wife’s virginity in a drawing room! Somehow after the discovery of Maria’s perfidy, and after finding out she had bedded practically every man in Rome before turning eighteen, the idea of virginity and wedding nights had become very important. No graceless coupling in coaches for him. Yet he thought that he and Charlotte were so mutually fraught with desire that he even considered a special license. But Charlotte’s father had rejected that idea.

“It’s going to have to be big,” he had said shrewdly. “We’ll have to put on the romantic wedding of the century, in order to cool the gossip. And you”—he looked at Alex from under his bushy eyebrows—”you’ll have to make a baby as soon as possible.”

Alex nodded. He had no worry about that. In all he and Maria probably made love only ten times, and he had Pippa as a result.

But now—Charlotte was looking as testy as a cobbler with a sore head and he was losing all inclination to ask anyone to marry him. What did he need a wife for? Maria’s screaming diatribes should have been enough to warn him off women forever. And Pippa was doing better…. The silence between them grew and grew.

Alex looked down at Charlotte again. With a faint pulse of alarm, he realized that her face was as white as her gown and she was leaning her head against her hand. He sat down next to her.

“You really do have a headache, don’t you?”

Charlotte nodded miserably. Each nod made her head pound. Alex got up and went out into the hall. She heard him talking quietly to one of the footmen.

“I’ve sent him off to tell Keating to make you a special brew,” he said, reentering the room. “Here—bend your head this way.” He gently pulled her over until she toppled against his shoulder.

“This is most improper,” Charlotte said, rearing her head.