Leslie Lafoy by Her Scandalous Marriage

salvage what little pride was left after doing so, or risk every shred of it, engage her boldly, and hope for an incredible stroke of luck.
    “Let’s be honest,” she said, stripping the decision away from him. “The real point of this entire conversation is whether or not I am a virgin. The answer is no, I am not.”
    There is a God
.
    “As to the question of whether that will become public knowledge . . . The answer is that it will only if you choose to make it so. The young man to whom I was engaged is dead. And since he was an honorable and decent man, he took my heart and my secret with him to the grave.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
But not overly and deeply so.
    “As am I. I loved Peter very much.”
    “And your devotion to his memory is what makes thethought of marriage to someone else unacceptable to you,” he guessed, feeling for the first time in months that life might actually go his way for a change. “People often marry for reasons other than love, you know.”
    “Quite frankly, I think love has very little to do with most marriages,” she offered, casually returning to her meal. “At least those that I’ve seen. Typically, what begins as a glorious bloom of intense physical attraction fades into a purely practical arrangement.”
    “Fairly quickly,” he offered to keep her talking. She was a fascinating creature. So many unexpected facets.
    “Seemingly,” she agreed. “And then it’s a mere matter of service exchanges that don’t particularly delight either party, but are acceptable because they’re relieved that they don’t have to negotiate with strangers for them on a daily basis.”
    “I never would have guessed that you are such a cynic.”
    “Hiding it is a necessary professional skill. I make at least a dozen bridal trousseaus every year. Brides don’t want to have their breathless illusions of happily-ever-after dashed with reality. If you can’t pretend to their satisfaction, they’ll take their business to someone who can.”
    “Amazing,” he said, shoving his plate aside, his interest in eating entirely gone. Drinking, though . . . He picked up his wine glass and settled back in his chair, content to just look at her. God, she didn’t need a drop pendant necklace to draw a man’s eyes to her bodice. How the hell had he ever thought that he could resist her?
    “And now that you know all about me,” she said, taking a sip of wine, “it’s only fair that you tell me something about yourself.”
    “There isn’t much to tell.” Well, there was a great deal to tell, actually, but he really wasn’t all that interested intalking. If he’d had his druthers, he’d much rather close and lock the dining room doors, sweep the table clean and lay her down on it.
    “Your family name is Mackenzie,” she pressed. “Scotch, obviously, but I don’t hear the brogue in your voice.”
    Then again, some women considered conversation foreplay. “My father’s ancestors came to England with the first King James. In the course of the almost three hundred years since, the Stuart blood that was once in us has been considerably diluted. A good nosebleed these days would be the last of it.”
    She smiled and then tipped her chin up to laugh outright. His loins tightened instantly.
    “My paternal grandfather was your father’s cousin,” he said, in part to distract himself, in part to keep the game going. “The title had to do quite a bit of backtracking and side-sliding on the family tree to be dumped on my doorstep.”
    “You make it sound as though you weren’t expecting it and don’t much want it.”
    “I wasn’t and I was rather enjoying the life I had.”
But things are definitely looking up at the moment.
    She laughed again and set her plate aside. And then, to his deep and abiding appreciation, she leaned forward, picked up the wine glass in one hand, propped the elbow of her other arm on the table, and cradled her cheek in her palm. Her eyes sparkling, she smiled