Lee looked at his father. “And what about Blair? Will she forgive me?”
Reed walked to the big walnut desk that dominated the room and took a pipe from a box. “If she’s the kind of girl who’d sleep with her sister’s intended, then I imagine she already knows how to get over this sort of thing.”
“And just what is that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. She’s been back East all these years, going to school with men, studying things she has no right to know anything about, and trying to be a man. Girls like her know from experience how to recover from affairs of one night’s duration.”
Leander took minutes to get his emotions under control. “I’m going to forget you said that, but I want you to know that if you ever say anything like that again, I’ll walk out the door and never come back. It’s none of your business, but Blair was a virgin until last night. And in two weeks’ time I mean to make her my wife.”
Reed was so flabbergasted that he just stood there opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water.
Lee took a seat and lit another cigar. “I think I’d better tell you all I know of what’s happened. As I said last night, for some reason, the twins decided to trade places so it was Blair I took to the reception. I had already planned to do my best to seduce her and, if I found her unwilling, I was going to break off the engagement. I think I was expecting to have to do that, since I was sure that no one, or at least not me, could break through that coating of ice that surrounds Houston.”
He held the cigar out, and a faint smile curved his lips as he remembered last night. “Within five minutes of being alone with her, I was so pleased with Blair that I never thought of questioning who she was or why she was behaving so differently. There was an emergency on River Street and she went with me, unlike Houston who always insisted that I drop her at one of her friends’ houses. We went to the reception and later to our house. Altogether, it was the most pleasurable evening of my life.”
“So now, you think you have to marry her,” Reed said with heavy-sounding finality. “Couldn’t you give it some time? You hardly know her. Marriage is forever. You’ll have to spend your life with this woman, and one night’s acquaintance isn’t enough to base that on. Just because she’s feisty in bed doesn’t mean—.” He stopped at Lee’s look.
“All right,” Reed continued. “So now, you ask for the young lady’s hand in marriage. What happens to Houston? Do you just walk away from her? Women take these things quite hard, you know.”
“Since all this was started by the twins, I don’t feel too bad. They should have thought of the consequences.”
“They could hardly have known that you would choose that night to decide the fate of your future. Before you ask Blair to marry you, why don’t you wait a month or so? That’ll give both of you some time to think about what you’re doing.”
“It’s too late for that. Besides, I don’t think Blair would marry me.”
“Don’t…?” Reed began. “If she’ll sleep with you, why the hell won’t she marry you?”
In spite of the anger in his father’s voice, Lee began to smile. “I’m not sure she likes me. She thinks I’m a bigot like Gates, and I honestly believe that if I asked her to marry me, she’d laugh in my face.”
Reed threw up his hands in despair. “I don’t understand any of this.”
At that moment, the front door was thrown open, and immediately there was the sound of shouting throughout the house.
Lee rose from his chair. “That will no doubt be the outraged Mr. Duncan Gates. I went to his brewery an hour ago and told him that I had deflowered his stepdaughter and, to make amends, I would marry the wayward girl. He is bringing Blair and the four of us are going to discuss the matter. Don’t look so glum, Dad. I mean to have her and I’ll use any method I can to get her.”
Chapter 7
“I have absolutely no intention of marrying him. None,” Blair said for the twentieth time.
“You are soiled, unfit,” Duncan raged. “No one else will have you.”
Blair tried her best to keep calm and not show the turmoil that was boiling inside her. Gates had been shouting at her and trying to intimidate her for three solid hours. She thought about her Uncle Henry’s calmness, how he’d look at what had happened with some humor, and they would sit down and talk about the situation as if they were sane adults. But not Gates. He had the medieval idea that now that she was no longer a virgin, she should be cast down to the dogs—or to Leander, which was about the same thing as far as Blair was concerned.
“May I ask why you don’t want to marry my son?” Reed Westfield asked.
Blair could feel animosity coming from the man, like heat waves on the desert. “I have told you that I have been accepted to intern at a major hospital in Pennsylvania and I plan to take the offer. Besides, I don’t love your son. He is engaged to my sister and, as soon as possible after their wedding, I will return to Pennsylvania, and no one in this town need ever see me again. I don’t know how to make myself more clear than that.”
“You’ve ruined your sister’s life!” Gates shouted. “You don’t think she can marry him after this?”
“Are you insinuating that Leander was…ah, unsoiled, as you put it, before last night?”
Duncan’s face turned red.
“Calm down, Duncan,” Reed said. “Blair, there must be some way that we can work this out to everyone’s satisfaction. Surely, you must have some feelings for my son.”
Blair looked at Lee, who was standing at the back of the room and appearing to enjoy everything. Not any feelings that she could tell publicly, she thought, and as if Lee could read her mind, he smiled at her in such a way that she blushed and had to look away. “I told you before,” she said. “I was pretending to be my sister, and I was acting the way I thought she would act with the man she loved. I don’t think I should be punished for being an excellent actress.”
Reed lifted one eyebrow. “I don’t think any actress carries her role that far.”