The next morning, Cora was pleased to encounter Lord Montville on the central staircase on her way down to breakfast. "Good morning, my lord!" she called out, hurrying to catch up with him.
He smiled, but he gave her a look that indicated he found her exuberance rather odd. "Good morning, Miss Levinson."
"It's wonderfully sunny," she went on. "Shall we take a walk together after breakfast?"
Lord Montville, who, like most men, had never had a woman ask to spend time with him—that was his role—merely stared at her. "If it would please you," he said, his tone almost questioning.
"Oh, it would, sir, it would," she said enthusiastically.
Cora was aware of how desperate she must seem—as well as the fact that she was coming across as halfway to lunacy—and the humiliation of it made her cheeks burn. But she was determined to lock down an engagement by the end of her stay at Forde Abbey, and she had a mere three days in which to do it.
She and Montville entered the dining room, and she steeled herself when she spotted Robert Crawley serving himself from the buffet table. He smiled warmly and came to her immediately.
"You're looking quite well, Miss Levinson. I trust your headache has gone?"
"It has, thank you." She glanced to her side for an escape, only to realize that Montville had already stepped away to choose a seat.
"I'm glad to hear it. Would you like to view the gardens together this morning?"
She felt a hollowness in her chest at having to turn him down. "No, my lord, I'll be walking with Lord Montville after breakfast," she said, deliberately not thanking him for the invitation. It would be so much easier if he would just leave her alone.
He looked a bit disappointed but pushed on. "This afternoon, then?"
"I'll see what the others have planned," she said, moving away.
The walk with Montville was dull—she was beginning to discover that he was not a fascinating or talkative man—but he did seem to be taking pleasure in her obvious interest. And fortunately, Robert seemed to have taken the hint and did not press her to spend the afternoon with him when they met again at luncheon. She made plans that involved no one but herself and stole away to her room for one of the naps her body had begun to crave.
There was dancing after dinner, and when Lord Montville, whose confidence in the affections of a woman who should have been far above his level was clearly growing, asked for two dances, she eagerly told him he could have twice that. And when Robert, with hesitation in his eyes, asked for one, she told him her card was quite full and that he would do better to ask someone else. She saw the hurt written clearly on his face as he took the full meaning of her words, and she felt her own heart mirror it as he walked away.
The night before the party was to break up, Cora drew Montville away from the drawing room and into the library. She knew he would not be so confident as to propose this early, so she meant to do it for him. "My lord Montville," she began, "I suspect you're aware that I have great affection for you."
Montville's eyebrows practically disappeared into his hairline.
"And I have been very much hoping that we might marry," she continued.
"Is this how it's done, in America?" he interrupted. She was not sure whether he meant it as sarcasm, and she was not sure he knew, either. "Ladies propose to gentlemen?"
"No, but I must be honest and tell you my reasons. My lord, I am…with child—"
"Good God!" he almost shouted, and Cora held up a hand for silence.
"I am with child," she repeated, "and thus I must be married soon. I am aware that this shocks you greatly—" Montville made an appalled scoffing noise, but she ignored it— "and I cannot tell you how bitterly I regret the actions that led to my condition, but what's been done has been done. And now I must be wed—"
"And what gives you the impression you have any right to expect marriage from anyone? Much less from myself? I am shocked, Miss Levinson, that you would imagine—"
"I know I have no right to expect that you would marry me. I am throwing myself on your mercy, my lord. You would have my endless gratitude if you would take pity on me and on this child, and raise it as your own—"
"Raise it as my own? Have you taken leave of your senses?"
"If we married, surely you would prefer the world think you had got me with child yourself, and done the honorable thing in marrying me, than let everyone know you'd married a woman who was already pregnant by another man?"
"I would not marry such a woman in the first place. I repeat that I do not want to take a ruined woman as my wife, and risk having some other man's bastard for my second in line if you deliver a son!"
Almost without thinking, she laid her hand against her stomach, as though to block the word from her child's ears. The gesture seemed to repulse him, and he took a step back.
"I have two million American dollars," she said suddenly. "I imagine that's more than you thought?" Montville made a strangled sort of noise, confirming that it was. "My dowry would be fully in your control once we married, yours to do with as you like. Please, sir. I can show you my gratitude no more clearly than with that."
There was a long silence, and Cora knew better than to break it herself. She had made her case and played her trump card, and her future was now in his hands and dependent on his mercy. He walked slowly away from her to lean against the mantel and stare into the fire—for five minutes or for five hours, she was not sure.
"I know at least that you are fertile," he finally said. "You've managed to guarantee what's always an unknown in a marriage. For God's sake; it took the first Lady Montville years to fall pregnant. I'd begun to think she never would."
"I can promise you a baby just a few months after the wedding," Cora said quietly. "And I imagine I'll be able to bear a long string of your own children after that."
"They had damn well better be my own children," he snarled. "How do I know a woman like you won't run out on me as soon as we're wed?"
She shook her head, not bothering to fight back the tears that she knew would show her sincerity. "I will never go near a man I am not married to, ever again. Not after this."
He nodded slowly, considering. "Very well," he said at last. "I will take you as my wife, and your bastard as my second-born."
"Thank you," she whispered, trying not to sob with relief. "Oh, thank you!"