He just looked weary.
‘What...’ she swallowed nervously ‘...what happens now?’
‘Now,’ he said, striding out of the front door and down the steps, ‘we go home.’ He nodded to the footman who’d come trotting out after them. ‘Fetch us a cab, would you?’
‘A cab? Don’t you have a coach waiting somewhere? And I have left my coat and outdoor shoes behind in the ladies’ retiring room.’
‘The reports of our betrothal, and the manner of it, and our hasty departure will soon reach my coachman. He can make his own way home. After all, he has the transport.’
‘Yes, but...’
‘And you don’t need outdoor shoes,’ he said, carrying her across the pavement to the cab, which had drawn up. He deposited her inside, stripped off his own tailcoat and wrapped it round her shoulders. ‘Nor do you need a coat for the short journey to Deben House.’
‘Deben House? Why are we going there?’
‘Because we need to talk. Somewhere where we won’t be interrupted. My servants will not dare to question my movements, in my own home. If I take you anywhere else, there’s bound to be someone who’ll try to make us pander to the conventions. We may be betrothed, but we still ought not to be alone with each other. So people will say. And I—hell!’ He raked his fingers through his thick dark curls as though almost at the end of his tether. ‘I cannot go on like this. It’s unbearable.’
She shrank into his coat and into the corner at the same time. It was unbearable?
‘Being betrothed to me, do you mean?’
‘No! How could you think that?’ He winced. ‘No, I know exactly how you could think that. I have not behaved...but—no. What I regret is the manner of my proposal. Kneeling there in silence, practically willing that oaf to goad you into it. He said he grew up with you. How could he not know that giving you a direct order would result in you doing the exact opposite? You all but said, so there, and stamped your foot when you told him you would jolly well marry me. How do you think it makes me feel, knowing you only accepted my proposal to spite him?’
‘I...I don’t know,’ she said in amazement. But it sounded almost as though it mattered to him. Which implied that he cared. More than just a little.
‘I thought it would be enough that I’d got you to say yes. But it seems where you are concerned, my conscience is particularly acute.’ He shut his eyes and threw his head back against the squabs. ‘God, before I met you I was not even aware I possessed a conscience.’
‘B-but you have done nothing you need feel guilty about.’
He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Oh, haven’t I? Do you not understand what I have done to you yet? I have robbed you of all choice. You have to marry me now, or for ever be condemned as a jilt. And do you know what is worse? Nobody will reproach me. Nobody. I can behave as badly as I wish and still be accepted everywhere. But if you make a bid for freedom you will be ostracised. You will have to spend the rest of your life hiding out in the depths of the countryside and even there you will not completely escape the repercussions of this night’s work.’
She laid a hand on his arm when he would have run his fingers through his hair again.
‘None of that will happen, if that is what is worrying you, because I am going to marry you. I will not back down.’
‘No. You are not the sort to back down from a challenge. That is just the trouble.’
The cab juddered to a halt and Lord Deben flung the door open.
‘I gambled on you doing just that. It was unforgivable,’ he growled, stalking away from her without a backwards glance.
She clambered out, unaided, and followed him up the front steps of the imposing mansion into which he’d just disappeared.
‘Oi,’ cried the jarvey as he saw both his passengers vanish without a backwards glance. ‘Wot about my fare?’
From inside, she heard Lord Deben order someone, in far-from-polite terms, to see to it.
As she stepped into a massive hall, a footman scurried past her and out into the night. Another stood gaping at her. She supposed she was quite a sight, draped in a man’s coat over her evening dress, but worst of all, unchaperoned and clearly the cause of his lordship’s ill humour.
She clutched the coat to her throat, wondering what to do next.
A door to her right flew open and Lord Deben emerged from it. ‘This is Miss Gibson,’ he told the perplexed footman. ‘Soon to be Lady Deben, unless she can come up with some way to overturn the damn-fool proposal I made her tonight.’ With that, he retreated into the room from which he’d briefly emerged, slamming the door behind him.
The footman blinked just once upon reception of that astonishing news, but then recovered his professional demeanour and asked if he could relieve her of her coat.
She shook her head, steeled herself to face up to whatever lay behind that door and went in pursuit of Lord Deben.
He had gone into a room that looked as though it was kept in readiness for when he returned in the evening. A fire was blazing in the grate. And Lord Deben was standing on the hearthrug with his back to it, already in possession of a drink.
Glaring at her.
‘If you wanted me to have some means of escaping our betrothal,’ she pointed out tartly, ‘then you should not have physically carried me out of the Twinings’ house, into the cab and brought me to your home.’
‘I know,’ he said grimly. Then he laughed harshly. ‘Even when I decide to reform, the best I can do is make my mouth say the right words. I am incapable, it seems, of preventing myself from behaving in a completely and utterly selfish manner.’
‘Are you telling me,’ she said, reaching behind her to close the door, ‘that you feel as though you ought to release me from this betrothal, but find yourself incapable of doing anything so...chivalrous?’
‘Yes, dammit.’ He tossed back the entire contents of the glass he’d been holding, then dashed the empty vessel into the fireplace. ‘I have taken ruthless advantage of the opportunity that idiot handed me to bind you to me irrevocably. Letting him run to his length, silently urging him to goad you into accepting my proposal has to be the lowest, meanest thing I’ve ever done. Just when I’d been congratulating myself these past few weeks for drawing the line at forcing you into marriage by taking your virginity, I went and did something just as underhanded. Just as manipulative.’
‘Wh...?’ She shook her head, thoroughly confused. ‘Underhanded? Manipulative? You sound as though you truly want to marry me, my lord.’
‘Of course I do, you little idiot! I’ve been besotted with you practically since the moment you erupted out from behind those plant pots with your hair all over dead leaves and your nose running, to rescue me from making the biggest mistake of my life...’
She sank down on to the nearest piece of furniture, since her legs suddenly decided to give way.
‘Mistake?’ She shook her head again. ‘You said nothing would have induced you to marry Miss Waverley...’
‘That was not the mistake I was about to make. It was far worse. I had just decided that all women were so untrustworthy that it didn’t matter who I married. I had just decided to walk into the ballroom, ask the first relatively attractive one who batted her eyelashes at me to dance, and, if she didn’t bore me too greatly, to propose to her and get the whole wretched business over and done with.
‘But then you showed me that there are women who have a sense of honour and decency. And that if I married just any woman, I would doom myself, and probably my children, to a lifetime of regret. I decided that I wanted to marry a woman like you, Miss Gibson. A woman who would be loyal, and decent, and honest. Even painfully honest, if she didn’t agree with the way I tend to act as I wish. And before much longer, I didn’t want to just marry a woman like you,’ he bellowed. ‘I wanted only you.’
‘You have always
wanted me? Even when I—?’
‘Wore the most ridiculous outfit and made a spectacle of yourself, just to teach me a lesson,’ he agreed gloomily.
‘So then, why are you trying to find ways to get out of it? I have said I will marry you. And I won’t go back on my word.’
‘It isn’t enough. I thought it would be, but it isn’t.’ He turned round and gripped the mantelpiece with both hands, his head bowed as though he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.
‘Dammit, you must be the only woman in London so innocent that you haven’t noticed how hard I’ve been trying to seduce you. The depths to which I’ve stooped to get you to this point. I wove a sensual web round you, lured you into that room, then reduced you to a state of mindless passion, deliberately, so I could take your virginity that night. Haven’t you realised it yet?’
‘No, I...’ She sat back, stunned. It hadn’t been farewell then, that night. He’d been trying to stop her from ending their relationship in the only way he knew how.
And yet when it came to it, he hadn’t been able to go through with it.
‘Why did you stop, then?’
‘You smiled at me,’ he groaned. ‘You looked so trusting... How could I abuse that trust by robbing you of your right to choose? After you’d shown me how important it was? That was the moment I realised that I didn’t just want to possess you and make you do what I want. I wanted you to...’ He paused. His knuckles went white. ‘I want the impossible. I want you to love me.’
‘Oh, that’s...’ a little sob escaped her throat ‘...that’s wonderful!’
‘What?’ He spun round so quickly that for a moment he lost his balance and had to clutch at the mantelpiece to regain it. ‘What is wonderful?’
‘That you want me so much you were prepared to go to those lengths. That you cared enough about me to put my wishes before your own for once. I know how much that must have cost you.’
‘Yes. You know me for the selfish bastard I am,’ he said bitterly.
‘But if all this is true,’ she said, suddenly puzzled by one glaring inconsistency in his argument, ‘why on earth didn’t you just propose to me in the conventional manner? Why did you have to make it all so complicated?’
‘You wouldn’t have accepted,’ he said with conviction. ‘Why would you? You hadn’t been in town five minutes before you learned of my reputation. How could a girl with such high moral standards stoop to consider an alliance with a serial adulterer?’
She looked thoughtful. ‘It has often occurred to me to wonder why you consider yourself so very bad. You don’t frequent brothels, or keep a string of mistresses, tossing them and their offspring aside once you’ve grown bored, like so many other men of rank. And I have never seen you the worse for drink.’
He grimaced with distaste. ‘I do not like having my wits addled. Drink dulls the senses and makes fools of men I could otherwise respect. Do you think I wish to figure in society as a fool?’ He made a slashing motion with his hand. ‘But like all men of my class I did commence my sexual career in a brothel. It was just that I soon found out I’m too fastidious to frequent such establishments. I graduated to keeping a string of mistresses, though that...’ he snorted in derision ‘...palled swiftly, too. There is something so very mercenary about the arrangement.’
‘Oh, I see! At least a married woman genuinely wants you for yourself, not for what you can buy her.’
‘You are elevating those encounters to something they never were,’ he grated. ‘They didn’t want me. They just wanted someone in their bed to alleviate the boredom they experienced with their own husbands. Don’t make excuses for me. I treated them all abominably. I demonstrated how much I despised them for breaking their marriage vows even while I stripped them naked. They liked it,’ he said with a curl to his lip. ‘The more brutal I was with them, the more my reputation for being an exciting lover spread,’ he said with disgust.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand how you can have driven yourself into such a miserable state. Why did you not—?’
‘What?’ He laughed bitterly. ‘What alternative did I have? I have a healthy sexual appetite, but I dislike women intensely. As people,’ he added swiftly when he saw her eyes widen in surprise. ‘I enjoy women’s bodies. I hunger for the satisfaction that I can find only in bed. But as for forming any kind of connection outside the bedroom...’ He shook his head. ‘I cannot believe I am talking to you about such a sordid topic. I could excuse myself by saying that right from the first, you have had the power to make me blurt out thoughts I have never had any trouble concealing from everyone else. But it is not sufficient. Instead, it is just one more sin,’ he drawled darkly, ‘to chalk up to my name.’
‘We are going to be married,’ she said softly. ‘We should be able to talk about anything. And from what you have just told me, it sounds as though you have been at war with yourself for quite long enough. There is nothing wrong with wanting a woman to love you, and only you. Nor in disliking visiting brothels. Nor keeping a mistress, if you have not been able to find a deep and fulfilling relationship with a woman. Lord Deben,’ she said with a twinkle in her eye, ‘I rather think you have more moral values than you like to let the world suspect you of harbouring.’
‘Nonsense!’ He drew himself up, affronted that she should suspect him of harbouring moral values. ‘This is just one more example of why it would be quite wrong to make you marry me. You won’t face the truth. You keep looking for the good in me, and there isn’t any!’
‘This, from the man who drew back from taking my innocence when he was so aroused his breeches must have been positively painful? A man with no good in him would have taken what he wanted and probably tossed his victim aside afterwards.’
‘What would you know about such things?’
‘I have four brothers,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘And the two older ones have not always been as discreet as they might be when embarking on their own adventures of that nature. They talk to each other and forget that, in the dead of night, when they roll back from the tavern, my window might be open and I might not be asleep.’
‘Nevertheless,’ he said, pushing himself away from the fireplace and walking across to the sideboard, ‘I should not have exposed you to my lust.’ He picked up the decanter. ‘It was wrong.’ He slammed it back down again. ‘I am not good enough for you. That was, in the end, the only thing upon which your father and I could completely agree,’ he finished morosely.
‘My father? How do you know my father?’
‘Where the hell do you think I’ve been these past two weeks? Or do you still maintain it is of no concern to you?’ he said bitterly, swinging round to scowl at her.
‘No,’ she said, completely entranced by the sight of the self-contained, suave, sophisticated Lord Deben in the throes of an emotional crisis.
Over her.
‘I should like to know, very much, where you have been and what you have been doing, now that I begin to suspect,’ she said shyly, ‘that you might not have spent the whole time in some secluded love-nest with a woman who was able to give you what you didn’t seem to want to take from me.’
He looked at her sharply, his brows lowering even further.
‘You thought I didn’t want you that night? You thought I was with another woman?’
‘Never mind that,’ she said, making a dismissive motion with her hand. ‘You said you were going to tell me how you met my father.’
‘So I did.’ He regarded her thoughtfully. ‘After allowing you to escape me, at the Swaffhams’, I indulged in a fit of despair that lasted almost two full days.’
‘Really?’ She curled her feet up on the sofa and made herself comfortable. ‘Go on.’
His eyes flew to where his coat, still slung over her shoulders, gaped to reveal a hint of her figure, then rested for a few seconds
on the rapt expression on
her face.
‘I took myself off to Farleigh Hall. And strode about the estate, hacking at the undergrowth with my cane, cursing the fates that had me falling for the only woman I’d ever met who was completely immune to me. And then I began imagining one of those bucks who’ve been hanging about you finally breaking through your indifference and persuading you to marry him instead of me. Then I realised that it was not as far from Farleigh Hall to Much Wakering as it is from London to Much Wakering, and I could do no worse than start all over again with you, by going to visit your father and asking for his permission to pay my addresses to you on a formal basis. Once I had that, I thought, you would have to see that I was in earnest. That you would have to at least think about me as a potential husband, and not...well...’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I do not know how to describe the relationship we’ve had so far. But I knew that it would be the devil’s own job to change it from what it had been to the kind of conventional courtship you deserved.’
She swallowed. It took only two days to reach London from Much Wakering. That left a lot of time unaccounted for.
‘Should I enquire where you were for the rest of the time?’
‘I have just told you,’ he replied with a touch of impatience. ‘I have spent the entire time in Much Wakering, trying to persuade your father that I would make you a suitable husband.’
‘He argued about it?’
‘I made the error,’ he said, ‘of assuming he would be flattered to think an earl...’
‘Two earls,’ she corrected him.
‘Oh, God, you can just picture it, can’t you? I went up there all full of myself, announcing my intention to make you my wife, boasting of my titles, my lands, my income...’
She couldn’t help it. She giggled. ‘He n-never set much store b-by such things.’
‘I am glad you find this amusing,’ he snapped. Then sighed. ‘But there. A more intelligent man would have known it was the wrong approach to take with your father from the snippets you had told me about your childhood. All those scientists and inventors thronging his house, then the way he appeared to think the Ledbetters were suitable people to introduce you to London society...’
Harlequin Historical February 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2: Never Trust a RakeDicing With the Dangerous LordA Daring Liaison Page 23