“You are nothing like Montclair,” she said tiredly. “If you were, it would be a good deal easier.”
Her words gave him pause. He should not press her for answers on that statement, but he could no sooner quell the question on his lips than he could shake free this link to his father’s blood. “What would be a good deal easier?”
Jane dropped her gaze to the floor. Why should he be shamed, when he’d been the one to take her lips under his? Why, when he still wanted her, now just a curtain away from a theatre full of potential witnesses to their scandalous actions?
He brushed the backs of his knuckles down her cheek and that gentle caress brought her lashes fluttering once more. “I am not a rogue, Jane,” Those grounded words brought her eyes open. “I am not a charming gentleman with easy words around ladies as my brother.” He’d prided himself on that for the better part of his life. Now he wished he possessed even a trace of Alex’s capabilities for then he’d have the words to muddle through this exchange. He brushed his knuckles along her jaw. “I would never force my attentions upon you or deliberately set to seduce you with words or actions.” I would want you because you desire me as I desire you. “When I shared Rossini’s words, it was so you might know everything about the opera you’d looked forward to.”
Jane leaned up on tiptoe and shrunk the distance between his tall, and her much shorter, frame and kissed him.
Gabriel stiffened and then with an agonized groan, he devoured her mouth with his. There was nothing gentle or sweet about the exchange. It was an explosive meeting of two people who both wanted one another and who’d fought that longing for too long. “I want you,” he whispered as he dragged his lips down her neck.
As he gently sucked at the sensitive skin, a moan slipped past her lips. “I w-want you, too.”
Her words had a maddening effect and a low moan rumbled from deep within his chest. He drew her close to him. Gabriel dropped his attention to the exposed flesh of her décolletage and of their own volition, her hands came up and she anchored him close.
Ah, God damn his soul. He was his father’s son and there was no escaping that crime. Gabriel rucked the skirts of her gown up higher, higher, ever higher and exposed her limbs. Then with desperate movements he ran his hands over her hips then lower. He stroked the expanse of her thigh and drew it about him, testing her against his form. His aching shaft pressed against the front of his breeches and another groan rumbled up from his chest and stuck in his throat.
The orchestra’s distant music, muffled by the pounding of his heart, faded altogether. “We should stop.” Please do not agree.
“We should.” She dropped her head back, allowing him access to her neck once again. He groaned and released her skirts, shifting his search of her body higher.
She whimpered as he returned his attention to her neck. Jane pressed herself against him and drew his head forward. He stumbled and pulled his mouth away, attempting to right her. To no avail. She tipped and crashed backward onto the thin-carpeted hall. Gabriel caught himself on his elbows, above her. The red velvet curtain fluttered and danced damningly about them.
He registered the three pairs of feet in front of his gaze. Two pairs of slippers and a gleaming set of Hessians to be precise. Gabriel swallowed hard and forced his stare upward.
Chloe and Imogen stood with their mouths rounded in like circles while Alex’s green-eyed stare gleamed with the faintest trace of amusement.
“Gabriel?” Alex’s slightly bored drawl jerked him back to the moment. He held a hand out to assist him to his feet.
Bloody hell. This night could not possibly get any worse. Then Lady Jersey with Lady Castlereigh arm-in-arm stepped into the corridor. Their gazes collided with Jane and Gabriel’s prone forms, and as one their eyes formed round moons. He bit back a curse.
He’d been incorrect. The night had just worsened.
*
Positioned between Lady Imogen and Chloe, Jane hurried through the theatre. Her skin pricked from the burn of Gabriel’s gaze on her back and the stare of the two Society matrons who’d chosen the most inopportune time to slip from the performance and enter the corridor and see—
She closed her eyes a moment. The matrons saw her twined with Gabriel’s form like a vine of ivy around a powerful tree. Jane swallowed a humiliated groan and quickened her stride. Had there been any doubt before this moment, there was none now—she was her mother’s daughter. A shameful, wanton harlot who’d kissed a man and been discovered before his family and two ladies of the ton. She pressed a hand to her mouth and buried a moan.
Chloe shot her a sideways look. Concern filled the young woman’s overly kind eyes. “I say, it was a splendid performance, don’t you think, Jane?”
Tears pricked behind her lids. Why would this woman be so kind? Why, when she’d shamed her and Gabriel’s entire family as she had? Chloe slid her arm into Jane’s and patted her hand. “Alex will have secured the carriage by now,” she said with swift assurance.
They made their way down the stairs, through the quiet hall, and outside to where, as Chloe predicted, Lord Alex stood beside the waiting carriages. A surge of relief slammed into her; a desire to hide within the black lacquer walls and hope that those two women failed to glean her identity and—
She thrust aside the futile wish. Society matrons made it their affair to know the affairs of others. Even now, the scandalous exchange between Jane and Gabriel was likely circulating through the theatre fodder for the gossips and no black lacquer carriage would shield her from that.
Jane accepted the assistance of the coachman and allowed him to hand her inside. Chloe followed, and for one moment she believed Gabriel should take a carriage with his brother and for one longer moment, wanted him to and spare her the humiliating agony of sitting beside him and Chloe.
Alas, the fates were uncooperative this evening. Gabriel climbed inside and the wide space of the carriage grew smaller under the power of his frame.
A moment later, the servant closed the carriage door and the conveyance rocked forward. The rumble of the carriage wheels along the cobblestones filled the quiet, punctuated by the beat of her heart in her ears. She gripped the edge of the seat and replayed each horrid moment of this evening.—Montclair’s presence. Her wanton kiss. The discovery.
And worse, the lie between them still remained. She stole a sideways glance at Gabriel. He sat, white lines drawn about his tightly held mouth. A faint muscle jumped at the corner. What was he thinking?
“Did you enjoy the performance, Gabriel?” Chloe’s hopelessly bad question broke into the stiltedness.
Jane peered at the young lady who wore a wide smile on her heart-shaped face.
The muscle twitched once more. “Chloe,” he bit out.
The young lady pointed her eyes to the carriage ceiling. “Gabriel has always enjoyed the opera.”
Jane stared at Chloe. Had the young lady gone mad? Did she not comprehend the implications of this evening’s debacle? For all of them.
“I thought it was a lovely performance.” Apparently, not by the cheerful pronouncement. “I—”
“That will be all, Chloe,” Gabriel snapped with such rigidity to his tone that Chloe went instantly and uncharacteristically quiet.
The carriage rattled along the remainder of the infernal trip, in absolute silence for which Jane was grateful. It gave her an opportunity to try and sort her tumultuous thoughts and put to rights some of her confounded emotions.
She could not stay here. That much was clear now. Her presence only posed a risk to Chloe’s reputation and ability to make a match. She’d given her the truth, though in actuality it was Gabriel who’d been deserving of the details that had brought her into his household. Instead, she’d infringed upon his family’s kindness and left disaster in her wake, as she was wont to do.
She dimly registered the conveyance rocking to a halt before the stucco façade of Gabriel’s townhouse. He didn’t wait for the carriage to come to a complete stop befor
e he shoved the door open and leapt to the ground. He reached back and handed his sister down. Chloe frowned up at him and opened her mouth as though she wished to say something, but with the glower he trained on her, wisely remained silent and sprinted ahead. Gabriel turned back to the carriage and held his hand out.
Jane hesitantly eyed it, and then avoiding his gaze, allowed him to hand her down. She scurried ahead.
“Mrs. Munroe?” he said quietly, momentarily halting her retreat.
She froze.
“Await me in my office.”
This was to be her sacking. They all began with a call to the nobleman’s office. And this time, like the others before it, there would be no reference. Jane gave a jerky nod and then raced ahead. What household would retain her for their daughters’ care—she a woman, discovered with her employer atop her, with her skirts rucked about her lower legs, her lips swollen from a kiss? A sob escaped her lips as she sailed through the entrance, avoiding Joseph’s gaze and made her way through the house to Gabriel’s office. She turned the corner and collided with Chloe.
The young woman caught her about the shoulders and steadied her. “Forgive me,” she insisted. “I do not have much time.” She glanced about. “I suspect Gabriel will arrive any moment to speak with you.”
To sack her.
She claimed Jane’s hands and gave them a gentle squeeze and met her gaze with a seriousness she’d not before seen in Chloe’s eyes. “He will do right by you.” What did that mean to a woman such as her, a whore’s daughter? Then Chloe clarified. “He will not see you ruined.”
“Ruined?” she parroted back. A sad smile turned her lips. She’d been ruined at birth. “I am long past that.”
A momentary flash of pity lit the young woman’s eyes.
Uncomfortable with that show of support and that useless, unwanted emotion, she gave a smile. “I believe I saw to that all on my own, Chloe.”
The soft thread of boot steps sounded down the corridor. Chloe gave her hands one more squeeze and then darted down the hall. Jane turned quickly and pressed the handle. She slipped inside the darkened room and took in the space she’d stood, pleading for her post not even a week ago, feeling remarkably as though she’d come full circle.
She’d required sanctuary for two months. She’d managed to steal but a week. And for that theft, she’d sacrificed the Edgerton family’s good name.
Jane stilled, sensing with an intuition that only came from her body’s inexplicable awareness of his presence. She turned in the middle of the room and folded her arms about her person.
Gabriel stood framed in the doorway, watching her with an inscrutable expression.
She wet her lips, and he followed that slight movement a moment and then closed the door behind him with a soft click. Jane clenched and unclenched her hands at her side. In that assessing manner of his, he dropped his gaze to that distracted movement. When he met her stare once more, a frown marred his lips.
Then, wordlessly, he strode past her and made for his sideboard. He swiped the nearest decanter, poured two snifters of the amber brew, and returned. “Here.” He thrust the glass at her.
Jane held her palms up. “No. I…” Something hard in his eyes silenced those words. She accepted the glass and cradled it in her hands. Of all the households she’d been employed in, every last man had drunk the dratted spirits. What was it about the favored spirits that called to a man? Perhaps the ability to make a person forget? Jane raised the glass to her lips and took a tentative sip. Her lips pulled in a grimace and she exploded into a fit of coughing. She glared at him. “Th-that is horrid.” She’d never understand men. There was no accounting for their interests and tastes.
Some of the hardness left Gabriel’s mouth and that ghost of a smile hovered on his lips. He took a sip of his drink and then carried it to his desk. With a casualness she marveled at, he propped his hip against the edge. Then, being a male and a marquess no less in their Society permitted one that effortless ability in all regards. And just like that, all hint of warmth was gone, replaced with that frozen impenetrableness so that she wondered if she’d merely imagined any softening.
Unnerved, she dropped her gaze to the liquid contents of her glass. “I am sorry,” she said quietly and then grimaced at how useless those regrets were.
“Do you think I hold you responsible for what transpired this evening?” That terse question brought her head up.
Jane stared unblinking, back at him. “I kissed you.” And then she darted her stare about the room, half expecting interlopers to charge forward with their accusatory fingers pointed. She raised the glass to her lips, took another sip, and then promptly choked. “It really is horrid stuff. Utterly awful.”
He took a long swallow and then set his glass down on the desk beside him. “I am sorry,” he said without preamble.
Jane cocked her head, but otherwise remained silent.
“It was not my intention to seduce you at the theatre.”
“Yes, you’ve said as much.” Three times now.
“We will marry,” he continued as though she’d not spoken.
Her heart fluttered and she touched her chest. Her reaction made so very little sense. Why should she have this odd lightening when she’d never before even considered marriage and to a powerful nobleman no less? Surely she’d heard him incorrectly. Though, there had never been anything wrong with her hearing. Or at least she didn’t believe there was. And yet it had appeared he’d said…
He nodded. “Marry.” Gabriel shoved away from the desk and stalked over to his sideboard. He poured several fingerfuls into his snifter, and then seemed to think better of it. “As in wed.” And then added another splash for good measure.
As in, she had heard him correctly.
“Wed?” Gentlemen like him did not wed women such as her. But then, he doesn’t know who I really am.
He gave a brusque nod. A flash of horror glinted in his eyes, the first indication as to just what Gabriel Edgerton, the Marquess of Waverly, felt about the prospect of marriage to her. Her heart dipped back into its proper place and resumed beating a steady, unaffected rhythm. She studied him as he downed the contents of his drink in a single, long swallow. “Of course, given the state of…” He tugged at his cravat. “Our discovery.” He was as awkward at picking his way through this discourse as she. Was there a gentleman in the whole of the kingdom less interested in sealing his marital fate than Gabriel? “There is no recourse except marriage.”
Except there was. There were the funds settled upon her and her finishing school and a life free of a gentleman’s interference in her life. Where was the joy in those prospects that had once given her hope?
Her mother had depended on a man and it had cost her all. Yet in this moment, there was something sweetly seductive in the prospect of being wanted for her. She clasped her hands to her throat. “You would marry me?” Guilt twisted in her belly and she fisted the glass so hard, her knuckles turned white. She was undeserving of his apologies and his generous offer. “You would marry me, when you don’t even know me?” In a world with men who’d take their pleasures where they would, when they would and how they would, this was the kind of man Gabriel Edgerton, the Marquess of Waverly, was. He’d wed her, a stranger, to protect her. Or is it to protect himself, a suspicious voice needled. Was Gabriel so very committed to being the responsible gentleman that he’d marry her and sacrifice his own happiness in the process?
He rolled his shoulders and took it, however, as a question. “I see little choice in the matter.” She winced at those emotionless words, hating that they grated on her heart.
To give her mind something else to fix on, Jane took another sip. She dissolved into a sputtering fit of coughing. No, she could not do it. She set the glass down hard. Foul, stuff the spirits were. They did have a dulling effect upon her senses that at least drove back the edge of anxiety that had dogged her since her and Gabriel’s discovery at the opera.
“I’ll obtain a special
license in the morning,” he said, with all the wariness of a man who’d been saddled with the weight of the world upon his shoulders.
Despite the disarray of her own life and her inevitable ruin, her heart tugged with regret. Poor Gabriel. He cared for his sisters and his brother. Would he take on Jane, a stranger, to appease his misplaced sense of guilt? Never would she steal a person’s freedom, not when she so craved it for herself. She gave her head a slow shake. “I cannot,” will not, “wed you.” Not in good conscience. Not when she’d long disavowed marriage to a nobleman. And most certainly not to a nobleman who appeared more eager to march the steps to a guillotine than find him wed to her. His reaction should not matter, and yet, oddly, a pang struck her heart. She could not maintain the lies between them. Not any longer.
Gabriel froze with his drink midway to his mouth. “Of course you—”
Before her courage deserted her, she cut across his defense. “The Earl of Montclair was not wholly wrong about me, Gabriel.”
Chapter 17
From the moment he and Jane had tumbled from the alcove at the London Opera House, horror had attacked his senses over the inevitability of his fate—he had no choice but to wed. He, who’d vowed to never take a wife, or bring offspring into this world, had lost self-control, and as such, had confined himself to a life with everything he’d disavowed. That horrifying prospect had occupied his thoughts—until now.
Jane shifted back and forth on her feet and wrung her hands before her.
The Earl of Montclair was not wholly wrong about me…
The other man’s allegations rushed to the surface. “What are you on about?” he bit out.
She cleared her throat. “I told you I was employed by the Marquess of Darlington,” she said over him when he made to speak. “I did not explain what happened after I’d been,” she wrinkled her nose, “relieved of my responsibilities from that post.”
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