Reaching the study, Lowena knocked gently on the door. When there was no response, she opened it and quietly stepped inside. Marcus was standing by the window, unaware of her presence.
For a moment she drank in the sight of him, waiting for him to notice her. All the harsh things she had said to him at the ball had mellowed into a desire just to see him. He’d removed his jacket, and beneath the white shirt his muscles flexed as he stood up straight, lifting his hand and combing his fingers through his dark hair.
His stance was sombre. She took in the sheer male beauty of this man who wanted to make her his wife, feeling her blood run warm. He was everything a man ought to be. She was aware of the aura of calm authority and strength that always surrounded him, that was evident in his voice and lent purpose to his movements.
As if sensing her presence he turned, his shoulders stiffening and his face stony and preoccupied. His expression became guarded as he gave her a lengthy inspection, his eyes as brittle as glass.
Taking a deep breath, she walked towards him. Her stomach was in knots. What if he no longer wanted her? Her pulse was racing faster than ever.
‘Well,’ he said, his eyes locked on hers, cold and dispassionate. He was in complete control. ‘You certainly know how to make an entrance. You take me wholly by surprise.’ One dark brow lifted in questioning arrogance. ‘To what do I owe the honour of this visit? No doubt you have considered my proposal of marriage and have come to reject my offer.’
Although hurt and appalled by his biting tone, Lowena knew she had come too far to stop now. Drawing a long breath, she said, ‘If you want me to go away I will, Marcus. You only have to say.’
She was relieved when she saw his granite features relax a little.’
‘No—please stay.’
Swallowing past the awful lump of constriction in her throat, she moved uncertainly towards him, feeling momentarily at a loss to know what to say.
‘Why are you here?’
His soft voice was more intimidating than a raised one. Pinning her eyes with his, he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his trousers and remained several feet away from her.
‘I want to tell you that I have considered your proposal of marriage most seriously...’ she answered in an aching whisper.
‘I see.’ His eyes probed hers, wary, expectant—hopeful.
‘Marcus—why are you making this difficult for me?’ she asked.
She spoke with such quiet dignity that Marcus felt his heart begin to melt. Her glorious amber eyes, sparkling with suppressed tears, were looking at him with no trace of defiance and without guile.
‘Am I?’
‘Yes—this is silly. Although I don’t suppose I can blame you after my coolness towards you last night. I will do anything to atone if I have angered or upset you in any way.’
One dark brow lifted in questioning arrogance and his firm lips twisted with irony. ‘Anything?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, looking into his fathomless eyes. Her throat ached, and she was trying hard not to cry. ‘Marcus—please don’t be like this. You have no reason to be. I cannot bear it,’ she whispered wretchedly. ‘Please don’t shut me out.’
Her soft plea wrung his heart. ‘So what have you decided? Is it—favourable?’
Lowena was relieved to hear the harsh edge of his voice tempered at last. ‘Yes. I—I’ve come to tell you that I would like to accept your proposal—if you’ll still have me, that is.’
He saw the tears shimmering in her eyes, and one that traced unheeded down her cheek. His heart wrenched and, unable go on torturing her when he had no reason to, he said with a raw ache in his voice, ‘And do you really want to be my wife, Lowena?’
She searched his face, feeling her heart turn over exactly the way it always did when he looked at her as he was looking at her now. She saw the glow in his eyes kindle slowly into flame, and deep within her she felt the answering stirrings of longing—a longing to feel the tormenting sweetness of his caress, the stormy passion of his kiss and the earth-shattering joy of his body possessing hers.
‘Yes. More than anything else that is what I want.’
‘Thank God for that,’ he murmured huskily. ‘As an experienced man of the world, I never would have believed that I could fall victim to a beautiful, innocent young woman who has blithely incurred all my displeasure by leaving me and then having doubts about becoming my wife when I finally find her again. You, my love, have the power to amuse, enchant, bewitch and infuriate me as no other woman has done before. These past weeks have been hellish. I only hope that you have felt my absence as keenly as I have felt yours during the time we have been apart.’
The tenderness in Marcus’s eyes warmed Lowena’s heart. ‘Yes, I have,’ she confessed. ‘When I left you, and before I met my father, everything suddenly seemed so empty and meaningless.’
Marcus’s lips curved in a soft, satisfied smile and tenderness washed through him at the sincere honesty of her reply.
‘I’m sorry,’ she went on. ‘I was still upset and angry that you had told me to leave Tregarrick.’
‘I understand that now.’ Suddenly his smile was lazy, and his eyes settled on her moist lips with hungry ardour. ‘I can think of many pleasurable ways of showing me you are sorry for turning me down.’
Hot colour burned Lowena’s cheeks and she smiled. ‘I would like to.’
‘Then if you come here you can show me, and cry in my arms if you want to. And while you do I will tell you just how much you have come to mean to me. And when I’ve done that, and we are of one accord, I will kiss you.’
Tortured by her tears, and loving him so much, Lowena moved the few steps towards him. But, unable to wait, he reached out and snatched her into his arms, wrapping them about her as she wept happily against his chest, wetting his shirt with her tears. He clasped her tighter, kissing the top of her shining head, inhaling the sweet, familiar sent of her.
‘Dear Lord, I’ve missed you,’ he told her, his voice a ravaged whisper.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said brokenly, still sobbing. ‘I’ve missed you too—so much. I couldn’t fight my feelings, however much I tried. They are too strong for me.’
‘Don’t,’ he begged, unable to bear her tears. Turning her face to his, he touched her mouth with his with an aching tenderness. ‘Don’t cry any more, sweetheart. You’re tearing me apart.’
‘I don’t mean to. I don’t seem to be able to help it,’ she said, smiling through her tears as he proceeded to kiss the droplets from her cheeks.
Placing his finger beneath her chin, he tilted her face to his. ‘Don’t ever leave me again, Lowena. Even if I ask you to—which I won’t. I asked you to leave because I wanted you out of the house—somewhere I didn’t have to see you. I reasoned that if you were no longer there I’d stop feeling wretched... I’d stop wanting you. You’d stop invading my mind. I thought I could exist without you—how wrong I was. You’d been gone less than a week when I saw the truth of what I’d done.’
‘Please don’t—there is no need to torture yourself like this, Marcus,’ Lowena whispered, deeply moved by his words.
‘I couldn’t endure a time like that again without you—not knowing where you were, what had happened to you. I’d cut myself off from caring for anyone for so long—maintaining the careful emotional distance I had developed over the years to protect myself. Then all of a sudden there you were, and I wanted you—quite desperately.’
‘I wish you had told me then.’
‘I was a fool not to. You have done what no other woman has been capable of doing. When I returned from America and saw you—all grown up and more beautiful than I remembered—I was offered hope and forced to test the susceptibility of my own heart. You have broken through my guise of stoic reticence. The simple truth is that I was strongly attracted to you. You were far
too beautiful for any man to turn his back on.’
‘And yet you sent me away. It was because of Isabel, wasn’t it? I know she hurt you very badly.’
‘Yes, she did. I admit it. You knew her. You must have known what she was like.’
‘I was living with Izzy at the time, and didn’t go to the house. I saw her from time to time in the carriage, or riding out, but I didn’t know her—I never spoke to her. She was very beautiful, that I do know,’ Lowena said, remembering the woman—tall and slender as a willow, with flaxen hair and cornflower-blue eyes.
‘Yes, she was, and I was certain she returned my feelings. In fact, she swore her undying love.’
Lowena hated Isabel for hurting him, for turning him into a cynical man who was reluctant to marry and refused to believe in love. She realised that although Marcus wanted her, Lowena, he hadn’t wanted to open himself up for more hurt. Yes, he wanted her in a physical sense—he’d shown her that and told her as much. But Isabel had damaged him. He’d put a wall around himself, but it wasn’t insurmountable after all, for he had asked her to be his wife.
‘I can’t begin to imagine how you must have felt, but I can imagine the pain of it.’
‘Looking back, I don’t know if the pain I felt was caused by losing her or by Edward taking something that was mine. I didn’t see myself as a victim. There was nothing to be gained by placing blame. And they were happy together, if just for a short time. But I didn’t want to watch them settled and living at Tregarrick. It was better that I got on with my own life. I told myself that I would never again allow myself to become enamoured by a woman.’
‘I don’t wonder at your reluctance. But not every woman is like Isabel.’
‘You are absolutely right. It was simply that she hurt my unguarded heart so badly,’ he said, remembering Isabel and how, even with the width of the Atlantic Ocean between them, he had been unable to forget her. ‘When I left America, for me the war was over. I told myself that what mattered now was getting on with my life. And yet those left-over thorns were still stuck in my flesh and posing problems.’
‘And what happened to change that?’
He looked at the proud beauty before him. Placing his hand gently on the curve of her cheek, he felt the pain of a moment before dissolve as he looked into the depths of her eyes and saw her goodness and understanding.
‘You did.’
‘So you did want me?’
Taking her face between his hands, he looked deep into her glorious eyes. His expression held no laughter when he searched the hidden depths with his own, and when he spoke his voice was husky.
‘Want you? How can you ask me that? My attraction to you is both powerful and undeniable. I have told you that I sent you away because I was afraid of what you were making me feel. The force of my feelings astounded me. At first I was quite bewildered by the emotion I felt in my heart. I couldn’t really describe what I felt for you because I didn’t have any words. All I knew was that I felt strange, wonderful—different from anything I had ever expected to feel or ever wanted to feel again. It was as if I had spent my whole life waiting for you to be there.’
‘I have always been here—since the day you found me.’
‘Yes, you have. I have wanted you ever since you were a sixteen-year-old girl—one minute filled with childlike innocence and the next with the beauty of a woman and the wisdom of someone twice your age. And now you have a new identity, a new place in the world, but you are still full of strange, shifting shadows, and I ask myself if I shall ever truly know who you are.’
‘Know that I am only a woman who loves you. That is the truth.’
Drawn to the beauty of the bewitching amber eyes looking into his, he lowered his head at last and his mouth covered hers in an endless, drugging kiss as his arms tightened around her. Trembling with a joy that was almost impossible to contain, Lowena abandoned herself to his embrace, pressing herself close to him.
His kiss, full of longing and bittersweet, induced a whole range of uncontrollable feelings within Lowena, and her eyes fluttered closed when she felt the stirring of immense pleasure sigh through her body. All she was conscious of was Marcus’s mouth on her own, kissing her with commanding strength and passion. He deprived her of thought, leaving only feelings, and they filled her with such a sense of languorous pleasure that she seemed to be floating. He was as warm as she remembered, and the masculine scent of him seemed to surround her...
Chapter Ten
When at last they drew apart, Marcus took her chin between his fingers and tilted her head until the light shone in the amber depths of her eyes.
‘There is one thing more I have to ask you, my love,’ he said, tracing her jaw and cheek with his forefinger, his gaze compelling. ‘How soon can we be married?’
She smiled at him, a soft pink flush mantling her cheeks. With a raised brow he waited silently, expectantly, for her answer.
‘I would say right now, if it could be arranged, but I don’t think my father and Deborah will allow us to get off that lightly. Arrangements will have to be made, so I suppose we’ll have to patient.’
His heart ecstatic in its joy, with a groan Marcus pulled her against his chest with stunning force, crushing her against him. ‘My beautiful, darling girl, I shall insist that arrangements are made right away—within the next two weeks—I shall obtain a special licence, here, in London.’
Her lips broke into a smile of delight. ‘What? No banns?’
‘No. My impatience to make you my wife is great indeed. Besides, I have no intention of allowing anyone to come forward to ban a union between us.’
‘They wouldn’t dare!’ She laughed. ‘But I have to consider my father. I have spoken to him, and he knows how I feel about you and that you want to marry me. But he has only just become used to having a daughter and suddenly you intend to snatch me away.’
He grinned down at her. ‘I am sure he will wish us well. Besides, Devon is practically next door. We can visit and he will be more than welcome in our home.’
‘Home! It will not be easy for me, returning to Tregarrick as your wife. As an employee of your family I was accepted as such, but there will be a complete change in the household’s attitude towards me. I expect there will be a distinct reserve—even resentment—now I am no longer one of them.’
‘I will write to the housekeeper. They will know by then who you are, and by the time we get there you will be accepted as my wife.’
‘But I am not trained to oversee a household.’
‘My mother will help you. You’ll soon get the hang of things.’
‘And Edward? How do you think he will react to our marriage?’
He shrugged. ‘That does not concern me. He will deal with it in his own way.’
It wasn’t until later, when Lowena was alone in her room, that the full realisation of what she was about to do set in—she would be married to Marcus before the month was out. Just the thought of being his wife warmed her heart and set her pulses racing, but she was disappointed that he hadn’t told her that he loved her, which would make their union perfect...
* * *
Everyone was delighted at the way things had turned out for Marcus and Lowena—in particular Lady Alice, who was relieved that Lowena had been found and that she was united with her father. The two families came together to discuss the happy event of their wedding, although Lowena insisted that she didn’t want much fuss—that she wanted it to be a quiet family affair.
‘No sooner do I find I have a daughter than she leaves me,’ Sir Robert said as he embraced her. ‘But if this is what you want and you are happy then that is the most important thing.’
‘We are not far. We will see each other often. Now I have found you I will not be away from you for long periods, I promise you.’
‘Now, where will the
wedding take place?’ asked Lady Alice, already mentally listing the many arrangements.
‘Here—in London,’ Marcus stated, ‘At St George’s Church in Hanover Square—if that is agreeable to you, Sir Robert?’
‘Why not wait until we are back in Cornwall?’ Lady Alice asked.
‘Because a long delay seems pointless, and because I want my sister and her family at our wedding. I would not wish to drag them all that way.’
‘But—what about Edward?’ Lady Alice said tentatively. ‘I know the two of you are not...close, but would you not like to have your brother present?’
Marcus looked at his mother directly, his expression suddenly hard. ‘Of course I would—and you know how I wish things could have been different between us—but Edward’s behaviour to both you and me in the past has not endeared him to either of us. No, we will marry here in London. I am impatient to return to Cornwall, but I think St George’s Church will be more convenient for the guests.’
‘But there is still so much to do—not to mention Lowena’s bridal gown,’ Deborah said. ‘It is virtually impossible to arrange a wedding on a scale that befits the daughter of Sir Robert in two weeks. And do not forget that we have bridesmaids to find.’
‘I don’t see why that should be a problem. Juliet has two young daughters. I am sure they’d be overjoyed to be Lowena’s bridesmaids.’
‘I agree with Deborah,’ Lady Alice remarked. ‘I think a little more time is needed.’
‘My dear mother,’ Marcus said, not in the slightest perturbed by the objections being raised. ‘I am sure you and Deborah are two of the most competent and capable women in London. I have every confidence that you will be able to arrange food, flowers and bridesmaids in time.’
‘But we can’t possibly!’ Deborah said.
Marcus grinned at them all, casually propping one booted foot on the opposite knee and gently stroking the palm of Lowena’s hand with his thumb inside the folds of her skirt, knowing how susceptible she was to his caress when he heard her breath catch in her throat and saw a pink flush mantle her cheeks.
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