by Gabriel
“I had to paint.” Polly’s gaze went to the fresh portrait. “She needs to learn to enjoy people other than her family.”
She took the cloth away, refolded it, and pressed it to her again.
“I need to hold you,” Gabriel said, lingering a few feet away. “The door is unlocked though.”
“And the tea has grown cold.”
He stepped close and put his arms around her. “Do you recall your promise this morning, Polonaise?”
“To tell you my troubles?”
“I did not adequately addle your wits, if you can recall it so easily, but yes, that promise. Will you keep it?”
“Easily.” She let her skirts fall, closing her legs to trap the cloth next to her. “You are my trouble, Gabriel, and I’ve found a solution.”
“You’re marrying me?”
She tucked her face into his throat and held him tightly. “Aaron’s portrait will soon be done. You should know Tremaine has offered me marriage.”
“As have I.”
“I’m considering his proposal, Gabriel.”
“Coward.” He put affection in the word, trying to suggest he didn’t believe her. “I’ll not give you up without a fight. St. Michael is a decent man, but he isn’t me.”
“Precisely.”
He fell silent, and despite the now roaring fire, the heat of his recent exertions, and the warmth of the woman in his embrace, Gabriel felt a chill pierce him to the quick.
Fifteen
“We’re back!” Allie burst into the library, cheeks rosy, the scent of snow clinging to her layers of warm clothing. “You were right. My cheeks are frozen.” She pressed one against the back of Gabriel’s hand to demonstrate. “It was like flying. The sleigh moves more smoothly than if it’s on wheels. We didn’t hitch up Soldier. We hitched up Andromeda, and put sleigh bells on her and everything.”
“And I missed it all.” Gabriel hoisted her onto his lap. “I’ve already ordered our chocolate, and gotten a great deal of work done in your absence.” Two letters was a great deal, sometimes.
“Do you think Aunt wants some chocolate?”
“I took her a pot of tea not long ago. She was in the middle of cleaning her brushes when I left her.”
“She does that to think.” Allie tossed her mittens on the low table. “She tidies her work table, folds her rags, and does other silly things to think.”
“I talk to pigs when I want to think.”
“Do you have pigs here?”
“At the home farm.”
“Do you go visit them?”
“I haven’t yet.” He wondered why, because he’d developed an affection for the beasts in recent years. “I am remiss.”
“You are,” Allie agreed, pulling off her woolen leggings. “We can go see your pigs tomorrow, unless it starts snowing again.”
“You want more snow?” The leaden sky beyond the window suggested the weather might oblige her.
“I don’t want to go back to Three Springs.”
Gabriel put his arms around her and cuddled her against his chest, because he didn’t want to let her go, either. “Why not? Are you on the outs with Hildy?”
“Never.” Allie relaxed against him, a rare trust, because she’d soon be too grown-up for this nonsense. “I don’t want to hear about that baby ever again. Everybody talks about the blessed event, and the interesting condition, and the family way, and being on the nest—it’s stupid. It’s just a baby, and everybody was one. I was a baby.”
“No doubt the most beautiful baby ever born,” Gabriel said, wishing he’d been around to assure her of that when it might have helped.
Allie closed her eyes on a sigh. “Babies are not beautiful. They are bald-headed, squally, and untidy.”
She was wrong: to their parents, babies were unfailingly beautiful, but to make such a remark to this child would be unkind.
Also stupid.
“Allemande?” He drew a hand down her braid, which had become untidy in the course of her day’s adventures.
“Hmm?”
She was showing every sign of drifting off on him, so Gabriel tugged her braid gently. “You must talk to your mother about the way you feel.”
“My mother-mother?”
“The mother who birthed you, whom I know as Polonaise. She loves you, loves you until her eyes are crossed and she can’t think straight, but you haven’t been honest with her.”
“I’m not supposed to be honest.” Allie straightened, perhaps sensing defection by one of her few allies. “I’m supposed to pretend, which is the polite way to say I’m to lie.”
“Not about your feelings, you’re not.” Gabriel let a little sternness creep into his tone. “Not to her, not to yourself, and never to me.”
Allie frowned at him, looking so much like Polonaise he had to hug her lest the dawning anger in her eyes undo him.
“She wants me to go back to Three Springs and keep pretending. She does.”
“She needs to know how you feel,” Gabriel said again. “You have to be honest, Allie. For the whole rest of the world, you can pretend, but with the people who love you, you have to tell the truth.”
“You aren’t a bastard.” She thumped down against his chest, all pointy little bones and indignation. “You don’t know how they wince and shudder when you try to say the real truth.”
“Yes, my dear, I do. That tap on the door is likely our chocolate.”
She hopped off his lap, and he wanted to snatch her back, to protect her from all the pretending adults and the lies and the confusion.
“It’s the chocolate,” she reported, holding the door for the footman.
“Aren’t you going to join me?”
Allie remained right at the door. “I’m not hungry, and I never really liked nutmeg on mine anyway.”
She was out the door, nose in the air, before Gabriel could muster an argument.
He did like nutmeg on his chocolate, and whipped cream, and a dash of cinnamon. But he did not like having to consume his treat in solitude. When St. Michael came sauntering in, Gabriel offered him the contents of the tray.
St. Michael sniffed at the pot. “You’re wandering off now, with all these goodies to tide us over until tea?”
“I am. I’ve a need to introduce myself to some pigs.”
“And they will be better company than I?”
“Precisely.”
***
Gabriel had to hunt Polly down in her studio, where she was cleaning brushes and folding rags, and Aaron nowhere to be seen. This was contrary to Gabriel’s agreement with Aaron, but circumstances were extenuating. “I gather your subject is playing truant.”
“He got a dispatch from Town,” Polly said. “He lit out for the village with his wife in tow.”
“Trying to get some air before the next dump of snow, then,” Gabriel concluded, though having read the contents of the dispatch, he knew their outing entailed a bit more than winter restlessness. “St. Michael claims we’re to have more foul weather this afternoon.”
“What does your back claim?”
“That I miss you.” As did his front, his middle, his bottom, and his top.
“One learns to cope with not having every piece of candy one craves.” She set down the jar of linseed oil she’d been wiping off. “I’m sorry,” she said, back to him. “You don’t deserve the sharp edge of my tongue.”
“Your menses approach, unless they already plague you?”
She shook her head, and he slipped his arms around her from behind.
“The door—”
“I locked it when I came in, and told the footman to wave off intruders. What’s amiss, Polonaise?”
“I’ll be done here soon,” she said, her hands wrapping around his wrists where they locked at her waist. “Leaving.”
“If you must.” He kissed her temple then desisted, because the sadness radiating from her was palpable. “I’d rather you didn’t. Distance makes marriage a tad challenging.”
&n
bsp; “I will not be married.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against his shoulder. “Not to you, in any case.”
“Right.” He nuzzled her jaw. “You’ll be the Sheep Countess, and deliriously content. I’ve been warned.”
“I will be Mrs. Tremaine St. Michael, if he’ll still have me.”
“What?” Gabriel dropped his arms by force of will. “It’s permissible to be a French I-don’t-use-the-title countess, but not an English marchioness?”
“He doesn’t use the title.”
“The hell he doesn’t.” Gabriel turned abruptly to add logs to the fire, because nowhere in his own blessed, benighted, blighted home could he get warm. “You will catch your death in here, Polonaise, letting the fire burn down like this. What can you be thinking?”
He rose from the hearth and studied her, going on in muttered oaths.
“But you can’t think for the loss you face, can you? Your heart is so heavy, and you will let none comfort you. Your every breath makes you ache, but you will cling to your hurts as if they succored you.”
“Stop babbling at me!” She whirled off and stood clutching her middle, the portrait of Gabriel and his horse at her back.
“I tell you the truth,” Gabriel said. “It’s a difficult pill, but often has curative powers. Good day, Countess.”
***
“I’ll marry you.”
Polly found Tremaine in the family parlor, a smallish room that was easy to heat. She made her declaration as soon as she spotted him, lest she lose her nerve.
“That is good news.” He peered down at her, and Polly realized the man was almost as tall as Gabriel, maybe as tall, for Tremaine was in his stocking feet. He had Gabriel’s overlong dark hair and something of his patrician features, though Tremaine’s eyes were the wrong color.
But one couldn’t discern eye color in the dark of night.
“What has provoked this capitulation?”
“You made a number of convincing arguments.” Polly sidled away from him to stand by the hearth, because after too many hours in her too cold studio, she couldn’t seem to get warm. “We would suit, it will simplify our business arrangements, we have family in common, and you are… passably attractive in the right light.”
“Such flattery.” Tremaine moved to stand beside her, only to watch her as Polly flitted off to stare out the window.
“More damned snow.”
“It’s December,” Tremaine reminded her as he shifted to regard the scenery with her. “Nigh Yuletide. Most people think the snow a prettier alternative to sleet and rain and mud.”
“It all turns to mud,” Polly said, striding across the room to pour herself a drink. “Shall we toast the occasion?”
“By all means.” He stood where he was, which meant Polly had to cross back to him—an inordinately challenging traverse of ten entire feet of carpet.
“So when shall we do this delightful deed?” Tremaine took the drink from her hand. When his fingers slid over hers, Polly repressed a flinch. “A special license will spare us having to cry banns.”
“A special license will be fine.” Polly took a hefty swallow of spirits then dissolved into a fit of coughing. Tremaine was immediately at her side, taking the drink from her hand and patting her back.
“I’m fine. It just went down the wrong way.” A special license was fine, Polly was fine, everything was just… fine.
“Right.” Tremaine moved away, and she could breathe more easily. “You’ll want your family in attendance?”
“Our family.” Polly tried to meet his gaze and couldn’t. They were discussing their wedding. “Maybe it would be simpler to find a vicar and have done with it.”
“Whatever you wish, my love.”
“Don’t call me that.”
He regarded her in a frowning silence, and Polly tried another sip of her drink so she wouldn’t start hurling fragile objects at the hearth.
“Why not spend the holidays at my house in Oxfordshire?” he suggested. “I’m on good terms with the local vicar, so we can take care of the ceremony at some point. You can enjoy a break between commissions, consummate our union, and then I’ll escort you out to Kent.”
Must he be so accommodating? “Kent?”
“Your next commission is the Haddonfield harem,” Tremaine reminded her. “The new earl has taken it into his head to immortalize his womenfolk in one fell swoop. It will be a challenge, but they’re rumored to all be quite attractive.”
“Bellefonte is Beck’s older brother. Why did you accept work from family?”
“How could I turn family down? The earl is a very persuasive man where his ladies are concerned. Seven is an easy number to group, and they are well respected. The commission will be prestigious, as this one is.”
This was how it would be with them. Marital consummation and portrait commissions in the same discussion, all horridly sensible and civil. “I suppose.”
“Polly?”
“Hmm?”
“I want you to understand something.” He set his drink aside and prowled toward her, as if he were stalking her, like a great, dark cat in the jungle might stalk something small and injured. No compassion, no quarter, no mercy.
“I’m listening.”
“We shall consummate this marriage.” His voice was as dark as his eyes, smoky with inchoate desire and sheer male dominion.
“Of course.” She closed her eyes to spare herself the sight of that possessiveness. The idea of a white marriage had passed through her mind, but Tremaine deserved better than that, and he wasn’t exactly unappealing.
Except he was—vastly unappealing. The idea of him touching her the way Gabriel did, joining with her, seeing her body and having the right to do as he pleased with her, made her physically ill.
The idea of explaining to Gabriel exactly why she’d accept Tremaine’s proposal made her worse than ill. It made her want oblivion from her own life, permanent relief from the heartache that started the day she and Sara had first traded roles.
Tremaine’s hand settled on her arm. He was so near Polly felt the heat of him. “A kiss to seal our betrothal?”
She nodded but couldn’t turn her face up to his. Could not.
So he took her in his arms and dipped his head to kiss her temple, then her cheek. He nuzzled her into turning by kissing her jaw, until he could get to the corner of her mouth, and then, by degrees, to her lips. When he settled his mouth over hers, Polly had to admit he was skilled and patient, and she ought to be relieved. A lifetime of inept pawing and slobbering…
Would be preferable to this stealthy, silky seduction. He took his time, bringing her gradually closer and closer to his body. He was tall, muscular, and he bore a scent of roses about his person that was oddly appropriate to the man.
But he was not appropriate to her.
“Kiss me, Polly. It’s just a kiss.”
But the kisser was wrong, the feel of him was wrong, the scent was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
His tongue seamed her lips gently, teasingly, and when he gathered her closer, she was too stunned to resist. He would soon become aroused, and she knew that was what this kiss was about. He sought a blunt acknowledgment that theirs would be a physically intimate marriage.
God help her. She found the resolve to put her hands on his chest and push. She didn’t shove him away, she just signaled… a halt.
His embrace changed, from that of a man bent on seduction to something tamer and almost protective. They stayed like that for several moments, the only sound the soft crackle and hiss of the fire.
“You’re sure this is what you want?” He kissed her temple and tucked her face against his shoulder. “I’ve had more enthusiastic responses from complete strangers, Polly Hunt.”
“I’m just…” She heaved out a big, weary, defeated sigh.
“I suggest you think this through a little longer.” He stroked a hand over her hair. “Why marry if exercising one’s conjugal rights is worse than a chore?”
“Many women do.” The words were out before Polly could assess the way they’d sound.
Tremaine set her away from him but kept his hands on her shoulders. “I know women do, for the roof over their heads or respectability, or simply to get away from Mama and Papa. But I have none of those motivations.”
“You?”
He nodded slowly, a sardonic smile curving the mouth that had been kissing her moments before. “I will expect you to meet me halfway in the bedchamber. If you can’t do that, then this won’t work.”
“It will work.”
He planted another kiss on her mouth—as she flinched back.
“It needs to work in this lifetime,” he said, dropping his hands. “For both of us. I will not entertain further discussion of this topic until you’ve put the associations here at Hesketh behind you and are thinking more clearly.”
She nodded, unable to do more, then left before she tackled him in a desperately determined display of her ability to meet him halfway. For if Tremaine wouldn’t have her, what on earth was she supposed to do?
***
“I need to talk to you.”
Gabriel hid a smile at Allie’s truculent tone, so much like her mother’s.
“Shall we talk over a cup of tea, or have you taken tea into dislike along with nutmeg?”
“What? Oh.” Allie scrambled onto the worktable, to sit on it while Gabriel assembled the tea tray. “I don’t really dislike nutmeg, not on hot chocolate anyway. I said that only because I was mad.”
“Angry,” Gabriel corrected her. “I gather your temper has yet to dissipate?”
She cocked her head in consternation.
“Are you still angry?”
“I’m furious. Mama was kissing Uncle. I saw them through the window.”
“Does your steppapa know about this?”
“Not that Mama.” Allie heaved a martyred sigh. “My real mama, in the small parlor. Just now.”
Gabriel leaned over and bussed the child’s cheek. “Now you’re even.”
She glared certain death at him. “This is serious. It wasn’t a friendly kiss. It was a… grown-up kiss.”