The Truth About Love

by Stephanie Laurens

  He looked so eager, she hadn’t the heart to argue, let alone refuse. Especially as Rupert was helping her prove her point. She glanced back as he led her out into a corridor; she couldn’t see Gerrard. When last she’d glimpsed him, he’d been waltzing with Chloe.

  The sight had caused her an unexpected pang, yet if, as she contended, his interest in her derived solely from her being his subject, and not at all because he saw her as his intended bride, then naturally, given the right opportunity, his attention should wander.

  If she spent the next hour with Rupert and other gentlemen, quite apart from Gerrard, while he spent that time enjoying the company of some other lady or ladies, then surely she could cite that as tangible evidence—as factual, actual proof—that he didn’t see her as his future wife.

  Rupert halted, threw open a door and waved her through. Crossing the threshold, she heaved an inward sigh. She felt certain that if Gerrard did see her as his bride, he wouldn’t allow her to be alone with Rupert.

  Yet he had. So…here she was, in a darkened library. Actually alone with Rupert. She’d assumed the room would be open to guests, with lamps lit and maybe a few older gentlemen snoozing in armchairs. Instead, it was deserted, the dark shadows thrown by packed bookcases and heavily curtained windows encroaching on a desk and chairs grouped in the room’s center.

  Rupert closed the door, plunging the room into deeper darkness. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust.

  She looked about, swiveling to scan the room. “Where’s the statue?”

  Rupert drew near. “Well, my dear, just give me a few minutes, and I’ll create it—to your abundant satisfaction.”

  His tone warned her; clearly she’d made a serious error in judgment. Swinging to face him, she stared. “What?”

  Rupert shrugged off his coat and tossed it on the desk. He smiled, his hands rising to his cravat. “Confess. You didn’t really think there was a statue, not one of marble, did you?”

  His attempt at a seductive purr grated on her nerves. “Yes! I did!” She glared at him. “And here—” Grabbing his coat, she thrust it at him. “Put that back on.”

  Rupert waggled his eyebrows. “No.” His cravat half undone, he undid his waistcoat and tugged his shirt from his waistband. “I promised you a naked god, and I always keep my promises.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, then nodded. “Very well. But I never promised I’d stay and watch.”

  She darted to the side, intending to slip past him and race to the door.

  He was quick, too quick; stepping sideways, he blocked her path.

  Then he smiled, cynical yet still stupidly eager, and moved nearer.

  Pressing her, herding her, back toward the desk.

  He took her out this way.” Gerrard stalked into the corridor, towing Chloe behind him. He wanted a witness, especially one of Rupert’s family, so there’d be someone who’d know the reason for him thrashing Rupert to within an inch of his life.

  “Are you sure?” Chloe asked, her tone beyond resigned.

  “Yes.” Gerrard paused and looked up and down the corridor. “Where the devil have they gone? There’s no rooms open this way.”

  “Rupert won’t be looking for an open room.”

  Gerrard swore, and headed down the corridor, Chloe’s hand in his. “Your brother’s incorrigible.”

  “You’re one to talk.”

  “Me? I don’t waltz young ladies out of ballrooms.”

  “Precisely.”

  Chloe’s tone was tart. Gerrard threw her a warning glance, which she met with a sour look.

  “Ooooow!!” Crash!

  The commotion came from a room further down the corridor. Gerrard dropped Chloe’s hand and ran.

  “No!”

  As he flung open the door, he realized it was Rupert shrieking.

  “Stop it! That’s enough. Put the damned thing down!”

  The sight that met his eyes brought Gerrard up short. Rupert, his shirt hanging open and cravat askew, was on the floor, on his arse, desperately scrabbling backward from Jacqueline, a virago wielding a long wooden ruler.

  Protecting his head with his raised arms, Rupert wasn’t escaping.

  “You fiend!” Jacqueline laid into him, slapping the ruler against his thigh. “You witless…” Words failed her. Dragging in a breath, she brandished the ruler. “Put your clothes back on this instant! Do you hear me? Now!”

  Gerrard had known she had a temper; he hadn’t previously seen it totally unleashed.

  Her eyes blazed as, unimpressed with Rupert’s bumbling attempts to find his buttonholes, she stepped nearer and raised her arm.

  “No, no—see, I’m dressing—I am!”

  “Good!” She stood over him and glared. “Don’t you ever—ever!—try such a thing with any other young lady. If you do, I’ll hear of it, and I’ll…I’ll—”

  “I have a horsewhip you can borrow.”

  Jacqueline jerked her head up, stared at Gerrard as he calmly—too calmly, with far too much control—strolled into the room. Snapping her mouth shut, she straightened, and slipped the ruler behind her, into the folds of her skirts. “Ah…” She really didn’t like the feral look in Gerrard’s eyes, which were fixed unwaveringly on Rupert. “Rupert had an accident.”

  Gerrard’s lips curved, not in a smile. “I know just what sort of accident Rupert had. What, incidentally, caused the crash?”

  “He fell over a stool.”

  After she’d pushed him, then whacked him with the ruler.

  “How unfortunate.”

  Gerrard’s drawl was deepening—worsening.

  “Yes, well…” Jacqueline blew out a breath, puffing aside a lock of hair her tussle with Rupert had loosened. “As you can see”—she went to gesture at the cowering Rupert, then realized she had the ruler in that hand and switched to using her other—“he’s…getting himself together again.”

  Much as she was tempted to leave Rupert to whatever fate Gerrard might mete out, it was, in a way, at her instigation that Rupert had come to be alone with her. She’d never imagined he’d do anything so patently silly, but…He was nearly finished buttoning his shirt. He didn’t seem able to look away from them, his eyes wide, resting first on her, then on Gerrard; he looked like he was struggling not to whimper. “And then he’s leaving,” she pointedly said, hoping he’d take the hint and go with all speed.

  “Oh, he’s definitely leaving.”

  Gerrard took one step, grasped Rupert’s arm and hauled him to his feet.

  “Here! I say, old chap—”

  Resisting the urge to shake Rupert, Gerrard marched him to the door. “Just be thankful there are ladies present.”

  Rupert goggled at Chloe, a silent martyr in the doorway, and shut up.

  Chloe stepped back. Gerrard thrust Rupert, still struggling to tuck his shirttails in, through the door, then nodded to Chloe. “If you’ll excuse us?”

  No real question; he shut the door on Chloe’s suddenly interested face and turned back into the room.

  Jacqueline watched Gerrard stalk, slowly, toward her. While he’d been occupied, she’d tossed the ruler back on the desk, and quickly smoothed down her skirts. Pressing her hands together, she lifted her chin.

  “What the devil were you thinking, going off alone with Rupert?” Gerrard halted immediately before her, his expression hard, a definite scowl in his eyes. His tone was harsh, rather flat.

  She tilted her chin higher, and suppressed an answering frown. “He said there was a special statue in here. I had no idea he had such a…a salacious scheme in mind.”

  “Well, he did.” Gerrard’s eyes bored into hers; his accents were exceedingly clipped. “Indeed, I think it safe to say most of the gentlemen you’ll meet in this season will be entertaining salacious thoughts of you. Most, however, won’t act on them, not unless you encourage them—for instance, by going apart with them in a setting such as this!”

  He paused; she saw something—some emotion—roiling behind his eyes. Ins
tead of giving voice to it, lips compressing, he reached for her hand, turned and headed for the door. “I would be exceedingly grateful if in the remaining few days we’re in town, you could refrain from consorting with other men.”

  Towed behind him, she almost tripped. “No.” She pulled back on his hand, then almost tipped backward as with a low growl, he swung to face her. “What I mean,” she hastily amended, eyeing his harsh expression, “is why?”

  For a moment, he said nothing, just stared at her. Then, “In case it’s slipped your mind, we’re lovers.”

  His tone had grown dangerous again; for one fanciful instant she felt as if she was in a darkened room with a large wild animal. Her nerves flickered. Her eyes locked on his, she carefully said, “Yes, but that’s…private. Just because we’re lovers shouldn’t mean I don’t dance or speak with other gentlemen. No one else knows we’re lovers—it looks odd if I cling to your arm all the time.”

  And you cling to mine. People are getting quite the wrong idea…But she didn’t wish to be quite so forthright. He might feel obliged to marry her if society expected it, but once the portrait was finished, she’d return to Cornwall, and society would be irrelevant.

  She could see thoughts shifting behind his eyes.

  His expression hardened, his jaw set. “We’ll only be in town for a few more days—any additional oddity will be neither here nor there.”

  Turning, he started towing her to the door again.

  Her grand plan lay in shreds, and if he adhered to his pigheaded edict and insisted she remain by his side, she’d never be able to correct the mistaken impression they’d given the ladies of his family—and possibly everyone else.

  They were nearing the door. She dug in her heels and tugged back. “No. What you don’t understand—”

  He halted; his chest swelled, then he rounded on her. His eyes blazed; his features resembled a granite mask. The air between them shimmered with aggression, and poorly concealed possessiveness. “Do you recall”—his voice had lowered, his diction precise, his tone a dark warning—“agreeing to be mine until I released you?”

  She had to nod. “Yes, but—”

  “I haven’t released you.” His eyes burned, holding hers. “Until I do, you’re mine—and—no—other’s.”

  She stared at him, stunned; she’d never imagined he’d draw such a line.

  Apparently believing her silence denoted agreement, he continued in a fractionally less domineering vein as he turned and opened the door, “Specifically, you will not encourage any other gentlemen—you won’t seek their company, nor encourage them to seek yours.”

  Drawing her through the door, he reached back, shut it—and to her continuing dumbfounded astonishment went on as he led her back to the ballroom, “And most importantly, you will not go anywhere alone with cads like Rupert—”

  She shook aside her astonishment; it was doing her no good. “How the devil was I to know he was a cad?” Her temper rose. “If you want my opinion, Rupert’s a handsome lackwit. For the good of young ladies everywhere he should be locked up in Derbyshire—”

  “If you’d remembered your promise—”

  “I didn’t promise you my every hour!”

  “I have news for you. You did.” His voice had gone dangerously flat. The gaze he bent on her was hard and unyielding. “Even if you didn’t mean it, I’m claiming exactly that—every last hour of every day.”

  She searched his eyes; her jaw fell.

  He held her gaze for a pregnant instant, then looked ahead and whisked her into the ballroom.

  Jacqueline snapped her mouth shut, bit her tongue, swallowed her scream of frustration; too many pairs of eyes had fastened on them.

  Setting her hand on his arm, Gerrard led her through the guests; only she was aware of his glamour, the contradiction between his outward languid elegance as he nodded to others, and the tension in the muscles beneath her fingers, the rampant possessiveness in the hand covering hers on his sleeve.

  She plastered a light smile over her clenched teeth. Bloody-minded, arrogant, obstreporous man! She was only trying to make all right with his family—

  It hit her. Suddenly, just like that, in the middle of Lady Sommerville’s ballroom.

  The scales fell from her eyes with a resounding crash. She halted abruptly, almost swaying from the shock.

  Gerrard smoothly shifted; long fingers closing about her elbow, he propelled her on. “We’re leaving.”

  “Now?” A species of panic clutched at her stomach. She looked for Millicent. “But it’s not yet ten.”

  “Close enough. Millicent will know we’ve left. Horatia will drive her home.”

  It was a routine they’d followed for the last week, but…She needed to think. Desperately needed time to straighten her tangled thoughts.

  Her frighteningly dizzying novel thoughts.

  In no mood to brook any resistance, Gerrard escorted her out of the ballroom and down the stairs. In the foyer, they waited while his carriage was summoned, then he handed her in and joined her. The door was shut, the horses given the office. The carriage rattled out along the road, and they were alone, sitting side by side in the warm dark.

  Teeth gritted, he held his demons down, soothed them with the fact that she was with him, beside him, unharmed, and would remain so, with him, from now on. Until he’d finished the portrait, extricated her from the web of suspicion in Cornwall—and carried her off and married her.

  That was his plan, and it was set in stone. Immutable, not open to modification.

  Thank heavens Timms had, in her inimitable fashion, warned him. If she hadn’t met him in the corridor that evening and twitted him over allowing Jacqueline to remain in ignorance of his intentions, if Timms hadn’t mentioned the conversation she and Minnie had had with Jacqueline, he’d never have guessed what Jacqueline was about, what was behind her seeking to spend time with other men—and his reaction would have been a great deal less controlled.

  Given how fraught, how provoked he’d still felt, even guessing her reasons, the gods only knew what horrors Timms and her teasing had averted.

  Sitting in the carriage as it rocked along, excruciatingly aware of Jacqueline beside him, warm, feminine, the perfect answer to his every desire, no matter how deep or dark, guilt seeped through him; the blame for her uncertainty over his intentions lay squarely at his door.

  He’d shied away from speaking—of his wish to marry her and even more of his need to marry her—and part of that, definitely, had been a craven wish to protect his own heart, by not acknowledging it, to conceal the vulnerability he felt over loving her.

  Be that as it may, he still couldn’t speak, not until the portrait was finished, and she—her winning free of the suspicions over her mother’s death—no longer depended on him, on his talents, and his exercising those in her cause. Waiting was still the honorable way forward.

  Imagining it—putting his proposal to the test, laying his future at her feet—sent apprehension snaking down his spine. To him his future might be immutable, but it would only be so if she agreed.

  He still had no real idea of her feelings, felt no certainty over how she would react. Did she love him? He still didn’t know.

  Drawing in a breath, he shifted to glance at her. She’d been staring straight ahead, unusually silent. The flare from a street lamp fleetingly lit her face. Her expression looked…unreadable.

  He frowned. “I expect the portrait to take two, possibly three, more days to complete. After that, I suggest we return to Cornwall with all speed. We set the stage before we left—no sense delaying and letting the questions we successfully raised fade from people’s minds.”

  Through the gloom, Jacqueline studied his face. “Only three days?” She hadn’t seen the portrait in the last day or so, hadn’t realized he was so close to finishing it.

  He nodded, and looked ahead. “I’d appreciate it if you could remain at the house over that time. In case I need to check a line or adjust the shading.�
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  She felt her expression harden. “And you’ll be able to concentrate better if you know I’m in the house, and not gallivanting about falling prey to gentlemen cads?”

  His jaw tightened. A fraught moment passed, then he nodded. “Precisely.”

  He glanced, sharply, at her; even through the dimness she felt the lancing quality of his gaze. “Three days, and the portrait will be finished…” His voice faded; he cleared his throat and looked away. “As for what’s between us, we’ll talk of that later.”

  She narrowed her eyes, glared through the gloom, but he was looking out of the window. Later? Damn him! He was intending to marry her.

  Just thinking the words left her shaken, as if the earth had tilted beneath her feet. In some ways it had.

  Everyone else had seen it; only she hadn’t.

  She wasn’t at all sure how she felt about that.

  The carriage rocked to a halt in Brook Street. He descended to the pavement and handed her down, then escorted her up the steps and into the front hall.

  Masters shut the door behind them. Jacqueline smiled at him. “Aunt Millicent will return later. I doubt she’ll be late.”

  “Indeed, miss—she rarely is.” Masters bowed and retreated.

  Gerrard took her arm. Grasping her skirts, she climbed the stairs beside him.

  In the gallery, she paused. Drawing breath, she faced him. “I’m really not feeling all that well—a bit…unsteady.” True enough; her wits were whirling giddily. “I know you’re in a rush to complete the portrait, but I wonder if you can manage without me for tonight.”

  The lamps were turned low, yet even in the weak light, the concern that filled his eyes, his whole face, was visible. His grip on her arm firmed, as if he thought she might faint. “Damn! I knew I was pushing you too hard. You should have said.”

  That last was uttered through gritted teeth, but there was enough self-censure in his tone for her to let it pass; he was irate with himself, not her.

  “Come—let’s get you to bed.” He glanced at her as he steered her along the corridor. “It isn’t something you ate?”

  She shook her head. It was something she’d heard, something she’d realized. “I’m just…overtired.” And she needed time alone to think.