“Me?” Her voice was several octaves higher than normal.
“Yes, you. Is there perhaps somebody you might have to forgo?”
“Somebody?”
He tsk-tsked. “A lover, a sweetheart: some man you were hoping or planning to marry?”
“Of course not.”
“Why of course not?”
“I am not a proponent of the married state.”
His forehead wrinkled and he shook his head, his expression weary. “You have lost me, Miss Clare. Utterly and completely.”
* * *
Gabriel’s head was beginning to hurt.
“I am a follower of Mary Wollstonecraft’s.”
Gabriel had heard the name, of course. One could hardly avoid hearing it in Miss Clare’s presence—generally at least one time an hour, not that he had ever paid attention to the actual substance of her lectures. He had some vague notion of the Wollstonecraft woman—some radical female who had taken lovers, had children outside wedlock, and tried to kill herself when abandoned.
“I see,” he said, not seeing at all, but hoping that would be enough to head off any tedious conversations about the rights of women.
Miss Clare’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t see anything. You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
Gabriel sighed and lifted his hands in surrender. “Guilty as charged.”
“You’ve not listened to a word I’ve said to you over the past four years, have you, Mr. Marlington?”
“That is not true. I’ve heard you speak many times on Mrs. Woll—” He frowned. “Wollkenstonen—”
“Wollstonecraft, Mr. Marlington. Mary Wollstonecraft. I’ve no doubt you’ve heard me speak of her, but it’s apparent you’ve never listened to the actual words.”
Gabriel did not argue, hoping that might end the conversation. Besides, it was true—he hadn’t paid her railing any mind.
But it appeared Miss Clare did not need his participation to carry on an argument.
“She was a woman who claimed that women have an existence beyond that of their relationship to men. A woman who advocated that women are human beings with a right to education rather than merely an appendage of some man. A woman—”
Gabriel held up a hand. “I beg your pardon, I was not aware I was arguing that women are not human beings.” He frowned. “As for education—”
“It does not signify at this moment, Mr. Marlington. Forgive me for clouding the current issue.”
He hated to admit it, but his head was spinning a little.
“Returning to what you’ve just said: I am aware of the way things are; I know a woman needs the protection of a man’s name in situations such as this.” Her lips twisted into a bitter smile. “I understand that we must marry, no matter how repellent the concept.”
Gabriel gaped in stupefaction. “Are you trying to be insulting, Miss Clare?”
She cocked her head and squinted. “No—why would you say that?”
“Is it my person you find repellent or something else about me?”
“Oh.” Her cheeks darkened. “Well, perhaps repellent was not the correct word.”
Gabriel waited for her to choose another word, but whatever she saw on his face made her look away.
He studied her while she fiddled with the seams on her gown, his mind bucking against the inevitable like a wild, unbroken horse resisting a bridle. What kind of life would he have with a wife who found him repellent? Good God. An entire lifetime spent with a woman who disliked him. He shook his head. Still, what other choices did he have? None.
Something occurred to him. “Is this about your money, Miss Clare? About the fact you have been hounded by every gazetted fortune hunter in Britain? Are you worried I am forcing the issue of marriage to get my hands on your money?”
She did not look up. “I know you are not marrying me for my money.”
The misery in her voice made him cringe. She truly loathed him. Or the institution of marriage. Or marriage with him. Whatever it was, he could not in good conscience force himself on her.
“I propose a compromise.”
Her head swung up, her silky brown brows arched.
“We could have a temporary betrothal.”
The muscles in her jaws flexed, but at least she did not fly off into a pelter. “Go on.”
He shrugged. “There really isn’t much more to it than that. Once I have dispensed with Visel, you could repudiate me and our betrothal. You could say you changed your mind. It hardly matters—nobody will ask you for an explanation.”
Her mouth tightened and her eyes narrowed until they were chips of gray stone. “You would have me wait until you fight a duel to defend my honor to jilt me.”
Gabriel gave an irritated hiss. “I just said that you would refute me.”
She crossed her arms over her generous bosom, the action momentarily distracting him. He didn’t believe he had ever considered her body before—he’d always been far too busy defending himself against everything that came out of her mouth. She was tallish and tending toward plumpness, at least from what he could see of her in the concealing gown she was wearing. Gabriel swallowed. She had a most impressive bosom.
“Mr. Marlington.”
He wrenched his eyes from the bodice of her homely gown and looked up to find her rather plain features a fiery rose, her eyes snapping. She also sounded like a person who had repeated the same thing more than once. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said that jilting you will make me not only an outcast, but a laughingstock.”
Her words were like the fine strands of a spider’s web—just like so many of the things English people said and did and expected. Gabriel might have lived here over five years, but he still had no idea as to their more subtle meanings much of the time.
He crossed his own arms in a mockery of hers. “I’m afraid you will have to explain this to me. After all, you know what an unlettered savage I am.”
She did not bother to refute his words. “If we announce an engagement and then break it off, it will be clear to anyone with a teaspoon of sense that you merely offered a fake engagement in order to pursue this asinine duel.”
Gabriel felt as though she’d slapped him. “Asinine?” he asked in a voice that did not sound like his.
Her smile was . . . insufferable. “Asinine.”
“I was defending you.”
“And so you did—you stopped him, for which I am extremely grateful. But this?” Her gaze flickered over him in a dismissive and highly insulting manner. “This duel is nothing more than a monument to your inflated sense of masculinity.”
Gabriel knew his mouth was hanging open, but he didn’t care.
“You think to engage in your manly pursuit, to end this sham betrothal, and then to continue on your way, leaving me a pariah.”
“What?” he bellowed. “I suggested this to spare you from the indignity of having to marry me. Of having to marry a savage—of having to marry at all when it is something you find so utterly repellent.”
“I would ask that you not raise your voice to me, sir.”
Gabriel clamped his jaws shut so tightly he thought he might have cracked a tooth.
Her expression became even more contemptuous. “As for sparing me? Please. Do not bother to offer the protection of your name in the first place if you are only going to add insult to injury with this . . . this . . .” She threw up her hands. “I don’t know what to call it.”
Gabriel’s head throbbed and his eyes felt strange—sweaty and hot—and he couldn’t seem to settle on a collection of words that made any sense. Never, ever had anyone spoken so slightingly, so insultingly to him. If she had been a man . . .
But she was not a man—she was the woman who would soon be his wife. And she sat there looking so condescending, so superior, so . . . English. Fury addled his brains and fueled his mouth.
He pointed at her, knowing full well how rude the gesture was and reveling in her widening eyes and frowning lip
s more than was probably normal or healthy.
“You sit there on your . . . your”—a phrase from the nursery rhyme his twin nieces incessantly recited echoed through his head and Gabriel spat it at her—“tuffet.”
She opened her mouth, but Gabriel was only warming to his task.
“Yes, on your tuffet—and you judge me, when I am only trying to spare you. Perhaps you might turn your keen sense of observation on yourself, Miss Clare. Perhaps you might ask yourself what you were doing alone in that conservatory without—”
She leaped up and Gabriel met her halfway, closing the distance between them with one long stride.
“Don’t. You. Dare.” She punctuated her words with her finger—poking him hard in the chest between each word. Her own chest heaved, the heat of her body against his scorching. Her eyes were narrowed slits of gray as sharp as the edge of a sword. “Don’t you dare blame me for that drunken rake’s unforgiveable actions.”
Gabriel stared down at her; the slight tremor in her chin gave away something of the tumult that must lie beneath her bravado—not to mention making him feel like a cruel, insensitive, and selfish brute.
Which of course brought to mind his father.
Gabriel had known, even as a boy, that Sultan Abdul Hassan had been a man with a notorious temper—a temper like Gabriel’s, not that his mother didn’t have an impressive temper, herself. But the sultan had coupled his temper with absolute power, and he had wielded that power without any check. His father’s harsh behavior had been something Gabriel never wanted to consider when the sultan was alive; after all, he was his father and Gabriel had loved him. But that did not mean Gabriel ever wished to become him.
Although the sultan had shown him nothing but affection and indulgence, it had pained Gabriel to see his father did not love or honor his mother. But such had been the way of things in that household. Only when he was older did he understand that not all households operated as the sultan’s had. Again, it had been his mother who had disabused him of his ignorance. She’d caught him with one of the servants—one of the many women who’d angled at Gabriel since he was barely thirteen. By the time his mother caught him, he was no callow youth as he’d been when a woman three times his age took his virginity. No, by the age of fifteen Gabriel had been an arrogant young man who’d bedded dozens of women and believed his father’s people were his possessions: the women to serve the urges of his body, the men to follow his orders without question.
His father, the women of the harem, everyone around him, none of them except for his mother had challenged him in that belief.
They’d had their first argument the day she caught him with a harem servant, and Gabriel still shuddered to remember it.
“Debauching one’s servants is the act of a weak and despicable man, Jibril. That girl might have knelt for you but remember that she cannot say no to you. These people who serve our needs are like slaves.” Her face, which had always shown him nothing but love, had gone hard. “As I am a slave. And you are inflicting yourself on people who will not say no to you—never let yourself think otherwise—even when they may appear willing.”
Those words rang inside his head as Gabriel looked down at Miss Clare, a woman who had been compromised by an arrogant, selfish, thoughtless young man tonight and would now be forced to give all power over her person to another man: to him.
Shame mingled with myriad other emotions that had been surging and roiling inside him ever since he’d entered the conservatory and encountered Visel and Miss Clare. But it was not Miss Clare’s fault he was trapped. It was neither of their faults. Yet he was behaving as though it was.
He exhaled and nodded. “You are correct, Miss Clare, and I apologize for even daring to imply that you are somehow culpable in this mess. Please, forgive me.”
The moment stretched before she gave an abrupt nod.
She was, Gabriel realized, for all her self-sufficiency and outward strength, deeply shaken by the incident this evening. And his ill-conceived suggestion had not helped.
“I accept your generously tendered offer of marriage. You needn’t get down on your knees and do the pretty for me, Mr. Marlington.” She sat with her hands folded in her lap, her expression lofty and martyrish: like a Christian about to be sacrificed to the lions.
Gabriel took a good look at his wife-to-be and tried not to shiver. Oh, she wasn’t unpleasant to look at—at least not her features.While it was true she wasn’t pretty, she had a desirable body—lush and womanly—and he already knew he would enjoy touching her. But she was a cold, judgmental woman, and he came away from all their encounters feeling as if he’d been weighed and found wanting. In short, she was not the sort of wife he would have chosen for himself, but then he was not the man she wanted, either.
A fleeting picture of Lucinda Kittridge flickered through his mind, but he banished it. That was over.
He dropped to one knee and reached for her hand. She started but did not pull away.
Something about looking up at her from this unusual angle made his actions feel more real. “I know you don’t want me to do the pretty, but I would like to demonstrate my regard for you by proposing properly. You would do me a great honor by becoming my wife, and I give you my word that I will always strive to deserve your trust and regard.”
Her jaws worked, as if she were testing and discarding responses. “Thank you, Mr. Marlington. I accept your offer.”
He raised her hand to his mouth, kissing the back of it even though he knew such things were not done. Her fingers tightened for a moment, and then she drew away, as if even his smallest touch disgusted her.
Gabriel stood, swallowing his dread; he’d better become accustomed to her disdain and loathing. He knew reserved English ladies did not seek passion in their husbands’ arms, and Miss Drusilla Clare was even more reserved than most. He pushed the disturbing thought aside.
“The marquess will assist me in procuring a special license. If you do not object, we can be wed the day after tomorrow.” Gabriel did not bother to spell it out for her: that by marrying before the duel, she would have the protection of his name if he were not to walk away from his meeting with Visel.
Her expression softened slightly. “That will be acceptable to me. Will we live here, at Exley House . . . after?”
“My stepfather has already offered us a small but well-appointed house on Upper Brooks Street.” The marquess had actually insisted on giving Gabriel the house as a wedding gift. As much as he’d wanted to reject such a generous gift, one did not say no to the Marquess of Exley.
Gabriel realized she’d asked a question. “I beg your pardon, my lady?”
“I said I am not without means.”
“Means?”
“My aunt and I live in the house my father built here in London.”
Gabriel had seen the house in question, a gothic monstrosity. While that didn’t bother him so much, it did bother him to think of living on her bounty.
“Are you fond of the house? Do you wish to live there?”
“No. My father built it while I was away at school, so I only stayed there during the holidays and, of course, since leaving school.” She hesitated. “If you don’t care for it, we will have plenty of money to acquire or construct our own lodging.”
Gabriel’s face heated. “I am no fortune-hunting fop below the hatches, Miss Clare. I can house my own wife.” Even without the marquess’s generous gift, he had ample means. The Duke of Carlisle was a wealthy man and Gabriel was his only grandson; the duke had been most generous.
She opened her mouth—no doubt to utter some emasculating pronouncement, but he made an abrupt chopping motion with one hand, surprised and pleased when the gesture worked.
“Your money is your own—I will take none of it.”
“But—”
“There is one thing you should know about me right now, Miss Clare. I do not argue once I have made up my mind.”
Her eyes narrowed dangerously. And, by God, Gabriel
felt a slight chill. “Neither do I.”
He barked a laugh. “Excellent, then we shall rub along famously—and with very few arguments. Now, after the wedding we shall stay for the remainder of the Season to dispel any residual scandal. We can attend balls, be seen at the theater—” He shrugged. “Whatever is necessary.”
She remained quiet, her gaze serious and steady, which made him uneasy. And feeling uneasy made him irritated. What the devil was it about this woman—hardly more than a girl really—that put him on edge so? He was a man with a decade’s worth of experience with war, death, and women, but she made him feel like a callow youth.
“What about the wedding?” she asked, jarring him from his uncomfortable musing.
“Ah, yes, the wedding.” Gabriel cleared his throat, which seemed to have filled with his heart and lungs. God. Married. And to a woman who loathed him. Still, men of his class were not expected to limit themselves to one woman for the rest of their lives. In England a man would have one wife, one woman to give him children and comfort him in old age and infirmity. But most of the married men he knew either kept a mistress or conducted affairs. He could always keep Giselle and Maria and no one would look sideways at him—well, no more than they already did.
For some reason Gabriel found the thought of such a dual existence vaguely depressing.
He let his gaze linger over his wife-to-be’s body—a body that would be his in only a few days. Surprisingly, his groin grew heavy at the thought. His physical response was not what he would have expected; after all, bedding a woman who hated him was unlikely to be a satisfactory experience.
“Mr. Marlington?”
He met her gaze. “Hmm?”
“You were saying, about the wedding?”
“My mother and the marquess have offered to host a wedding breakfast for us.”
“That is very kind of them, Mr. Marlington.”
“Perhaps you might call me Gabriel as I am to be your husband in less than two days’ time.”
“Of course . . . Gabriel.”
She did not invite him to do the same, but then Gabriel did not expect it. Miss Drusilla Clare had never made her disdain for him a secret. And now this woman who could barely countenance looking at him or speaking to him would be his wife. If he survived his duel, of course.
Notorious Page 6