“Come.”
He lowered his brows. Henrietta seemed rather breathless, but why should she be breathless on his account?
“Quickly, before Sanders puts them off.”
“Puts who off?”
“Just come,” his sister repeated.
He heaved himself to his feet. His right hand still throbbed dully from its impact with Redditch’s jaw. The damned idiot’s thickness of skull apparently extended as far as his mandible.
He followed his sister to the foyer, where Sanders blocked his view of the entrance. “I really must insist, Miss—”
Miss? What the devil? “I say,” George interjected, “what’s the matter here?”
Sanders turned. “I’ve tried to explain to this woman you are not at home, but she refuses—” A small figure darting past him cut him off abruptly. “Ho there.”
“Good day, George.” Yes, a small figure—small, blond, and very familiar.
Jack. He might have known. At least the lad was no longer clad in livery. And if Jack was here, Isabelle couldn’t be far behind. God, he was in no temper to face either of them. “That will be all, Sanders.”
Gait stiff and insulted, the butler took himself off, and Isabelle stepped into the foyer. “Forgive the intrusion, but—”
George swept his gaze over her. She still wore the shabby gray gown, and her bonnet wasn’t in much better condition. No wonder Sanders refused to let her in. She held a bulging satchel in one hand, a satchel that may well have contained all her worldly possessions. With a six-year-old boy in tow, she looked every inch the beggar.
But why turn up on his doorstep when she’d made it quite clear she wanted no more to do with him?
“Why have you come?” He refused to observe the niceties, not after the confrontation with her father, and not with her.
“We’re going to have a talk, you and I.” Apparently she wasn’t about to observe the niceties, either. Not if her tone was any indication. She might have addressed her son in such a manner after she’d caught him shirking his chores and sneaking off to the beach.
“You can come into the front parlor.” At least he could do Redditch one better and show her to a proper receiving room. He led the way, aware of the slightly shabby air that hung about his family’s townhouse. The Uppertons might inhabit Mayfair, the same as the Marshalls, but the difference in their fortunes showed in the fading wallpaper, the thinner carpeting and the loosening threads on the furnishings.
“Perhaps your sister would take Jack to the kitchens?” Isabelle suggested.
At such a scandalous suggestion, Henrietta pressed her fingers to her lips. “What would Mama say if she knew I’d left you alone?”
“Mama’s opinion be damned. And she won’t say a word, because she won’t find out about this.” George eyed his sister. “Will she?”
“You know I wouldn’t mention a thing, but the servants … Sanders is sure to tell.”
“If he does, I’ll see him dismissed. Be sure he knows that—if he hasn’t already overheard. Now take Jack to the kitchen and give him anything he wants. Whatever his mother has to discuss with me shouldn’t take long.”
George waited until Henrietta had marched the boy toward the stairs leading below before asking his next question. “Where are you going?” He pointed his chin at the satchel.
She opened her mouth and closed it. “I shouldn’t tell you.”
“Why not? You’re here. Clearly you feel you have business with me.”
“Yes, and that business is the reason I oughtn’t to tell you.” She paused in the midst of removing her bonnet. A tousle of blond curls cascaded to her shoulders. “What are your designs on Jack?”
He rubbed tingling fingers together. How well he recalled the texture of those curls. What he wouldn’t give to feel them once more sifting through his hands. Something squeezed the air from his lungs. His damned heart, hang it all. “Who says I have any?”
She stepped closer, and a line formed above the bridge of her nose. “My father. He says you want to send Jack to Eton.”
“I might have mentioned that, yes.” He crossed his arms and set his hip against the back of a chair. “Public school, at any rate, if Eton won’t admit him.”
The line above her nose deepened into a full-on scowl. “You’ve no right. He’s my son. You’ve no claim on him.”
“I hadn’t meant to stake a claim. Only …” How to explain this? “I thought I’d give the lad a chance.”
“A chance?”
“Yes, at a better life. You can’t tell me you approve of him living as a servant in his own grandfather’s house.”
“Of course, I don’t. It’s why I left.”
“Left? You should never have gone back in the first place. Good God, your own father, treating you as a servant as well.” He stopped short at the realization he’d come close to shouting those final words. He could get through this interview without creating a scene.
To Isabelle’s credit, she did not flinch in the face of his anger. If anything, she drew herself up even further. “I received a summons.”
George tamped down an irritating wave of admiration. There was no longer any point to it. “A summons? After he turned you out? And you obeyed?”
“Yes.” She cupped a hand over her mouth and looked past his shoulder for a few moments. “I didn’t want to go back there,” she whispered. “I just … I didn’t feel I had a choice. Mrs. Weston was waiting for me when I returned to Kent. She informed me that Jack and I were no longer welcome in the village.”
“After all you did for her son when he was ill?” A burning in his gut flamed upward, threatening to cloud his vision with red. “And your own was missing? The—” He cut himself off before he voiced his true opinion of the vicar’s wife.
“She felt I was a poor moral influence due to my recent activities.” Isabelle looked hard at him.
Yes, they’d been seen. No doubt Mrs. Weston had noted George spending the night at the cottage. Another sin to lay at his doorstep.
“Returning to Father meant a roof over our heads and decent food in Jack’s belly,” she went on. “And Father wanted me back, even if I could not go into society.”
“And why, after all the time he left you to fend for yourself?” How much easier to concentrate on Redditch’s shortcomings, rather than his own.
“He didn’t know where I’d gone. I’m positive Emily informed him of my whereabouts.” She paused to swallow, no doubt reigning in some heightened emotion of her own. “He turned me out in a fit of anger when he learned I was expecting Jack. I suspect if he’d stopped to think, he’d have wanted to keep me closer. So I didn’t embarrass the family, you see.”
“Embarrass, yes.” God, could his opinion of her father sink any lower? “Odd way he has of showing it, treating you like a servant.”
“What point in wearing nice gowns when no one would see me and the old ones would serve?” The words seemed to catch in her throat. “And I thought Jack would accept his lot more easily if I set an example.”
“His lot, his lot.” George drummed his fingers against the back of the chair to stave off an upwelling of sympathy. How well he knew her pride. How it must have pained her to return as the prodigal daughter and witness the ill treatment of her son. But he couldn’t afford such feelings where Isabelle was concerned. She’d already cost him his heart. “And so you accept that? You won’t try to do better for him?”
“No, I won’t accept it.” She swiped at the corner of her eye. “Not when they beat his hands raw for disobedience. It’s why I left.”
“You didn’t imagine things might come to that?” Cold of him, such a comment, but if he didn’t maintain some sort of barrier between them, the dam of his emotions would burst, just as it nearly had in front of Redditch.
As it was, she’d witnessed his raw feeling when their eyes met. For that instant, he’d been unable to maintain his façade of indifference. If he wasn’t careful, it would happen again—he’d be o
pen and vulnerable.
Once more, she drew herself up. “I had hoped Eastwicke would take Jack’s parentage into consideration.”
“Seems he did, only the wrong parent.”
She glared at him. “I did not come here to discuss this matter with you.”
“Ah, now we’ve come to it. Why did you come here?”
“I’ve told you. I do not wish you to send him to Eton.”
“Why?”
“Because I will not be beholden to you.”
There went her damnable pride again. “Would you allow it as an apology?”
“Apology? For what?”
“I used you poorly in Kent. I should have shown greater restraint and greater discretion. I have no excuse. I simply could not help myself.” The appearance of aloofness was beginning to wear thin. He gripped the back of the chair, his fingers tightening until they ached.
“You owe me nothing.”
“Would you say the same if I’d got you with child?” He breathed in and asked the real question that plagued him. “Have I got you with child?”
“No.”
He felt as if he were once more in the waters of the Channel, grasping for Jack. Cold, desperate. An unexpected sensation rose up on a wave to engulf him, surprisingly akin to disappointment. But why should he be disappointed? He ought to rejoice. He’d never wanted a connection with a woman beyond the carnal.
Only Isabelle was different. He wanted her in his life, in his future, along with whatever entanglements that entailed. A home. Jack. Their children. His heir.
“Well, that’s …” That was what? A relief?
In a sense, yes, because he did not want to saddle her with another child when she was struggling to make ends meet with the first one.
Good? God, that was callous, even for his façade. It also was most emphatically not good, and that thought scared the hell out of him.
“It’s for the best,” he supplied.
She turned toward the door.
“Is that all you came for?” He didn’t think he’d managed to keep the hope out of his voice.
She eyed him warily from over her shoulder. “I came to tell you that I did not want you sending my son to Eton. I’ve done so.”
God, the imperiousness of her tone. Once again, he recognized her relationship to Redditch. Yes, she’d grown up commanding servants and expecting unquestioned obedience.
“You would deny him a chance at a better life?”
“I do not wish you to take him from me.”
“I never said I’d do that.” He reached into his morning coat and withdrew the purse with which he’d sought to settle accounts with her father. The coins clinked against one another. “I only wished to provide.”
She stared at the pouch, and he could practically see her calculating how much meat the sum might fetch, how many yards of fabric for new clothes, how many months’ rent on a house. Practical considerations. In her circumstances, they all came before Jack’s education.
“If you prefer,” he said to break the silence, “I’ll just give this to you to spend as you see fit.”
She choked, and the noise sounded suspiciously like a sob. A moment later, she composed her features into strict lines. “You cannot buy me.”
“I do not wish to.”
“Then, pray, what is it you want?” The same question her father had asked not an hour since.
She already knew the answer, he was sure, if not consciously then in her heart. He’d been unable to mask his stark yearning earlier when he’d met her gaze.
“Do you want my plain answer?” Part of him prayed she’d decline. For if he bared his heart to her, she might still refuse him.
He scanned her expression for any hint of her mindset. Her lower lip disappeared between her teeth, and a bolt of need shot through him as he recalled its plump pliancy moving beneath his mouth.
At the same time, hope blossomed within him. If she was just as hesitant, it might mean her feelings mirrored his. That she, too, feared the sting of rejection.
“All right.” Her response was deceptively casual, but it carried an edge that proclaimed his answer mattered and mattered deeply.
“I want you to marry me.”
“You’ve asked before. I turned you down.”
Responding with a clever turn of phrase—with just the right witticism—had always come so easily. So why, now that it signified, could he not find the right words? But that was the whole problem. His response to her signified more than anything ever had. If he mucked this up, it was over. Last chance. No pressure. None at all. God, he’d rather sit down on a stage before the entire ton, the king included, and play a concerto.
“It’s different now.” He held himself rigid against the back of the chair. “I’m not asking you out of a sense of obligation. I’m asking because, ever since I met you, I cannot keep you from my thoughts. You … you are like the music inside me. As much as I may wish to, I cannot excise it. It is part of me.”
“Do you wish to excise me then?”
“No.” The hell with it all. She might yet reject him, but he could no longer hold himself from her. He strode across the room and grasped her by the upper arms. “I’d sooner cut out my own heart.”
A tear leaked from the corner of her eye and traced a path down her cheekbone. Damn. He’d never been able to stand firm in the face of her tears. He raised a hand to take a droplet onto his fingertip.
Her face crumpled, and she fell against him. He settled her into an embrace, just shy of crushing.
“Isabelle?” He smoothed his palm down her spine from her neck to her waist and back. Her unique scent of lavender and woman tickled his nostrils, and he marveled at how well her petite form molded to him. No other female had ever fit so well.
She pressed her face to the front of his waistcoat, trembling, but her hands remained at her sides.
“Isabelle.” He eased his palms to her shoulders, gently, and then slid them farther until they cradled her face. He searched her gaze, her expression, her stance for answers and read only confusion. “Don’t you have an answer for me?”
She cast her glance downward, and he steeled himself for her rejection. She’d never get past the way he treated Lucy, and he couldn’t blame her. He’d been an utter scoundrel over that situation, no better than Padgett. No excuse he could make would ever change that.
He dropped his arms and stepped back. Her lack of response felt like a kick in the gut. Several kicks, in fact. It was as if the entire sixth form back at school had decided to have a go at him, one after the other, while the rest held him down. “I understand. Please. Take the money. I will send along the rest as soon as you give me your direction, but I’ll not deliver it in person. You need not see me again.”
Somehow, somehow he would get past this moment. Maybe in a year or two, he’d find it within himself to satisfy his mother and marry some chit, the more brainless the better. Anything, as long as she was the complete opposite of Isabelle.
He’d certainly never find her equal.
But who was he fooling? He’d never get over her. She truly was as deeply engrained in his heart as the music.
“I couldn’t help myself, you know,” he said, as much to fill the void left by her silence, as anything. “Falling for you was as simple as breathing. Lucy and I …” God, why was he bringing this up? He was only driving the final nail into his coffin. “I know there’s nothing I can say to excuse my actions in your eyes. She’s a courtesan. She understood it was business. For her as much as for me. I’m not proud to admit that, but I would never have touched her again. I would have provided.”
Provided. It sounded so damned sterile and disconnected. Empty. In no way did such a word relate to his sentiments where Isabelle was concerned. He’d already dug himself six feet deep, but with every word he added, he felt as if he were only going deeper. He might make it clear to China before he was through.
“I know.” God help her for that admission, but she couldn�
��t hold back the words any more than she could have stopped the blood coursing through her veins, any more than she could stop his earlier statement from echoing through her mind.
I’d sooner cut out my own heart. How the truth had rung through those few syllables.
“I—what?”
“I know. I know you would have provided.” She gestured toward the pouch full of money. That burgeoning sack represented everything to her, freedom and choice both. “You’re ready to press all of that on me. I shouldn’t take it, but I can’t stop thinking what sort of start it would give us.”
“Then take it and go. I’ll not darken your lives any further.” Pain and resignation laced his reply.
She closed her fingers about the pouch of coins and pushed it back toward him. “I cannot accept this.”
“It is a gift, and I would give you more.” Expression closed off, he bit out the words. “I would give you all you deserved, everything your family has taken from you. If you would have me, I would give you all of myself.”
The backs of her eyes stung, and a knot formed in her throat. As much as experience had taught her to erect a barrier about her emotions, nothing was strong enough to stem the tide that rose in her now. She couldn’t do this to him, couldn’t stand to see him hurt any longer. The man made mistakes, yes, but he had stood by her at a time when almost no one else had. He still stood by her, no matter what she decided. The choice was hers.
And his arms about her just now—nothing had felt more right.
“I don’t wish for your coin. Save it for someone more deserving.” Her vision clouded, and she raised her eyes to the ceiling until it cleared. “I’ve also used you ill. When you sent me home after we found Jack. And just now. And I never thanked you for all your help in bringing my son back to me.”
She leaned forward, intent on kissing his cheek, but George met her halfway. He claimed her mouth, conquered it fully. His arms wrapped about her, and crushed her body to his. Thank goodness for the support because her knees refused to hold her up any longer. She clung to his shoulders for dear life, until at last he relented. By then he’d left her gasping. His breath released in a warm rush into her mouth, his life mingling with hers. As it should.
Ashlyn Macnamara Page 28