Michael inclined his head. The slight movement sent water dripping over his brow. That bead trailed a path from the corner of his eye, down his cheek and Aldora ached to trace the crystalline drop with the tip of her finger. “Oh my goodness, you should be going. Why, you’ll surely catch your death as well.”
His eyes darkened for an instant. “I assure you, it will take a great deal more than a dip in a cool lake on a spring day to do me in.”
Yes, a man of his strength and virility exuded power. And yet, in their every exchange, she’d come to appreciate and admire his surprising tenderness. A gentleness at odds with everything she’d ever witnessed during her parents’ exchanges through the years.
Benedict made a loud clearing sound with his throat.
She should leave. She should go. So, why did she remain standing there, staring at him? Why did she want him with greater desperation than she would the fabled pot of gold at the base of a rainbow? And as much out of reach as that coveted treasure.
His gaze pierced through her, warmed her all the way through until she wanted to lose herself in him. “Ald—”
Benedict sneezed and the moment was effectively shattered. He swiped the back of his hand across his nose. She silently cried out. What had he been about to say? “Aldi’s expecting the marquess, so that’s why we must be going.”
Michael’s eyebrows snapped together, fire lit his eyes, and threatened to singe her from the burning intensity of it. Just like that, his earlier mask slid into place. “Ah, of course. The marquess.” A sneering smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “I should not keep you from that esteemed gentleman.”
The venom there robbed her of breath and Aldora held a warding hand up to her breast. No doubt, he took her as a fortune-hunting miss who cared about nothing more than his brother’s title and wealth. Guilt twisted her insides. My God…he is correct. She was nothing more than a conniving, scheming miss. Did it matter that her intentions were simply to save her brother and sisters from poverty and ruin? She wet her lips. “Benedict, start back to the carriage. I’ll be but a moment.”
Her brother opened his mouth but then promptly closed it. He proffered his most respectable bow to the man who’d saved him. “Thank you very much, sir.”
Michael returned the bow, matching the younger boy’s polite deference. “It was my pleasure.”
Aldora watched Benedict scurry off and stared after him for a quiet moment. “You presume to know me. You, with your hard stare and cold smile, judge me for things you cannot understand.” Michael continued to stand there in silence, which gave her the courage she needed to finish. “You don’t know what it is like to lose everything in the hopes of saving your family from the poorhouse. I’m not pursuing your brother in my desire for wealth and title, for me.” She took a steadying breath, humiliated waves of shame lapping at every corner of her body until she thought she might break under the force of it. “My siblings have been without tutors or governesses. They wear badly frayed clothing we stitch by hand because there are no maids left. All that remains between us and abject ruin is the patience of a rapidly tiring creditor.”
At the tense silence, she forced her gaze up to his. His face was an impenetrable mask, carved of immobile granite. There was no outward reaction to her admission. Not a hint of caring or interest. Or worry. But more importantly, it was also absent of pity and, for that, he earned another sliver of her heart. Oh, God. Why must he be unlike any other?
Unnerved by her regretful musings and his intractable silence, she dipped a stiff curtsy. “Thank you for saving Benedict. I am sorry…” The word trailed off. What was she to say? I’m sorry I fell completely in love with you? I’m sorry you have such a low opinion of me? She spun on her heel.
He shot an arm out, clasping her about the wrist in a surprisingly tender grip. Throat working, she stared down at his hand upon her person. Michael forced her back around to face him. “Do you love him?” he asked gruffly. He briefly tightened his hold and then lightened his touch. “Do you?” There was a faint imploring to those two words that ran ragged over her heart.
A sheen of tears misted her vision and she damned the useless drops. I love him. And the sight of this proud, unyielding man before her, with his heart and every emotion in his eyes, gutted her. “Michael,” she began on a ragged whisper.
He pulled her closer. “Do you?” he demanded, with his usual coolness restored.
If they were discovered in this scandalous embrace, with his hands upon her, it was a scandal from which she’d never recover. Suddenly, that worry didn’t matter as it should. Only Michael and the fire glinting in his eyes.
“No,” she said softly. How can I love him when you stole my heart in Lord and Lady Havendale’s gardens? “I—”
“You require stability and security for you and your family. If that is what this is about, I am wealthy.” He spoke the way a solicitor might coordinate the details of a business arrangement. “I will care for your family.” He spoke with a matter-of-factness that was belied by the grief ravaging his chiseled features.
Aldora’s heart picked a funny staccato rhythm within her breast and soared on the wings of hope before logic sent her careening painfully back to earth. “Your reputation.” Her voice emerged as a pained whisper.
Michael jerked his head back as if she’d slapped him. “My reputation?” he echoed with a hollowness that left her bereft.
I’m hurting him. Not my father. Not my family. Me. Never had she despised herself more than she did in this instant. For it was not Aldora’s late father that had caused Michael this suffering—but her. She needed to make him understand. “It is not my reputation I worry about,” she rushed to reassure him. This was about more than her. “I have to think about my sisters making respectable matches.” It was very important that he understood it was not her own inflated ego she cared about. “I need you to know,” she beseeched, “if it were only I, and not Katherine and Anne and Benedict, I would choose you and only you, regardless of anything.” Neither wealth nor history nor lineage would keep them apart.
He released her suddenly and, bringing his hands back, he flexed those digits. “I’ll not convince you to wed me, Aldora. I’ll not humble myself any more than I’ve already done. The choice is yours. You can have all.” Michael held her gaze. “Or you can have nothing, but you cannot have both.” His jaw worked.
She bit back a protest when he spun away and stalked off down the hill. A single tear fell, then another as she stretched a hand out toward his retreating back. Please, do not leave me. Of course, she’d no right to Michael in any way. She’d made her choice for her siblings. Yet, if she’d done what was correct, why did she feel this aching emptiness inside?
Chapter 10
I am a bloody fool.
Michael stared out into the gardens below, arms folded behind his back as he contemplated his earlier meeting with Aldora. This is why he’d invested all these years on his business empire and material wealth, power, and success. Because those were aspects of this rotted world he could control. Ones he had mastery over for sheer will and hard work alone. This business of pain and suffering and love were—
He froze.
Love. I love her. He loved her spirit and pride. Bloody hell, he even loved her willingness to put her family’s happiness before her own. Staggered under the weight of that discovery, he pressed his eyes closed. Surely not. “Don’t be silly,” he muttered into the quiet. Of course he didn’t love her.
She was scheming for a match with his brother. Why, Aldora Adamson was no different than any other title-grasping debutante. Just like so many others, she was out for wealth, power, and a title.
With a growl, he stalked away from the window and began pacing a path in front of his packed trunks. Except, she wasn’t like the others.
He’d witnessed the naked fear in her eyes when she’d discovered her brother nearly drowning. In those eyes was the gleam of a woman who’d do anything for her family—even if that meant ma
rrying for reasons other than love.
Love.
He scoffed at the thought of it. When had he ever put serious thoughts behind a marriage of love versus a marriage of convenience…or really marriage at all? He’d focused all his efforts and energies on his businesses without a thought to a wife. After all, his brother was the marquess and would possess the requisite heirs which would leave him free to…
He paused. What? Free to sulk and lament the path his life had taken following the scandal of his youth? He had prided himself on his resilience and strength in the face of his banishment. Only now did he realize, he was controlled by his past. Michael dragged a hand through his hair. Just as Aldora felt controlled by her family’s past.
Except, they didn’t have to be. If they were courageous and bold, and if she loved him enough to brave all, including scandal, they could confront their pasts and make a future not just for themselves, but also for her family. With his brother’s connections and his own financial power, he was not weak.
When Aldora had expressed her fears, he’d been too wounded by his own self-pity that he’d stormed off like a petulant child. He’d not stayed and fought like a warrior with assurances of protecting her and her family. Instead, he’d expected her blind love to conquer all the obstacles between them.
I need her.
He shot his gaze to the ormolu clock atop the fireplace mantel. His heart fell. She’d been expecting his brother’s audience that afternoon. Even now, their meeting was surely at an end. Dagger-like pain wrenched through his insides and threatened to tear him apart. Michael would wager his entire fortune his brother had gone to offer for Aldora. When he did and when she accepted, Aldora would never brave the scandal of throwing one brother over for another.
He glanced again at the clock. Perhaps, their meeting hadn’t yet taken place. Perhaps, their betrothal was still not agreed upon. For the first time in ten years, neither logic nor reason propelled Michael out of the room and into the foyer. He bellowed for a servant. “I need my mount readied!”
The servant hurried off to do his bidding, smartly recognizing that he was not a man to counter. He had a betrothal to stop.
Aldora stared down into her nearly empty teacup. What would she do when she finished the last of the brew? Oh, she supposed she could serve herself a second cup, but that might look gauche to the Marquess of St. James. It wasn’t really that she cared so much what he thought, but she cared that her mother was glaring quite pointedly at her and would surely snatch the teapot and, well, that would be terribly humiliating.
“His Lordship asked you a question, Aldora,” her mother snapped.
She jerked her attention toward the marquess, expecting to see impatience in his frosty blue gaze but oddly finding a flicker of warmth and something else. Something that looked an awful bit like commiseration.
“Aldora!”
“Forgive me, my lord. I’m afraid my mind wandered.”
He inclined his head. “I admit I was curious as to whether you prefer London to the countryside.”
“I abhor London,” she blurted.
Her mother gasped. “Aldora,” the countess said sharply.
Ignoring her stern mother, the marquess fixed his attention on Aldora.
Lord St. James captured his chin between his thumb and forefinger, rubbing back and forth, watching. Studying her. Like I’m an exhibit at the Royal Museum. Agonized, she bit the inside of her cheek. She didn’t want to go through life with a gentleman who she had to worry about pleasing and finding the proper responses to questions he put to her. She wanted a man in her life who accepted her as she was with all her many flaws and imperfections. And I found him… Only, she’d rejected those gifts he’d held out.
“Tell me more about your feelings on London, my lady.” He eyed her curiously. “I have never met a young lady who has ever admitted anything but love for the city.”
“Then you never met a lady who was telling you the truth,” she muttered. Her mother’s gasp was lost in the marquess’ unexpected bark of laughter. Aldora glanced up at him for the first time that morning with real interest. It would appear that St. James was not as stuffy as Emilia, or the ton, had taken him to be.
Mother hurried to explain. “What my daughter means is—”
The marquess held up a staying hand. Mother snapped her lips shut. Aldora smiled. Perhaps there was something redeeming about His Lordship, after all. He turned back to her, his expression patient.
She ticked her chin up a notch. If she were to marry the man, she should at least be honest with him—in this, anyway. “I hate London. The air lacks the elemental purity and cleanness one finds in the country. I miss the lush, fertile land to ride on, the crisp water to toss stones upon.” Her throat closed as she remembered her childhood home, the Tudor estate in Leeds, which they’d lost to Father’s debts. It had been the one place she had been truly happy.
Mother tittered nervously behind her hand. “My daughter overexaggerates her sentiments, my lord. She—”
“I’d like a word alone with Lady Aldora,” he commanded with all the power and pomposity a nobleman could muster. Odd, she’d taken him to be a shallow, weak gentleman given only to propriety. Mayhap, there was more to Lord St. James, too. Then, they all had their secrets.
Mother’s eyes went wide. She stared unblinking like a night owl before wordlessly exiting the room.
Aldora tamped down the swell of panic that crested as her mother left her unchaperoned with His Lordship. She half-expected her mother to defy all convention and pull the door closed in her wake but, alas, it would appear not all sense of propriety had escaped her desperate mother. She distantly registered the marquess rising and crossing to the window. He parted the curtain and peered out into the streets below.
“I wanted to speak to you alone, my lady.”
Aldora’s twisted her fingers in the fabric of her skirts. She stared at the crumpled blue fabric and forced herself to relax her grip then smoothed her palms along the creased satin. “Did you?” She was mere moments away from everything she’d hoped for, everything she’d dreamed of for her sisters and brother. There should be a euphoric feeling of elation. Relief. So, where was it? Why was she left with nothing more than this suffocating, cloying sense of…absolute wrongness?
His Lordship dropped the curtain back into place and peered over his shoulder at her. His penetrating blue eyes pierced through her and she shifted. Did he even now know the secrets she kept? Of her love for Michael? Her scheming to wed the wrong brother for no other reason than because of the title he possessed? Shame burned strong in her belly. God, how she despised herself for being like so many others in want of a title. Hating herself for an absolute powerlessness when her siblings desperately needed saving.
“I came here to ask you something, my lady,” Lord St. James said quietly, cutting into her tumultuous thoughts.
Oh, God. He’s going to ask it. Nausea churned in her belly until she had to fold her arms protectively under her waist. She should want him to ask that very question. But, God help her… She briefly closed her eyes. I cannot do this. Not even to save my siblings… “My lord, I cannot.”
The marquess cocked his head.
Her choppy breath made speech impossible. She jumped to her feet and searched her mind for the right words. Any words. “My lord, you must forgive me.” Sheer bravery leant her the strength to move closer to him. “I cannot marry you.”
The marquess’ eyebrows snapped together. “I beg your pardon?”
What accounted for the shocked befuddlement coating that question? Then, it was not every day a young lady threw over one of the most eligible bachelors in London. “It is not that I don’t want to wed you,” she hurried to reassure him. “You’re a fine man.” Of course, not really knowing him, she couldn’t say that with any absolute sincerity. “But I cannot wed you.” She took a deep breath and said the words that would serve as the death knell for her family. “I love another.”
Lord St.
James opened and closed his mouth several times, before ultimately settling for silence. He scratched at his forehead.
Aldora thought to the first time she’d met Michael. He’d not stood on ceremony with her. He’d been teasing and…and real. He’d never struggled or searched for words. And in a Society filled with glittering falsities and deceptive cheer, there was something so very important, so elemental to one’s survival, and that was realness.
Michael’s brother coughed into his hand, bringing her back to the moment. “Uh…I must say that isn’t why I’ve come today.”
It wasn’t? She tipped her head. That slight movement dislodged her spectacles. “I beg your pardon?” She pushed the wire rims up on her nose, though it was her hearing that had failed her in that moment and not her eyesight. For surely, the marquess hadn’t said what she thought he had.
The gentleman flushed a deep shade of red and he stole a glance about before speaking in hushed tones. “I did not come to offer for you,” he began gently. He dropped his voice an octave. “Why, I hardly even know you, Lady Aldora.”
Yes, there was that. Not that a lack of familiarity had stood in the way of other esteemed Society matches. For all her earlier unfavorable opinions on the marquess, she and the ton had proven wholly incorrect. There was something so very honorable and unique about this nobleman who desired to actually know a lady before wedding her. With his staring patiently on, Aldora searched her mind for some suitable reply to her erroneously drawn conclusion. “Uh…” she began…and came up empty. Because really, what else was a young lady to say after such a mistake? She should feel the sting of shame and humiliation on her cheeks. Or regret. Yes, there should be that, too. And yet, oddly, all she felt was…
Her shoulders sagged on a tidal wave of relief and a giggle escaped her.
“I suppose I should be offended by your reaction,” the marquess drawled with a sardonic twist to his observation.
“Oh, I meant no offense.” Goodness, it was a good thing her mother wasn’t standing outside the room. Aldora imagined they would have heard the thud of her body fainting dead away had she been. “I must confess to curiosity as to why you’re here, then, my lord?”
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