Chapter Sixteen #4
“Good God, Marchand.” Her temper flared. “Mince a word now and again.”
“Did he?” He was relentless. He never, ever was intimidated by passion or fervor, and God how she loved it.
She felt a flush of shame. “No,” she said softly.
“Why not?”
She didn’t answer that.
“Dowry problems?”
She felt like kicking him.
She didn’t want to tell him the truth, because she knew it would hurt him, because it hurt her, and it was all of a piece
now for the two of them.
And yet there was no avoiding the truth of what Francis had said before he departed.
Ginny swallowed. “He said that he’d heard the Woodvilles’ circumstances have changed for the better, and he hoped to have
an important conversation with me when I returned to Sussex for the marriage settlement discussions in a few days. He did
not use the word ‘marriage’ or ‘married’ and he doesn’t know anything about . . . what happened with Hogarth at Lucifer’s
Fall. All the losses.”
The horrific eradication of her dowry, in other words.
Did Marchand truly understand the humiliation she would feel if Francis had asked her to marry him, and she’d accepted—only
for him to learn later that she had no dowry, after all?
Did he understand how humiliated she would feel if she had to tell Francis outright that despite their recent inheritance,
she currently had no dowry? That it had all disappeared, because her brother had gambled it all away at a gaming hell? And
was then compelled to watch Francis’s sweet face fall, to see betrayal and hurt in it?
The notion of any of these scenarios curdled her blood.
How was it that Marchand, who had known so much fear in his life, did not seem to recognize how terribly afraid she was? About her future. About her feelings about him. She wasn’t worldly. He was too much for her, yet exactly enough,
and she feared nothing else would ever be enough again.
She was miserable, and she was aroused, and neither condition seemed likely to be eased soon.
He was quiet for some time.
“Ginny . . .” When Marchand turned her name into a sigh in her ear, spangles immediately stood all the little hairs on her
nape erect, and a pulse of what she knew to be pure lust throbbed between her legs. “Here is the thing . . .” This, too, was
more breath than words, uttered drowsily. He leisurely feathered his lips down her throat, and she sighed and arched into
him, in thrall to these new, glorious sensations. She couldn’t help it. She would take them while she could. “I might be little
better than a street rat dressed up in a rich man’s clothes . . .” When he touched his tongue to her ear, a soft moan spiraled
from her; she was half angry, half astounded. “But I don’t understand what kind of man can’t make his own money for a woman
he wants.” His lips, his tongue, his breath were on the bare place below her hair, at her nape; she could feel his erection
hard against her bottom and the heat pooling at the crux of her legs, as if ready now to receive him, and she sighed helplessly, softly. “A man who wouldn’t go to the ends of the earth for a woman he wants strikes
me as no kind of man at all.” The words were incendiary, infuriating, but he delivered them like a mesmerist, and she found
herself turning as unresistingly as a flower in the breeze to abet his wandering lips as pleasure sparked to life everywhere
across her body. “A man who wouldn’t buy her everything she needs, keep her safe forever, give her children, never let her
know a moment’s worry or want again. Would pay any price for the privilege of being with her. But then, as we both know”—his tongue, and then his teeth, delicately toyed with the whorls of her ear, as her breath came in staccato tatters now—“I’m not a gentleman.”
Anger and despair and lust and wonder warred within her like those cats outside. His jealousy was darkly satisfying, even
erotic. But she knew at the root of it was deep pain, and that scared her. She desperately hated being the cause of his suffering.
She hated being the cause of her own suffering.
Everything he said was everything she had ever wanted to hear from a man, and she had never realized it until now.
But were these really things he wanted, were these really things he was offering her, was this really proof that he could indeed read her very soul?
Or was it possible that he was just playing dirty because he was jealous, and wanted to win?
“Funny. I don’t feel a thing.” She didn’t recognize the slow, pleasure-drugged sound of her voice as he drew his tongue along
the cords of her throat.
“No?” She heard the dark laughter in the word. His fingers lightly skimmed the length of her arms, then his hands covered
her hands, which were clasped in front of her.
Then he lifted them and she let him, because God help her, she thought she would let him do whatever he wanted to do to her
now.
He brought them up to her breasts.
And then he guided her hands in a rough caress over her bead-hard nipples.
Her head fell back hard as shocking pleasure cleaved her; she bit her lip to muffle her cry.
Her breath came in speeding, ragged gusts.
“Everything you felt just now, Guinevere?” he whispered. “That’s what I do to you.”
He gently took his hands from hers.
She didn’t turn as she heard his footsteps on the stairs, leaving her.
In his cozy room, which was softer than a goddamn hug, Marchand brooded.
The brooding embarrassed him.
He was altogether appalled with himself, in general. It was sobering.
He had no experience of this kind of jealousy—the possessive, mindless, reactive kind. He’d behaved little better than the
feral boy he’d once been. As if he’d been cornered by thieves in an alley, about to be robbed of a crust of bread he’d stolen.
He’d fought like a demon back then for something he’d felt was rightfully his. He yearned for the right to do that now.
But he’d just been an ass to her, and now he had a rampaging erection.
He took care of that, adroitly and swiftly, while picturing his hands covering her breasts. He saw stars when he came.
The relief was temporary. The jealousy flowed right back into his veins, cutting off his air.
He needed to learn it like an enemy, so he could discover which weapons he could use to disarm it. He was a grown man, jaded
and seasoned and intelligent enough. He could surely rationalize it away.
But that was the trouble: What he felt for her had begun somewhere within him that cynicism hadn’t killed. Some unprotected place where he was still a boy innocently in thrall to the moon. It had sneaked up on him; it now bound him like vines.
The problem with being accustomed to assessing threats was that it was a matter of moments before he realized his jealousy
was mainly fear. Fear of both the known and the unknown. Because it was one thing to hear about Balfort anecdotally.
It was another being compelled to stand in the same room with a man who would more than likely share Ginny’s bed for the rest
of her life.
And to understand that sweet, calf-eyed boy was, all things considered, probably a better choice for her.
His entire being rebelled against the notion so powerfully that it felt as though his rib cage were being ripped apart by
two mighty hands. He struggled to breathe through that suffering.
Jealousy was also pain.
He was ashamed of that, too. He ought to have been past that by now.
Because he knew too bloody well what it felt like to have his heart gouged out and his world turned to ashes. He recalled
too well the slow, painful, halting climb up out of the depths of loss while presenting himself to the world as shrewd, dangerous,
and invincible in order to survive. He knew what it had been like to learn himself all over again in the absence of a person
he loved.
It ought to have made him even harder and even braver. He wanted to be harder and braver.
It had instead made him humbler. And more patient.
And very wary of pain.
He knew too well the savage price exacted by love. Grief was built right into it, as Ginny had mentioned in the sitting room.
That poor bastard Apollo, yearning eternally.
He allowed himself one weak moment to rail at the superfluous cruelty of fate.
Anyone who knew him superficially—which was nearly everyone, except Ginny—would have been surprised to learn his greatest
gift wasn’t knowing precisely how to punch a man in the kidneys. It was that he knew how to care. He knew now definitively
that it was what made him feel whole. It was what he’d been missing. Whether it was wading into a fight in a gaming hell or
tucking a little boy into bed, or looking after spoiled aristocrats at Lucifer’s Fall, or escorting the beautiful, maddening
daughter of a viscount on a chase around London. He took care of people.
Mainly, he wanted to take care of her.
He had a look at his pocket watch.
There was time to get a hack to St. James’s Square.
There he would pay a visit to an apothecary and ask the questions that had been forming since his chat with Mr. Delacorte
in the smoking room.
If he was right about the suspicion he was pursuing, there was a possibility he could keep Ginny safe for the rest of her
life. If that was all he would ever be able to offer her, then by God, he was going to bloody well try.