Chapter Seventeen #2
money and been rejected, but she still played spillikins. She had even offered a suggestion for the name of one of Dot’s knights.
“You can call him Judas,” she said. “Because he betrayed the queen. And now she wants to destroy his entire army.”
“Ooooh!” Dot approved, while Mr. Delacorte made an incoherent sound of near frustration.
Her passage home was booked a few days hence on the mail coach.
Maybe she could saddle up Hogarth’s donkey and leave for Sussex now, and contemplate her utter failure to resolve anything
at all during the entire, slow journey home.
The worst part was the sense of betrayal she felt.
What if everything she thought she knew about Marchand, what if every memory she’d collected precisely the way she collected stone hearts—every look and word exchanged, the expression on his face in the churchyard as he gazed across at her, the way he held her, the way he kissed her—had been a lie? A strategy?
Had this been his objective, after all?
Because she had fallen into his hand like a ripe plum.
Perhaps he thought he’d won, and he had nothing left to prove now.
And perhaps that was the reason he felt he didn’t need to expend any effort making love to her. She scarcely knew a thing
about all of that, after all. Ropes and spanking notwithstanding.
She refused to meet his eyes in the sitting room or at the breakfast or dinner table, but he scarcely took them off her. She
knew because she could feel his gaze, for the same reason she knew she would be able to feel him present anywhere, in a crowd or if she was blindfolded
in a dark room. If he’d addressed her directly, she would have taken great pleasure in aggressively shunning him and letting
everyone in the room wonder why.
She could barely eat. She put a few things in her mouth at each meal and didn’t taste them. Misery blunted every one of her
senses, as if her whole being had donned mourning.
Marchand told himself: It’s better if she hates me now. It will ultimately be so much easier for both of us.
But every time he saw her at the dinner table or in the sitting room, he felt freshly destroyed.
Unlike him, she had not developed a useful, hard shield between herself and the world.
Her suffering was palpable. He could hardly breathe for witnessing it.
She was furious, that much was clear. No doubt she felt humiliated.
She probably felt betrayed. She was entitled to feel all of it.
Perhaps she was gravely disappointed he had not taken her to bed.
If that was the gratifying case, well, two of them suffered torments over that.
On the whole, he suffered because she suffered.
But he suffered for his own reasons, too.
For the first time in his life, he’d dishonorably reneged on a deal, when he’d vowed to himself that he would never be that
kind of man.
He told himself that his reasons had been noble. He was saving the viscount’s daughter from something she’d regret, no matter
how desperate her straits seemed now.
But he suspected in this instance that “cowardice” was masquerading as “noble.”
And lurking beneath the cowardice were reasons he simply did not want to face.
And he suffered because he’d asked Hogarth to send the letter describing “his” plan to repay his debt to Lucifer’s Fall. The
royal mail between London and Sussex was usually swift, but it hadn’t yet arrived. He ought to have stood over the boy and
demanded he write it in his presence, so he could take the letter back to London with him.
He’d just been so eager to return to the Grand Palace on the Thames. To be wherever Ginny was.
He’d imagined presenting Hogarth’s letter to her and watching her face go soft with joy and pride, savoring the miracle of it.
He’d wanted to be her bloody hero.
But Marchand was accustomed to getting on with things. He knew from experience that despite outer circumstances, if he didn’t
keep kicking to stay afloat, the waves would eventually suck him under. And he’d always valued his own worthless life, although
God only knew why. Perhaps he’d somehow known he would wind up someday kissing a beautiful girl in a churchyard, which would
make everything he’d done to survive up until that moment worth it.
He found he could hardly countenance the notion of burdening her with the truth about his feelings. He wouldn’t know how to tell her, anyway. He’d never done such a thing in his life.
Because he could not know for certain how she felt.
Even the possibility of witnessing pity in her soft eyes if he told her the truth made him want to shrivel. It would haunt
him bitterly for whatever remained of his days. How could she possibly understand that making love to her would destroy him
if he had to let her go?
He’d asked Mr. Ogden to make a certain appointment for him two days hence. On his calendar for that day Marchand wrote the
word “retribution.”
He took ice-cold satisfaction in the anticipation of meting out punishment and settling a grave wrong.
Before she returned to Sussex, if all went according to plan, he would be able to give Ginny’s life back to her and to the
people she loved.
So it seemed to him that he had arrived at the solution for what he could do for her. Perhaps it was the only point of him.
And for that, he thought he could endure anything. Even her hate.
The need for solace finally drove Ginny outside to the little park in front of the Grand Palace on the Thames after lurking
in her room for the better part of two days. It seemed as good a place as any to look for a stone heart, even though she’d
already found one there. Lightning could very well strike twice.
No stones immediately leaped into her line of vision, as they had that magical day in the park next to Marchand. Gordon did,
however. The plump striped cat who roamed the halls of the Grand Palace on the Thames was sleeping beneath a shrub, and he
hopped up next to her on the bench. She scratched him under the chin. The purring was admittedly consoling.
“I hope you don’t have any fights with Pumpkinhead and Inkblot,” she told him sincerely.
“Prrrp,” he trilled, noncommittally. Promising nothing.
Her head shot up when she heard the squeak of the gate.
She went so rigid so abruptly that Gordon shot straight up and then vanished in a tabby blur.
Marchand froze before her.
She was literally caged in by a wrought iron fence.
His expression suggested that of a man silently shouting “Bloody hell!”
It was the first time she’d looked at him for two long days, and it might as well have been the first time she’d ever seen
him. The impact on her was entirely the same. In the bright daylight, he looked magnificent, intimidating, and exhausted.
Exactly like a man who hadn’t slept at all since she’d interrupted his sleep two nights before.
Her heart, that traitorous organ, yearned to go to him to offer comfort.
She fixed things. She couldn’t seem to stop wanting to do that. Even for people who destroyed her.
“I didn’t know you were here,” he said stiffly. “My apologies for the intrusion, Miss Woodville. I’ll leave.”
But when he turned away, every cell of her body howled in protest.
He froze as if he’d heard her soul crying out to him. He hesitated.
Then she watched his shoulders move in a sort of resigned breath.
He pivoted to face her.
“You’re upset,” he said quietly.
That was a significant understatement.
“Nonsense,” she said firmly. She refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing how thoroughly emotionally ravaged she was.
But her voice shook.
He steeply arched a skeptical brow.
“It wasn’t my intent to embarrass you,” he said evenly. “And I’m very sorry if I did.”
Ugh. That careful, formal tone.
“I wasn’t embarrassed.”
That won her an almost impatient look. As if lying bored him.
“And there’s nothing shameful about the choice you made,” he continued.
She merely stared at him.
She saw him tense to leave.
“I know,” she said swiftly. “But the fact that you lost your nerve doesn’t surprise me a bit, Mr. Marchand.”
At once, that familiar, challenging light flared in his eyes.
“I suppose I ought to have known that you wouldn’t keep your word,” she pressed on recklessly. “For all your big talk about
never lying, cheating, or stealing. Once a rogue and all that. The joke is on me.”
He pressed his lips together. His eyes were both flinty and wounded. She’d hit her mark.
“You’re hurt,” he claimed correctly.
“Wrong again, Marchand.”
He didn’t honor this lie with a response.
Tension tugged at his eyes, about his mouth. He was suffering.
“Was it because of Francis?” she blurted. “Are you . . . are you . . . punishing me because of . . .” Her voice broke.
He looked tormented now. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Then why—”
“Because. I. Can’t, Ginny,” he said slowly and evenly, laying all of those words down like bricks. This time there was a warning in his voice.
But did she also hear a hint of a plea?
She nodded sardonically. “Ah, I think I understand now,” she said on a faux hush. “And I’m so very sorry to hear about your impediment. I guess Lady Tomelty had it wrong, after all. Perhaps Mr. Delacorte has something in
his case to remedy it.”
Marchand spun on his heel and stormed out the garden gate.
She jerked when he all but slammed it behind him.
She closed her eyes and dropped her face into her hands. She drew in ragged breaths through a nearly unbearable pressure in
her chest. She wanted to scream. She wanted to sob.
She thought her entire being might fly apart.
She’d dragged in three ragged breaths when she heard the latch on the gate lift again.
She froze.
She heard the muffled crunch of his slow footsteps toward her.
Slowly, cautiously, she lifted her head.
Her heart turned over hard at Marchand’s expression.
It was tormented. Furious. Hunted.
Yearning.
He was breathing audibly.
“I look for heart-shaped rocks on the ground everywhere now,” he said. “Every. Bloody. Where.”
She froze.
“I beg your—”
“My eyes can’t be on the ground, Ginny. I need to be on the lookout for perils.”
She was stunned.
“All right,” she said carefully.
“And I don’t think you’re pretty at all.”
The bastard let her sit with that for a torturous few seconds.
“No. You’re alarmingly beautiful, in an entirely unique way that somehow seems different every time I look at you. And I . . .”
Goose bumps raced over her skin. What was happening here?
“. . . and that makes it difficult to concentrate, let alone breathe. I need to think, Ginny. I need to breathe.”
Her own breath left. She couldn’t say a word. She was riveted.
“I’ve never—never—brought anyone to see Michael before. You’re the first. The Ghost in the Attic has nothing on the inside of my heart, Ginny, I can’t go showing the inside of my heart to people.”
“Gabriel . . . ” she said softly.
He raised his voice. “And dear God, Guinevere, you are”—he paused to huff out a breath—“stubborn beyond belief. And clever in ways that require me to constantly pay attention. And gentle in a way that makes me . . .” His
voice frayed. “That I . . .”
His fury sputtered out.
He was subdued now. Drained, but clearly implacable. “As I once said,” he said slowly, “I simply will not allow you to ruin
me.”
There was no sound but the rush of the breeze through the shrubberies around them. She could all but feel his beautiful, savage,
battered heart lighting on her palm. Crushable as a butterfly.
“Making love to you would ruin me, Ginny. And that’s why I can’t.”
The ferocity of his yearning poured from him in rays. But his will was as palpable as a wall. It was as though he were fighting
for his very life, which of course was all he’d known how to do since he was a boy.
“I see,” she finally said.
She wasn’t certain she did, entirely.
What if she never saw him again?
She looked at him as if it might be the last time, hoarding every second he remained in her vision. She was afraid, too. Because
she didn’t know how to comfort him. She couldn’t, when clearly she was the source of his torment.
“Gabriel . . . ?” Her voice was threadbare.
“Yes, Ginny.”
“Do you know . . . do you understand . . . how frightened I am about money?”
Pain fleetingly tensed his features. “I know,” he said quietly.
Where did that leave her?
Something remained unsaid. Something she desperately needed to understand.
I look for heart-shaped rocks on the ground everywhere now.
And then she remembered the one that had magically materialized near her foot.
And then she thought she understood, and once again her breath was robbed. Oh, Gabriel.
He was terribly afraid of being hurt. And ashamed of being afraid.
But how could she know for sure?
What if she nudged him again? Not by goading him. But by testing, one last time, the strength of his resistance, to see if it would give way. To see if the ultimate truth would emerge if she gave him one final push.
The rogue in her made her do it.
She leaned forward and said softly, “One night. One night in your bed. I’ll do anything you want me to do. And after that,
my brother’s debt to you will be paid.”
He closed his eyes, taking those words like a blow.
Her heart was pounding so hard the blood sang in her ears.
When he opened his eyes again, his expression was once again as unreadable as any expert gambler’s.
“I’ll give you my answer this evening.”
He turned on his heel and closed the gate behind him as he left.