Chapter Eight
GIDEON, TOO, WAS ALREADY dressed for dining. With his shaggy dark hair and hard angular face, he looked a trifle out of place in the formal black jacket and breeches and starched white shirt, a large pigeon’s-blood ruby nestling in the snowy white folds of his cravat.
He strode toward her, and she watched him, trying to place what it was that made him look different from all the other men she knew.
Perhaps it was the sun-darkened skin that gave him a slightly piratical look…
or the shaggy cut of his thick black hair, which marked him as one who cared little about his appearance.
But she thought it was mostly the eyes—as green as new leaves, but hard and watchful, as though he was always on alert, ready for an attack even here in the middle of this huge house.
“You are early for supper,” he commented as he drew near to her. His comment was mundane, but his eyes swept down her in a way that heated her blood.
“As are you,” she replied coolly, looking him in the eye. She felt, as she had before when she had been around him, the same curious blend of nerves and heat that she had never experienced around anyone else. It was a feeling she was determined not to let him see.
“Why don’t we take a stroll through the gallery while we wait?” he suggested, gesturing toward the long hall in front of them, lined with windows along one wall and with paintings along the other.
She nodded and turned toward the gallery, not taking the arm he proffered.
Sconces burned along the wall all the way down the corridor, reflecting their flickering light in the mullioned windows across from them.
The ceiling of the gallery was high and braced with beams of dark wood, giving it a dark and dramatic effect.
Portraits of men and women whom she assumed must be Bankes ancestors decorated the wall, along with paintings of rural scenes and animals.
There were statues and vases, some on pedestals and others freestanding, and here and there beneath the windows were benches upon which one could sit, presumably to admire the art across the way.
Most of the paintings were rather pedestrian, Irene thought, but she studied them as if they were masterpieces, for doing so kept her face turned from Lord Radbourne. She was discovering that looking at him caused too much tumult inside her.
After they had passed a number of ancestors in progressively dated styles of dress, they came to a large painting of a horse. Irene stopped, blurting out, “This is the best painting here!”
A grin spread slowly across her companion’s face.
“Yes, isn’t it? Far better than the one of his owner.
” He gestured toward the man in the portrait that hung beside the one of the horse, then on past him to a picture of a pinch-faced woman.
“Or the man’s wife. But then, from what I have heard, the third Earl of Radbourne was much fonder of his horse than he was of his countess. ”
Irene could not help but smile, though she quickly suppressed it. “I suspect there are a number of people who could say that.”
“You haven’t a very good view of marriage, Lady Irene.”
She did not reply, merely cocked an eyebrow at him and continued her progress down the hall.
“Or should I say that it is men of whom you take such a poor view, not marriage?”
Irene shrugged. “I am sure that I have no control over what you say.”
They continued in silence for a few more minutes, then Lord Radbourne began again. “You are displeased with me yet again, I take it.”
She cast him a brief glance. “Why would I be displeased with you? I have not even seen you until just now.”
He gave a slight nod. “I see. You are miffed, I take it, that I was not there to greet you when you arrived. My great-aunt has already rung a peal over my head about it.”
“Were you not?” Irene asked, instilling her voice with disinterest. “I am afraid I did not notice.”
“Did you not?” he murmured, his mouth once more curving up into a smile.
It was a very good smile, Irene noticed; she had forgotten how it lit up his eyes. He should use it more often, she thought, for it made it difficult for one to remain annoyed with him.
“It was rather rude of you—to ignore your guests.”
“Exactly the sort of behavior that you are here to polish out of me,” he told her.
“Lord Radbourne, I fear that there is not enough polish in the world to make you anything but rude.”
He did not appear to be offended by her remark, for the smile lingered on his lips. “Indeed. You know, Lady Irene, there are those who might say that you are somewhat less than courteous yourself.”
She drew breath to argue, but stopped, then gave a little laugh and said, “Well, perhaps you have the truth of it there.” She paused for a moment and looked back at Radbourne.
“Perhaps we should start over. After all, you and I will be working toward the same goal, will we not? Getting you married to some appropriate young lady?”
He shrugged. “I think that is more my relatives’ goal than mine.”
Irene looked at him in faint surprise. “Then I was mistaken and you are not interested yourself in the matter? You do not wish to marry?”
“I know I must at some point, and I suppose now is as good a time as any. But I am not driven to become a husband and father, no.”
They continued their stroll along the hall, though Irene found herself studying her companion as much as she did the artwork.
“I had thought you more eager than that in your pursuit of a bride,” she said after a moment.
He lifted one shoulder in a ghost of a shrug and said, “I am not certain that eagerness enters into it. I am willing to marry—and I am willing to marry a woman from their class. But it is less than inviting to think of saddling myself with a wife who will spend the rest of my life looking down on me, or who will be forever schooling me on my accent, my dress, my commonness.”
Gideon glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and asked, “Would you wish to be shackled to such a partner?”
“No, indeed. That is why I refuse to marry.”
“But you would not be considered unworthy by an aristocrat.”
“Lord Radbourne, you do not understand. Wives are regarded as inferiors by all men.” She tilted her head to look up at him.
He came to a stop, looking at her in some astonishment. “That is what you believe?”
She raised her brows. “What else should I believe? Oh, I am not talking about the meaningless little courtesies such as standing until a woman is seated or walking closer to the street to protect her. I am talking about all the essential matters of married life. A husband makes decisions for his wife. He gives her an allowance to spend on her fripperies. He tells her what to do. Is that the behavior of a man toward his equals?”
He frowned. “Well, no, but—”
Irene gazed at him challengingly. “But what?”
One corner of his mouth quirked up in a half smile, and he said, “But I cannot imagine the husband who would dare to tell you what to do or make decisions for you.”
“I intend to make sure of that. I only wonder that a man such as you would be willing to take on the sort of wife you just described.”
“I have little doubt that I will be able to take care of myself in such an arrangement. And if I am lucky, perhaps I will find a woman more…interesting than those that have been presented to me before. Because in the end, marriage is something that will make me more acceptable in the eyes of my family.” His mouth twisted as he said the words, and for an instant a certain bleakness touched his eyes before it was swallowed up in their cold depths.
“You sound bitter toward your family,” Irene commented.
“What else should I feel?” he challenged.
“They claim that blood is so important to them. But I see no indication of it. They have no joy in recovering a member of their family, blood of their blood. What is important to them is that I am the heir. The succession is what drives them. As to feelings for me, they have none. Their only worry is that my deficient upbringing will embarrass them, so they want me to marry in order to reduce their embarrassment.”
Irene had to drop her eyes before his steady gaze. It was rather hard to argue against his assumptions.
“I grew up in the East End,” he went on in a voice almost devoid of emotion.
“I believed myself an orphan. I had no memory of this place or my parents, except perhaps for one vague feeling of a woman holding me. I remember nothing of how she looked, only of softness and a smell of lilacs. My earliest real memory is of hunger. I was always hungry. I belonged to a man who ran the lot of us as pickpockets and thieves. I was useful for wriggling into tight spaces and then opening a window or door for my accomplices. I was skillful at picking pockets and I was fast. So I had value to him. If I had not, he would have thrown me out into the cold. But as it was, he gave me food to eat—though it never seemed to be enough—and he gave me a place to stay. I had no schooling—I taught myself numbers and reading.”
Irene’s heart was touched with pity. “I am sorry.”
He cast a sideways glance at her and said roughly, “I don’t ask for your pity.
I am merely telling you that that was my life.
That was my world. And then, one day, Rochford walked into my life and informed me that I was Lord Radbourne and my family wanted me back.
What am I supposed to feel for them? They are strangers to me.
Strangers whose only interest in me is how to keep me from ruining the family name.
They are noblemen, the kind of arrogant, useless, unfeeling people whom I have always despised. Members of the ton.”
Irene felt the pain that lay beneath his words, and surprising herself a little, she took a step toward him, laying her hand on his arm. “But you are a member of that same class of people yourself,” she reminded him softly.
He looked at her. “Not in my heart.”