Chapter 19
She’d known a meeting between Jeremy and her cousin was inevitable. She’d enlisted her sister Meghan’s help to order a hack to wait outside while Linnie stood guard at the window. She’d known she’d face Jeremy, but she’d not anticipated how shaken she’d be in this moment.
“Linnie, what are you doing here?” Arran demanded gruffly.
Her heartbeat sounded so loud in Linnie’s ears, she struggled to reorder her thoughts.
What was she doing here, he’d ask?
Linnie had to tear her gaze away from Jeremy and put an angry glare on her cousin.
“What am I doing here, Arran?” How is my voice so calm? “You’d put that question to a woman whose fate and future you’re undoubtedly discussing?” She gave Arran a frosty look. “If that isn’t the most typical, most male thing ever.”
That managed to shut her cousin up.
Linnie wasn’t even close to done with him.
“No, that isn’t quite right. I would venture you not even speaking with me after .
. . after . . .” She briefly faltered. “Hyde Park,” she settled for.
“But instead, bringing another man who I bear no connection to along to discuss my future while excluding me is, in fact, the most male thing ever.”
Her cousin had the good grace to blush.
From the corner of her eye, she detected the ghost of a grin on Jeremy’s hard lips; even that smallest of smiles ravaged her heart’s natural rhythm.
The same could not be said for Lord Culross, who appeared physically pained by her description of him. Linnie set her jaw. She’d not feel bad. She wanted more than a man who made decisions for her and spoke for her.
She felt Jeremy’s eyes boring into her.
For the first time since Hyde Park, Linnie made herself look squarely at him.
“Captain Tremaine,” she said as evenly as she was able, “I’d ask you to please forgive my cousin and Lord Culross’s interference.
I will not have you come to blows or duel with either gentleman on my behalf.
There is no need to feel c-compelled,” she said, stumbling for the first time, “to do right by me.”
Her solemn avowal breathed a surge of volatile energy throughout the already tense room.
Jeremy narrowed his gaze on Linnie.
She felt her cousin and Lord Culross exchange silent, indiscernible looks.
“A word alone with Miss Smith, McQuoid,” Jeremy ordered, his stare remaining centered on Linnie.
Her heart quickened. It’d never not race for him.
“Absolutely n—”
“It wasn’t a request, McQuoid.”
The two men turned toward one another.
Reading their tension and rage, Linnie rushed to intervene and keep them from coming to blows. “Stop it, Arran,” she demanded, placing her hands on his chest. “I’m a grown woman who has gotten myself into a situation. Allow me to get myself out.”
She caught the way Jeremy’s expression shuttered.
“As I said to Tremaine.” Her cousin shook his head. “Absolutely n—”
“Yes, well, as a wise man once said, I’m not asking, Arran.”
Arran and Lord Culross exchanged stares. Some unspoken communication passed between the two.
Jeremy anticipated their compliance and opened the door.
Wordlessly, he closed it behind them.
Jeremy laid his back against the panel and turned the lock. “Brava, Linnie.”
They were alone. Now that they were, she didn’t know what to say or how to say it.
Linnie rubbed at her arms to bring warmth into them. She spared a brief glance for her toes. When she looked up, a faint grin hovered on Jeremy’s lips, and she could make absolutely nothing out of that smile.
Finding her courage, Linnie let her arms fall back to her sides.
“My cousin had no right coming here to compel you,” she said with a steadiness that didn’t match the careening rate of her heartbeat.
Another one of those enigmatic smiles curled his lips. “Is that what you believe he came here for?”
She hesitated. “To duel?” The two words emerged threadbare.
“We’d have likely gotten there . . . but no.”
“I don’t . . .” Linnie dampened her lips.
Jeremy sharpened his gaze on her mouth. Passion turned his grey irises into graphite.
“McQuoid fears I intend to marry you. He assured me Lord Culross would be more than happy to.” The right corner of his mouth pulsed. “As did Lord Culross.”
“Oh.” Linnie wet her mouth. “And what did you say?”
His piercing irises turned a shade nearly black. “Are you asking me whether I took Culross up on his offer, Linnie?”
He’d uttered similar words just last night. Did he speak them now in anger? To taunt her?
“I . . . ?” Linnie turned her palms up in supplication.
Jeremy slipped his gaze over her face, and his eyes softened in a way they’d once done—tender and teasing and gentle.
He is inside there still. The warmhearted friend and champion and—
Jeremy slipped the back of his knuckles along the curve of her cheek, stealing Linnie’s breath. “I’m disappointed, Linnie,” he said quietly.
Craving more of his touch, wanting to be close to him in every way, Linnie leaned into his caress. “You a-are?”
“Oh, yes.” Jeremy continued to move his fingers in that mesmerizing way.
Linnie’s lashes fluttered. “I-I’m sorry.” How is it possible for that feather-like glide to overpower her senses the same as when he kissed her in the most intimate places?
“Don’t be. I’m only disappointed in myself, love. Enraged.”
A hardness had crept into his smooth baritone that brought her eyes flying open. Anger tightened the sides of his mouth and left wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
“Why?” Linnie asked earnestly, wanting the warmhearted, gentle version of Jeremy Tremaine back.
He dipped his neck; his eyes bored into hers. “The fact you still don’t know that I’d sooner kill Culross than see you marry him means I’ve failed greatly, Linnie McQuoid Smith.”
How was it possible for those ruthless words to melt her from the inside out?
“Oh,” she whispered.
Jeremy looped an arm about her waist and dragged her close so she could feel the hard ridge of his want for her. “I want you, Linnie.” He moved his hips in a smooth circle over the flat of her belly.
An agonizing ache formed at her core, and she twisted and moved in a bid to find relief.
He placed his lips against the shell of her ear and drew the lobe inside his mouth to tenderly suck.
Linnie’s breath hitched so loudly that it was a wonder her cousin and Lord Culross didn’t break the door down to storm the room—and she couldn’t even muster feigned horror at the prospect.
Jeremy released her lobe and lightly blew. “I want you in my arms, in my bed . . .” He paused. “In my life.”
Linnie stilled. That solemn profession managed to penetrate the dizzying effects of his kiss.
She leaned back; though tall herself, she had to crane her neck to solidly meet his gaze. “What?” she whispered.
“I want you in every way, Linnie. I want you as my wife.”
Jeremy wanted to marry her?
Linnie was afraid to move, to breathe, to even blink, out of fear that her mind merely played the cruelest tricks and her ears heard what she wished for them to hear.
Biting at her lower lip, Linnie shook her head.
Jeremy palmed her cheek.
He nodded. “I am mad for you, Linnie. You are a siren who has lured me and . . .” His gaze grew inward; frustration glittered in those dark depths and in the words he spoke. “And I do not understand any of it, but I know I will kill for you as easily as I would die for you.”
Tears burnt her eyes, and Linnie frantically blinked them away so Jeremy’s face was not a blur before her.
He fiddled with his left, littlest finger, tugged, and then removed a gold ring etched in an abstract design. It was a moment before she registered the intricate skull etched within a patch of four-petaled clovers.
Before her mind processed Jeremy’s intentions, he sank to a knee.
A fluttering started in her stomach and swept through her chest.
“J-Jeremy?” Her voice trembled.
Jeremy gently claimed her left hand in his own.
“Linnie Smith, you have bewitched me body and soul. I will consecrate my life to yours.” Emotion lent his graveled voice an even harsher quality. “I will protect you from all harm and danger. Give you everything you desire or could hope for—”
Her heart hung there, suspended, waiting for the one promise, and the one that mattered most to her—that did not come.
His love.
His unswerving gaze didn’t so much as waver from Linnie’s, and he slipped the ring upon her largest finger. “Will you marry me and become Lady Jeremy Tremaine?”
A slight lump formed in her throat. He’d been all she’d ever dreamed of or wanted in a husband, and he would forever be the only man she yearned for, and loved. She should’ve been grateful, and her soul should’ve been rejoicing to have this.
But greedily, Linnie ached to be loved as madly, as desperately in return as she loved him.
Jeremy’s brow furrowed. He must have felt or seen or sensed her hushed, unspoken regret.
His dark brows came together, and his steady gaze finally faltered. “I know I do not bring the title of countess,” he said stiffly, “or any other—”
“No!” She sobbed. “I don’t care about that.”
“Linnie?” Her cousin’s anxious voice came muffled on the other side of that panel.
They ignored him.
“I want only you, J-Jeremy.” I love you. To profess her heart to him now would only highlight the fact that Jeremy himself hadn’t brought himself to say those three words. “I want to marry you. There’s only you. There will only ever be you.”
A heartwarmingly silly grin brought Jeremy’s lips up. “You do?”
“Linnie!” Arran called again.
The Earl of Culross’s voice rose up with a greater sense of urgency and agitation. “Miss Smith?”
Linnie and Jeremy remained the only two to live in that moment.
She nodded wildly. “Yes, you silly man!” Linnie framed his sculpted face, permanently bronzed from the sun, between her hands. “I am most disappointed in myself because how can you not know—”
Jeremy took her mouth in a hot, soul-searing kiss that contained both a fiery passion and poignant intimacy.
And with her cousin and Lord Culross thundering outside the office and pounding on the door, Linnie kissed her future husband in return.
What he offered was enough—for now.
In time, he would be able to give her his heart.
She was determined to open Jeremy’s eyes to the fact she loved him, and maybe in time, he could love her, too.