Chapter Thirteen
After nine o’clock the next morning, Friendly rapped on her bedroom door as if the house were on fire. He waited not a moment for her to answer, but caught her in mid-step as she approached the door.
“Lord Halsey, mademoiselle, calls upon you in the main salon.”
“Halsey?” Inès snatched a pillow up to her chest to cover her body in her flimsy muslin night rail. In her hand, she held today’s stockings that she’d just plucked from her chest of drawers.
“Yes, miss.”
“I don’t…?” she asked in confusion. “Is Lady Ashley awake and…and have you notified her as well?”
“She is. And I did.” He fluttered his gray lashes at her and mumbled about this being an early hour, too early.
“Is she dressing to receive him?” Or did she ask him to return at a better hour?
“No, miss. She said if the gentleman calls upon you, then you must receive him.”
That had her gaping like a fish. Well, then. Niggling at her was Halsey’s prickly attitude of their last few encounters. “Is he angry?”
“Angry, miss? No. Rather, I say he has the look of a fellow who has been up all night arguing with himself.”
“Oh. Arguing, eh? Merci, Friendly. I will be down. Soon…soon.” She spun around. What to wear to argue with a man? How to go without minutes spent fighting with corsets and petticoats?
“Come quickly, miss. He does not relinquish his hat or gloves or coat. He…paces.”
“Paces?”
“Like a cat, miss. A large one.” He waved a frustrated hand, then left.
She dropped her pillow, ran to pull the bell for Mary, then charged into her bedroom to her lingerie chest of drawers and grabbed a petticoat and…
In the hall, Friendly barked, “Sir, you must not—”
“But I will!” a booming voice responded.
Oh, he wouldn’t invade her bedroom!
But her door latch clicked. Her hall door slammed shut.
She stiffened.
Strong footfalls made their way across her sitting room floor. She hurried around the doorway and saw…
The Earl of Halsey strode toward her. He wore his coat and gloves but threw his hat to her chair.
“You…you should not be here,” she told him, laughter bubbling inside her at his audacity, fear crowding it out at the dour look turning down his enticing lips.
“You are right,” he agreed, and two gloves sailed toward her bed. He shrugged those wide shoulders and his greatcoat fell in a heap to the rug.
She retreated a pace, her back to her chest of drawers, her underthings slipping from her fingers. “You are too early. I am not dressed.”
“So I see.” His fierce violet gaze took in all of her, her hair curling wildly about her face and throat, her nipples tingling from his presence, her body, flooding with warmth that he was here and yet afraid—oh so very afraid—that he had come to bid her farewell.
She tilted up a defiant chin. “I must put on—”
“Not for me.” He caught her with one hand to her jaw and another going around her waist. Crushing her close along his long torso and muscular legs, she whimpered, but tried to fight him. “Stop that.” He clamped her hips to his.
“Why come like this?” She wished she could summon tears.
“Because I must shock you from your past. You tell yourself you must preserve your independence. But I am not a man who would take your sovereignty. I would treasure it, savor it. You know it. Say it.”
She flashed frustrated eyes at him.
“Say it,” he crooned, loosening his hold on her jaw and caressing her cheek with the backs of his fingers.
“I know…”
“Yes, the rest of it.”
“I know I could be free with you.”
“The good and the…”
“Bad,” she admitted.
“So then, my darling, marry me.”
She stared at him as if he’d just collapsed all the walls around them. “Evan.”
“Marry me.”
She gasped. “Oh, Evan. Don’t—”
“Marry me. Let me show you a man can ensure your welfare. Show you happiness. Value you as you are.”
She drew back, the joy of loving him for the rest of her life battling the knowledge that if she accepted him, if anyone came to demand she perform her duty to her brother, she might ruin this man’s work in government, his name, his family, his future, and even his mind. “I will not do that to you.”
“You do not love another.”
“No.” Only you come so close to my heart.
“Then let me be that man who wants to live and laugh with you.”
“I will not hurt you.”
He cupped her cheeks. “I doubt you ever could.”
He knew not the half of it. Yet how to warn him, how to accept him and love him? “You will marry a woman whom you barely know?”
“I know you have endured terrible losses of loved ones and a beloved home. Let me give you many homes, dogs, horses, cattle, sheep—hell, whatever you want! I know you enjoyed a happy family who are now gone from you. Let me give you a large and happy family to fill all the rooms in those houses. Let me give you babies, nights of longing and lust fulfilled.” His sexual implications shone in the humor in his eyes. “Let me,” he whispered.
She smiled at him, lured. “Oh, you are a sweet man.” Too sweet to be tied to a woman who has a vial of poison sewn into the hem of her winter coat.
He tipped his head, wryly complimented. “Oh, my darling, I know you care for me. I cannot bear any more waiting to have you.”
Tears stung her eyes. He made his case so well.
#
She was slipping away from him. He could not bear it. “Marry me. I want you as my friend, my lover, and my wife. Say yes.”
“I fear you will not want me tomorrow and tomorrow.”
What to say to all of eternity with her? “But how will you know, my darling, if you do not live with me for years and years?”
She took his lips in a sweet, short kiss. “Oh, Evan, mon cher. You make my decision too much a foregone conclusion.”
“Why would I not when you want me as I do you?” He kissed her earlobe and the tip of her nose. “Marry me.” He plunged one hand into her hair and held. “Marry me.”
“Yes, yes.” She kissed his dimples, his chin, his lips. “I will marry you.”
“On Friday.”
She broke out in laughter. “Oh, surely not.”
“Thursday, then!”
“How can we do that?”
“I will get a license. We’ll have the wedding here at the Ashleys’.”
“Oh, but…my house! Evan, no. My people, my staff. Hawkins, my butler, I cannot disappoint. And Mary, the maid here, was to come with me to the new house. And there is more, much more. I cannot marry you so soon. People will talk. They’ll say I am with child.”
He grinned. “You aren’t, my darling. Do give me but a chance and I will do my best to ensure you will be!”
She laughed. “Oh, you are impossible! You know what I mean! They will gossip and assume—”
“Let them think what they want. Besides, you and I have known each other only a few weeks. Even if we had fallen into bed the night of the Carlisles’ dinner party, you could not yet know you were pregnant.
And as for your staff, keep them. We will find places for them.
Hawkins perhaps in one of mine in the country. And Mary? Keep her.”
“You are kindhearted. But the lease on my house… Oh my. I must cancel it. My orders for draperies and furniture. I bought my own piano, too.”
He saw her sadness that she would lose this precious item. He would not let her down. “Bring it to our house. Ours, Inès. You will bring us music with your presence.” He raised her hand and kissed her knuckles. “You will marry me Thursday.”
“Friday.”
He looked askance at her. “You aren’t delaying the inevitable?”
“I am being a woman, monsieur. A French one who is trying to envision a new gown, which I expect my modiste can deliver in four days, not three.”
“You won’t change your mind.” That statement was no question he dared pose.
She shook her head. “I won’t change my mind.”
He kissed her then, a ravenous thing bending her backward over his arm, branding her as his own.
#
She showed him to the door with swiftness borne of a frivolous desire to take him to her bed, then and there.
After closing the door on him, she picked up the skirts of her night rail and negligee and raced toward the main salon. She shut the door, locked it, put her back to it, and gasped for breath.
A hand to her hair, she wended it back over her shoulders. She squeezed shut her eyes and searched for sanity. Her heart tied to his, her mind full of him, her body yearning to live with him, she told herself to list all the reasons she should not marry him.
But she had already done that. It had not changed his mind. Nor had it hers.
She strode to the fortepiano and sat. Putting her fingers to the keys, she ordered herself to find the melody best suited to her love and surrender to this majestic man.
The sun pierced gray snow clouds and she followed the line of their descent to the foliage in the back garden. She should play some loud, raucous, obtuse piece. Or a silly French ditty, a minuet, or a frilly bit by Lully.
She snatched back her fingers from the long black keys.
She shuddered at how disastrously her decision could destroy noble Evan Mannerly, Earl of Halsey.
She should play to denote the chaos she would cause him.
But when she placed her hands to the keys, what came from her fingertips was a surprise that soothed her torn and battered heart.
She played an erudite tune that spoke of springtime and rejuvenation, light and the natural growth of friendship to love.
Over and over again, the music brought her peace.
How many times she replayed Beethoven’s Sixteenth Sonata, she did not know. She had not counted.
But the sun burned through the clouds and stood high in the sky when she felt finished and fulfilled.
She would marry him.
She loved him.