Chapter Seven
JANE SWAYED GENTLY as Lord Dalton’s carriage rolled slowly into stench-filled east London. Up on the box with Dalton’s coachman sat Joe. He was Jane’s concession to the dangers of the locale.
Inside the carriage, Dalton again sat in close proximity opposite her, his long legs crowding hers.
His attentive eyes watched her. The mingled scents of his freshly shaven face and crisply starched cravat besieged her senses.
She squirmed on her seat, attempting to subdue her tremors of attraction.
At last, the carriage halted in a run-down street outside a plain two-story red brick building. A sign over the front door proclaimed it as the London Welfare League Home.
Dalton glanced up and down the grimy street, where a few men shambled along with no apparent purpose. “Do you consider this a safe place for you to visit?”
She rolled her eyes. Spare me from overprotective gentlemen. Her answer was crisp. “It has been so far, and I have been working here for five years. We take precautions. My footman, Joe, is always with me.”
“Does Elizabeth ever accompany you here?”
“To date... no,” she answered. “Dr. Logan is often here, and Mrs. Courtice. Would you permit your sister to come here if she was accompanied, as I am?”
He looked uncomfortable about the idea. “Probably not without me.”
Jane stifled her protest about his paternalism and wondered how his sister could live in such a straitjacket. She couldn’t.
Jane rang a bell by the door. “Are you always so protective of women, Lord Dalton?” she asked.
Before he could answer, the front door was opened by a young woman in a drab gray dress. They entered a small foyer and stopped to peel off their cloaks, gloves, and hats, leaving them with Joe, who seated himself beside the front door, ready to act as temporary porter.
Following a long passageway, they passed a series of open doors. Inside each room, women were stitching various types of apparel, from hats to petticoats.
Jane provided a monologue of explanation as she led him along the corridor.
They arrived at the end, and Jane pushed open a heavy door, holding it for Dalton before he could step forward to assist her.
“We don’t demand that these women be deserving poor. For whatever reason they are poor, they all need our help.”
Dalton’s mellow voice delivered his considered response.
“In answer to your earlier question, Miss Brody ... yes, I believe I am always so protective of women. That is the role I have been given in this life. I have many female relatives, and as the senior male of the family, it is my responsibility to protect and care for them.” He looked very serious and sounded resigned to his fate.
Jane halted abruptly in the middle of the office. In the distance was the murmur of many voices and the sounds of work, but it seemed to her that they were in a cocoon of silence, hearing only each other’s words. “What about women who are not your relatives? What do you do for them?”
“I believe I give them what I am able to. Money to assist with causes such as this one.”
“What of middle-class women who wish to make their own way in the world without the assistance of men, or because their menfolk are nonexistent? The best way you can help them is to give them their rights and equality so they can support themselves.”
Dalton took a step closer.
Jane looked up at him in surprise. He was crowding her again, forcing her to acknowledge him. Her heart stammered.
“What about you, Miss Brody? How can I help you?”
Jane was struck dumb. What could he mean? After a pause she asked, “How do you think I would need your help, Lord Dalton, except with our cause?”
“Do you never need a friend on a dark day, Miss Brody?”
Confused, she hesitated before answering, her eyes watching his, trying to understand him. “Yes, I can always appreciate another friend.”
She continued to gaze into his eyes, captivated by the esteem she thought she saw there.
When he held out his hand to her, she extended her small, ink-stained one.
She glanced down. Poised in the air between them, it trembled a little before Dalton took it firmly in his.
His grasp was strong, and Jane felt warmth spread up her arm.
Dalton nudged the door behind him closed with one of his glossy Hessian boots. “How else can I help you, Miss Brody?” He moved one step closer. She shivered in anticipation. “As a friend when you are in need of comfort? Like this?” He kissed her forehead.
She closed her eyes as the softness of his lips brushed her skin. “Perhaps,” she breathed. I should make him stop.
“Or like this?” He trailed a slow line of kisses from her temple across her cheek to the corner of her mouth. A blush followed their path.
Don’t stop. “Yes.”
His warm hand released hers and slid around her waist until they were standing toe to toe, her face tilted up by the long fingers of his other hand. His fresh cologne reminded Jane of their waltzing last night.
His lips feathered across hers, and she felt them tingle, sparking a warmth throughout her body. His arms wrapped around her, and he drew her even closer. His lips trailed kisses along her tilted neck, his facial whiskers tickling. From a distance, Jane heard herself gasp and sigh.
He began a gentle, determined offensive on her lips.
Her mouth opened in answer, and his tongue flicked in.
Jane unconsciously responded, kissing him back tentatively.
He tasted ... enticing. She felt the crisp starched linen of his cravat under one hand while the fingers of her other hand entwined in his soft, wavy hair.
“You excite me,” he said.
Dalton broke away from her questing mouth.
He glanced around the room before he stooped to gather her in his arms. He strode to the desk and kicked out the chair from beneath it and sat down with her in his lap, then resumed his seduction of her lips.
His hand played across her neck and slipped lower to briefly cup her breast before settling to caressing her waist and hip in slow, hypnotic swirls. Time was suspended, her mind in a haze.
He murmured against her mouth as he kissed her.
Jane barely heard him and made no answer.
“What do you say?” he said.
“Pardon?” was Jane’s muffled response as she kissed his jaw.
He stopped kissing her.
Jane opened her eyes to find his searching gaze on her, his head tilted back, his eyes watching her face. “Marry me, Jane.”
She held herself quite still as her befuddled brain tried to catch up with his words.
Silent, he awaited an answer.
Slowly his meaning became clear to her. Jane felt a rush of surprise and happiness. She was breathless and blushing. He wants to marry me!
How wonderful! How awful!
Jane froze with surprise and fear. She heard her mother’s moans and her breathless voice—saw her pain-filled face as she labored to birth her twelfth baby. She remembered the frail woman her mother had become, wasting away, leaving Jane to raise her beloved siblings.
She couldn’t marry him. And she didn’t love him. She couldn’t.
Bewilderment and dismay washed through her.
She stared unseeingly at him. “No, Lord Dalton. I can’t marry you. It’s absolutely against my principles.”
He looked thunderstruck. “Your principles, Jane?”
She slid from his lap to stand before him, stumbling to her feet.
Her mouth compressed into a firm line to stop it trembling.
“Yes. Marriage for me is impossible! You need heirs, and I will never have children.” She paused and sucked in a breath.
“I thank you for the offer, but I must decline.” Her chest ached with unshed tears.
He was outraged, she could tell. She was refusing an offer from a peer. She was refusing wealth and privilege and a comfortable life with a family—for her principles. Anger appeared to grow within him as she watched.
He offered his hand. “If you won’t marry me because of your principles, then be my lover.” His voice was cold.
Her soul chilled. She recoiled from him.
“No! That would be worse than being your wife. I would hold even less hope for esteem in society if I took that path. The outcome would be just the same! Children to raise and no freedom, but with none of the benefits of status and wealth that would go with marriage.”
His anger seemed to simmer on. “You have the option to choose.”
“I don’t want either! I thank you for the honor of your marriage proposal, and I thank you for consideration of me as a mistress, however, I must decline both!
” She could not meet his eyes. She caught her breath, tried to return to her usual calm tone.
“It would be better if we did not meet again in the near future.”
Jane crossed the office and opened the door, indicating that he was to depart. Numb, she watched him stand, bow stiffly, and leave. He wasn’t only departing the room, but the Home and her life.
***
DAZED, JONATHAN EXITED the room. His anger drained away as he strode down the hall. He passed through the front door of the Home with a preoccupied nod to Joe.
“Drive on!” he commanded as he entered his carriage. He would send it back for her later.
He collapsed onto the seat, trying to make sense of the last few minutes. He felt the joy of having her in his arms again. He saw her heaving chest and flushed cheeks. He couldn’t be mistaken about her feelings. She had responded to him fully and passionately.
He had offered her marriage, shown her the passion that could exist between them and still she wouldn’t have him.
He had thought she merely had never been proposed to before, and that she’d give up that equality business if she had the opportunity for a family. After all, with his support, her charitable works could increase, and everyone knows women can never be equal to men.
He had been so sure she would accept. He knew a score of women who would have been silently whooping in triumph had he proposed to them.
But Jane wasn’t one of them. She wasn’t focused on catching the highest matrimonial prize possible. That was what intrigued him about her, he acknowledged with a grimace.
But surely it could not just be explained by her championing of women’s rights. She was attracted to him. He knew it. He needed to get close enough to her to make her recognize that attraction.
More than that, to make her act on it.