tack, I didn’t even consider it.”
“Good-because it won’t work.”
“I know-see? Understanding at work.”
She humphed, and wrestled her riding dress into place. “You’ll have to help me with these laces.”
Shrugging on his jacket, he came over and did so, swiftly redoing what he’d earlier undone. She felt him tie off the knot, but then he paused. Then he turned her to face him.
His hands on her shoulders, he looked into her face, into her eyes. For once let her see into his, past his guard-see clearly and without equivocation the possessiveness he was reining back.
“I want you as my wife-and I don’t like having to wait. But I know you’re not yet ready to agree. However, as I told you at the outset, I want you warming my bed-for the rest of my life. Whatever you want, whatever you need to get you to agree, I’ll do it, I’ll give it. Whatever it takes, I want you as mine.”
She held his gaze steadily, let a moment tick past, then simply said, “I need to think.”
He nodded and released her. As he moved away, heading for where he’d left his boots, he murmured, “If you feel anything for me, don’t take too long.”
Gervase insisted on riding all the way back to the Park with her. Which did nothing to clear her head, or stop her whirling thoughts.
When she woke the next morning-late-she felt muddle-headed, but found she couldn’t think about, couldn’t concentrate on, anything else. Not until she’d decided on this, on them, on him and how she should deal with him.
What she wanted from him in order to agree to be his. What else she needed to know. Whether she dared.
Marriage between people like them was not something to be embarked on lightly, not a link to be recklessly forged.
Leaving Harry to face the ledgers alone, she pleaded a headache and went to walk in the rose garden. To pace.
She’d seen falling in love with Gervase as a risk, a danger, but had embarked on their liaison, their affair, anyway, then, when love had sneaked up on her and blossomed so easily, she’d blithely-recklessly-surrendered to it. She’d meant to stay on guard and be wise, but it-he-had somehow slipped under her shield and lodged in her heart.
That was one thing. Unrequited love when she was merely his temporary lover was a scenario she’d been willing to face and cope with…at least she had been until she’d realized just how strongly she felt about him, how possessive of him she’d grown.
Regardless, she’d accepted the risk and couldn’t now retreat. So she loved him, and knew it. But did he love her?
When they’d been no more than lovers, that hadn’t truly mattered. Now he’d asked for marriage, it did. A liaison lasted for a finite time; marriage was forever. If she agreed to marry him and he didn’t love her…what then?
Could she bear it if, years from now, he found another, a lady whom he did love, and turned from her?
She honestly didn’t think she could.
Head down, hands clasped behind her back, she paced unseeing along the paved path between the burgeoning bushes.
How could she learn if he did, or could, or would, love her? She was too well acquainted with the male of the species to place any reliance on words, especially those uttered in the heat of the moment, under duress-especially, for them, emotional duress. No matter what he swore, or how sincerely he spoke, she wouldn’t accept mere words as proof of his affection.
Where else to look for such proof? That was the first of the questions facing her-the first she had to answer.
The scent of roses wreathed about her. She paced, and thought, and wrestled with her feelings, and tried to imagine his. After a largely futile half hour, she headed inside, her way forward unresolved but her goal at least clear.
To avoid a potentially soul-destroying marriage, or alternatively to grasp a shining prize, she had to find some way to discover whether Gervase Tregarth truly loved her or not.
Somewhat to her surprise-to her unease-the one question she hadn’t even needed to ask was whether she wanted to marry him. That, she’d discovered, not entirely happily, was a want already engraved on her heart.
A little before noon, Gervase called in at Tregarth Manor, the manor house outside Falmouth where he’d been born. He spent an easy half hour chatting with his cousin, who now lived there with his wife, confirmed that he no longer felt any strong connection to the place-it was no longer “home”-then headed on to his destination, Falmouth itself.
He paused on the last hill above the town, studied the roofs sprawled about the harbor, then shook Crusader’s reins and headed down, the steady clop of the big gray’s hooves following his thoughts around and around.
As they circled one female-one frustrating, stubborn, when it came to herself blind Valkyrie he was one step away from forcibly seizing and carrying off to his bed. And keeping her there until she agreed to marry him forthwith.
Even now, hours after the fact, he was still grappling with the frustration that had gripped him when he’d realized the direction of her thoughts. Lady Hardesty’s blindness-which would have made Madeline’s more understandable except that they lived in deepest Cornwall, not London-and the insult the group had, albeit unintentionally, handed her, had made him see red. Literally. He was still amazed he’d handled the moment with passable civility. “Civil” wasn’t how he’d been feeling.
But then to discover that she had still not grasped the notion that she was the lady best suited to be his wife, that she still saw herself as a passing fancy, a local lady he’d seduced to be his mistress for the summer, had all but shredded his control.
He’d felt distinctly violent in that moment on the dance floor, then even more so when on the beach she’d confirmed her complete lack of comprehension of all he’d spent the last weeks trying to show her. To demonstrate to her, because actions spoke so much louder than words.
In her case, not even actions had sufficed; she’d thought her way around them, rationalized them-had made them fit her entrenched view that she was not the lady who would be his countess.
But she was. His jaw clenched; he tried not to let his grim determination seep into his expression-no need to scare the other travelers on the road.
Regardless of her willful stance, she was the one, the lady who would, as he’d informed her, warm his big bed at the castle for the rest of his life.
In the face of her determined refusal to see, he’d jettisoned his careful approach and told her the blunt truth- not solely so he could more openly forge ahead with his campaign to win her, but equally in response to her question of how long he would remain in the country-how long he would remain with her-and the vulnerability he’d sensed behind it.
He didn’t know if she loved him as yet, but he suspected she was at least close to it. That realization had been the only bright moment, one moment of blessed relief among the other, less happy revelations of the night.
So now she was at least thinking of him and her in the appropriate way, and considering agreeing to marry him. He hadn’t exactly proposed; he inwardly winced as he recalled what he’d said, how he’d put it. But at least she now knew how he felt, how he saw her.
Of that, at least, she could no longer harbor any doubt.
Unbidden, his mind ranged ahead, to their wedding-he assumed it would be at the church at Ruan Minor. That seemed likely; both their families were part of that congregation. He knew the church well, could imagine himself standing before the ancient altar, could imagine turning and seeing her, walking up the aisle to his side…
Crusader jerked his head, jerking Gervase from his dream. He realized; frustrated irritation swamped him. “Good God! Now I’m fantasizing.” His sisters would laugh themselves into fits. It hadn’t even been the wedding night he’d been fantasizing about.
“First things first,” he muttered beneath his breath. How to get her to agree.
