A Gentleman Never Tells(9)
Yes, that is exactly what happened.
“After more than nineteen years of living with me, just how big a simpleton do you take me for?”
What she had done to her father was horrible for a well-behaved daughter; what she had done to the viscount was unforgivable. She feared there was no way she could make it right for any of them.
For the present, Gabrielle saw no way out other than capitulation. She lifted her shoulders and chin, and said what she knew her father wanted to hear. “I’m sorry for the distress I’ve caused you, Papa. Though I never intended for this to happen, I’m without excuse.”
“Yes, you are!” he said, anger rising in his tone again. “And now I’m left with the task of sorting all this out! If there is any chance of salvaging this engagement, the only way will be if I give more lands than were exchanged in the betrothal agreement, not to mention everything else we had worked out. With the wedding date just days away, funds, lands, and business ventures have already been mingled. It will take our solicitors weeks to sort it all out.”
Gabrielle stiffened. Salvage the engagement? Marry the earl’s youngest son, knowing he and her sister were in love? She couldn’t.
“No, Papa. I will not marry Staunton.”
“Nonsense,” he said gruffly. “You will, if I can talk him and his father into forgiving you.”
All thoughts of capitulation vanished. “It’s not nonsense. I’ve never wanted to marry him. You and his father arranged this marriage for financial profit, not for any love between Staunton and me.”
“Love?” His lips thinned in exasperation. “What is that, Gabrielle? Of course the marriage was for money. There’s no such thing as love. I should have known it was a foolish notion that brought you out to the park this morning to meet that man. It’s just as well you learn here and now that whatever it is you think you feel for him it isn’t love, and it has nothing to do with what makes a good marriage.”
No such thing as love? Did she believe that?
Maybe, yesterday. Maybe, before she saw the passion between Rosabelle and Staunton. Maybe, before she kissed Lord Brentwood and felt those wonderful stirrings of desire down in her soul.
Gabrielle looked toward Viscount Brentwood again. He was tall and lithe for such a wide-shouldered man, walking with far more ease than she would have anticipated considering what had happened to him. She expected him to be seething with uncontrolled anger like her father and Lord Austerhill, but when his gaze locked onto hers, all she sensed from him was a deep burning to know why.
A shiver of awareness slithered through her. He seemed to consume her with his dark eyes as he drew nearer. The way he looked at her played havoc with her breathing. She felt flushed and out of breath, as if she’d been the one running and in a struggle. A seeping warmth settled low in her stomach, an unwelcome warmth. That feeling had caused enough trouble already, and she wouldn’t give in to its comfort again.
The closer he came to them, the faster her heart beat, and not from fear of reprisal, but from very raw, very real attraction. There was a jagged red scratch on his cheek where his face had been shoved against the ground. His black greatcoat fell open and hung off one shoulder. His top hat was missing, and his thick, light brown hair was mussed and fell carelessly across his forehead. Despite all the recriminations she’d heard from her father and Lord Austerhill, she wanted once again to wrap her arms around Lord Brentwood’s strong, broad chest and feel his full, sensual lips on hers.
She couldn’t comprehend the reason she was so affected by him.
Lord Brentwood and the servant stopped in front of Gabrielle and her father. She was supposed to be making final preparations for her wedding next week and, instead, she was staring into the intense dark brown eyes of a stranger that were asking questions she knew she couldn’t answer.
That old eagerness to please stirred inside her. She wanted to take a step toward him, plead with him to forgive her, but something in the quiet way he looked at her made her remain where she was.
In a voice much less emotional than she was feeling, she said, “My lord, I assured my father this was not your fault.”
A brief moment of surprise flashed in his eyes before they turned dark and stormy again. She could see that he wrestled with something deep inside. Was it loathing for her, or for her father and the footmen who tackled him?
“I don’t need you taking up for me, Lady Gabrielle.”
She threw a cautious glance toward her father, surprised he was letting her talk to the viscount. “But I must,” she protested. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”