Proof by Seduction (Carhart #1)(65)

She’d always thought it weak to indulge in tears, but nothing else seemed to answer for the situation. Crying didn’t solve any problems, but not crying hadn’t proven particularly effective, either. She let herself weep.

The creak of hinges interrupted her. Heavy footsteps sounded in her front room, and a metallic scrape. Jenny looked up through tear-blurred eyes in time to see Gareth come down the short hall between her rooms. His hands were full; he held a bundle under one arm, and the kettle from the other room in his hand. He set the kettle on the hob-grate over the fire.

Then he glanced over at Jenny and froze in shock. The cloth he’d used to hold the kettle fell from his hand and fluttered to the floor. It landed with an ignominious plop.

“I’ll be damned,” Gareth said slowly, “if I ever have any idea what to say at times like this.”

Jenny sniffled. “You didn’t leave?”

He looked at her as if she belonged in Bedlam. “Of course I left. I was hungry, and I couldn’t find anything to eat. I bought a loaf and some cheese. And oranges.” He set his paper-wrapped package on the table. “Wait. You mean, you thought I had left. Without saying a word to you. Would I do that?”

He drew himself up, cold and affronted.

Jenny nodded.

His jaw clenched. “Damn it. You know better than most I’m no good at these things but even I am not that bad. Really, Jenny. Why would you believe such a thing of me?”

“I don’t know,” she said, mulishly. “Maybe because you once told me all you wanted from me was a good shag?”

“I said that?” He looked surprised, then contemplative. Then, apparently, he remembered, and winced. “God. I said that? Why did you even touch me?”

She glanced away so he could not see her heart in her eyes.

Steam was billowing from the kettle. Gareth stooped and plucked the cloth from the floor and grasped the handle. Jenny watched in fascination as he poured water into her teapot.

“What kind of a lord are you? You make your own tea?”

He set the kettle down with a faint sniff. “I’m not completely helpless. I lived with only a small entourage in a Brazilian rain forest for months. I can make perfectly respectable tea. And coffee. And porridge, for that matter.” He gestured with the cloth. “You like oranges. Here. Let me peel one for you.”

Jenny hiccuped through her tears. “How do you know I like oranges?”

“Why else would you have had one in that sack the day I met you? Now, come over here and eat. You’ll feel better.”

Jenny wrinkled her nose at him, but he was undoubtedly right. She sat and he handed her a section of orange.

“Tears,” he said as she popped the tangy fruit into her mouth, “are irrational. You needn’t fear I’ll leave you with nothing but a silver bracelet. I’ll take care of my responsibilities.” He handed her a piece of cheese.

Jenny held up her hands in protest.

“No,” she said in a low voice. “You won’t.”

“What do you mean, I won’t? Of course I will. You can’t imagine the money would mean anything to me, and so why wouldn’t I—”

She jabbed a finger into his chest. “You won’t,” she said, “because I won’t let you. I have…I have enough money. Saved. In a manner of speaking.” Where that manner of speaking was exaggeration. She licked her lips. “And I don’t want to be your responsibility.” That she was more certain about. “I’m never going to be your responsibility. Do you think I want a periodic payment from you?”

“Why ever not? Most people would.”

She shook her head mutely. Then she burst into tears again.

Gareth stared at her in horror. “What? What did I say this time?”

She kept crying.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” he cried. “It’s inexplicable. You’re an intelligent woman, Jenny. There’s no need to cry because a man offers to provide a little financial assistance.”

The admonition had no effect.

She had harbored girlish dreams about her mother. She’d never wondered, though, what her mother had experienced. Had she, too, been shunted off when some man she cared for coldly offered her a stream of dreary coins?

Jenny wouldn’t accept it for herself. She’d lived on that sort of payment all her young life. Someone had employed a stream of uncaring women to raise her. She hadn’t run away from a life as a governess to lapse into another man’s responsibility. Because what a woman felt as cold obligation, a man saw as salve for his conscience. Financial absolution, as it were, in lieu of emotional ties.

She would not do this again. She’d become Madame Esmerelda because she didn’t want a master. She’d felt pushed into one box or another. She didn’t want to be another bloody line in his ledgers, and she’d be damned if she depended on another person again.

“Look,” Gareth said a bit desperately, “I’ll—I’ll send financial assistance. And an occasional fruit basket.”

Jenny couldn’t help it. She laughed at him through her sniffles. “Oh, listen to you. ‘A woman is not a millpond. She is a science.’ Good God, if the Linnean Society could hear you now, they’d drum you out of their ranks.”

“Well,” Gareth huffed, “I don’t know what to do. I was serious about the fruit basket. Or at least I would be, if it would make a difference.”