Edith Layton (10 page)

“Well, however you did it, you did it!” she crowed. “And I only had to go after the one, because when the other saw what you did, he couldn’t run fast enough.”

Now Damon turned his head to look at her. She was glowing bright. Her bonnet was gone, her wind-whipped hair was flying like streaming pennants of sunshine around her flushed face, her eyes shone tiger bright, and she was grinning widely. He began laughing.

“Look at you!” he managed to say when she frowned. “I’d have needed salts, at the least a physician, for any other female in that situation, gently bred or otherwise. She’d be trembling still. I
f
she was even
conscious. I’d have had to lug her back to the carriage at the very least, instead of racing back to it side by side with her. But you! You protected me, and did it well, and reveled in it, too!”

Her animation vanished. She swept the hair back from her eyes. “Yes,” she said sadly. “So now you see what my answer to you must be.”

“Exactly! You were made for me. We’re two of a kind. Oh, Lord, Gilly!” he exulted. “You’re perfect!”

“You’ve lost your mind,” she said.

“My heart, alone. My mind is firmly made up.”

“You want a street urchin, a hurly burly female? And a ruined one, at that, as a wife?”

“I want you, Gilly Giles, a woman who’s a lady when she wants to be, brave as a lioness when she has to be, and with a heart that’s whole, whatever happened to her in the past.” She began smiling tremulously until he added, “And with a heart that’s wholly mine.”

And then she looked away.

“Or is that you think you can never care for me?” he asked quickly, seeing her sudden disquiet.

“Not that, never that,” she answered as quickly, because she did care for him, and knew she could learn to care more. It was just that she didn’t know if her heart could ever be wholly his, since she’d given it away so long ago to someone else. But that wasn’t what he asked, so she only said again, “No, not that, never that.”

“Whatever possessed you?” Bridget cried, after she heard the whole story when they returned.

“My fault entirely,” Damon told Ewen Sinclair. “I
should have thought. I never should have driven there with her.”

“A lot you had to say about it,” Ewen growled, glowering at Gilly. “She probably cloaked the thing in mystery and pleaded with you prettily, and you were in trouble before you knew it.”

“He had to know the truth,” Gilly said defensively.

“That,” Ewen said, glaring at her, “is why they invented language. It’s not your fault, Ryder. I’ll allow it mightn’t be Gilly’s either. She’s always believed she can handle any situation by herself. Indeed, as she just so graphically showed you, she had to for a very long time and didn’t do too badly at it either. She’s as impulsive as a spring breeze. But her heart’s as sound as any man’s, and as you saw, she has more courage than most of them.”

“Thank you,” Gilly said, exchanging relieved looks with Bridget.

“I’d want her at my side in a fight, but now you can see why we wouldn’t mind getting her off our hands,” Ewen teased, with a sidewise glance to see Gilly’s reaction.

“Wouldn’t mind taking her off them,” Damon said, “but that isn’t in my power. It’s for the lady herself to say now.”

“Indeed?” Bridget asked with bright-eyed interest, looking from Damon’s amused expression to Gilly’s suddenly flustered one.

“Yes, and I wish she would, and soon,” Damon said, watching Gilly, too. “Since we put the notice of our engagement in the Times I’ve been getting letters from my family asking for the date of the happy occasion so
they can make travel plans. There are a lot of them, and they live far from here.”

“But we wouldn’t have the ceremony in London,” Bridget said. “Our church at home would be so much nicer, wouldn’t it, Ewen?”

“Well, if it’s to be soon it would have to be,” he answered. “We leave for home in a week. We never intended to spend the summer in London. Of course, if it’s to be later, it doesn’t matter.”

“What
matters
,” Gilly said, goaded, “is if it’s to
be
!”

“Yes, of course,” Damon said. But they all looked at her as though waiting for an immediate answer.

When none was given, Damon shrugged. “I think I’d better be going now. We’re promised to the Went-worths this evening? I have to change, I’ll be back here at seven.”

“Need a compress for that hand?” Ewen asked, noting how Damon favored it.

“Let me see!” Gilly said, rushing to Damon’s side. She snatched up his hand to look at it. It was obviously too swollen for him to put his glove on. “It’s bleeding!” she cried. She held his hand, turning it over, absently noting its width, how long his fingers were, the strength and warmth…and suddenly let go, clasping her own hands hard together, shocked at how she’d reacted to him.

“It’s scraped,” Damon said, flexing his swollen knuckles, “nothing more. I should have had my gloves on.”

“But you wouldn’t have had the flexibility,” Gilly said seriously. “Can’t handle a knife so well with a mitt.” She was frowning, but then had to grin because everyone else was laughing so hard at her.

They sat in the Sinclairs’ salon, alone together, as was the prerogative of an engaged couple, discussing the evening they’d just passed. There was a footman in the hall and the door was only half closed, but they could sit side by side on a sofa, and since they’d just got there he could stay another fifteen minutes.

“I tell you, I don’t know where you get the control,” Gilly said in wonder. “I’m glad I don’t carry a pistol, because I’d have shot the woman myself.”

“It was a temptation,” Damon said, his voice shaking with withheld laughter.

“A soprano? And supposed to be singing opera? Huh,” Gilly huffed. “She sounded like she was being forced to sit on spikes—slowly.”

“I do appreciate music,” Gilly added seriously, “and regret that by the time I could take music lessons it was too late for me to learn to really play well. It’s all I can do to pick out a tune on a piano, much less a harp. But I wouldn’t ask everyone to sit and listen to me try. And to think they paid her to sound like a sack of strangled cats! I’m so glad Bridget said she was feeling faint, and then gave me
that
look, so I knew she was shamming it. Speaking of strangling, I was ready to throttle that soprano, I really was.”

Her murderous declaration only made him look at her more fondly, if that was possible. She wore green and pink again tonight, but this gown was leaf green, decorated with tiny embroidered rosebuds. She was scented with white freesia, and wore one in her high-dressed hair. It was all he could do to keep his hands idle on his knees and not touch the tiny pulse he
could see beating at the base of her neck. He didn’t dare look anywhere else. Her gown was low enough to make him yearn to know how the skin on her smooth white breasts would feel against his palms. She spoke about his control? She didn’t know the half of it.

He yearned for her. But knew he had to be cool and collected. She was a fiery creature, but that sort of fire would alarm her. Especially because of her early experience. She said she’d got over it, but he didn’t want to rush things or risk shocking her. He shocked himself, though. He’d never wanted any woman so much.

He had to be very careful. But he’d learned to be a careful man. You couldn’t buy or sell for any profit if you let those you were dealing with know how much you needed to make the bargain. This bargain meant the course of his entire future. He shifted in his seat; there were things that had to be said.

“So,” he said idly, as though he’d just remembered. “Have you given it any more thought? I wasn’t joking before. My family does want to know when the date will be. I think everyone in society must be wondering, too. But they’ve seen you. My family hasn’t. They’re desperate to get a look at you. For that matter, they’re anxious to get a look at me, too. I arrived in London only planning to rest a little while before heading home. I’m a good traveler but weeks at sea make a man long for a quiet bed, and the trip from here to my home is a long one. Weeks don’t matter much in the usual way of things, but they haven’t seen me for years.”

“That’s terrible!” Gilly cried, eyes widened. “Why did you linger so long here?”

“You know the answer to that, Gilly.”

She toyed with a fold of her skirt.

“I don’t want to press you,” he said, and though he wanted her so badly he dared not say it, that much at least was true. “But I won’t leave London till I have an answer. We did this as a temporary ruse. I want it to be permanent. If I’m expecting the impossible, then yes, let’s end it here and now, before expectations grow too high.” And that, too, he found was true. He wouldn’t linger where he wasn’t wanted. He was besotted with her, but never a fool, and he refused to play one. There was nothing so pathetic as a deluded lover. “So. Do we end it? Or go on to a wedding?”

She hesitated. It was the same question she’d been asking herself all day. And answering all day, as well, differently every hour. She could do far worse. He could do much better. She liked him very much. She gazed at him, thinking of the children this man could beget, strong and handsome, clever and charming. A girl with that shapely mouth, a boy with those hands…and so sunny-natured. She remembered how he’d delighted in her fighting at his side, how he laughed with her so often, how he’d taken the news of her ruin and somehow made it sound like triumph.

She remembered her two suitors at home in the countryside, too. They couldn’t compare to this man. Only one man she knew did, and he was the only man who surpassed Damon in her heart. But she also remembered the letter lying on the desk upstairs in her room, the one she no longer had to read, she knew it so well.

…Nabbing yourself a gent with a handsome face and a handsome fortune? No less than The Catch of the Season, Ewen
says. I expected no less of you. Bravo! You’ve done well for yourself, child
!

But not only did Damon Ryder want her, he had no title, so society couldn’t be
that
shocked if she married him. He wouldn’t be ostracized or cut by his friends and acquaintances. He said his family wouldn’t mind. He said he wanted her…

“But I don’t love you,” she blurted. “I mean to say, I like you very well, but I told you I won’t lie to you.”

“Have you heard any declarations of love from me?”

“No,” she said, much struck, “but then why would you want to marry me?”

Because
, he thought, I
think you’ll someday come to love me as much as
I
do you
. But instead he said, as truthfully, if less accurately, “I’ve never been in love, Gilly. Not in all this time. But I think we’ll grow to it together, in time.”

She nodded, thinking about who and what he was, of chances lost and gained, and those invisible unborn children who seemed to be waiting breathlessly for her answer, too. And of the letter upstairs in her room.

“I think I will,” she said, “if you’re still sure.”

“When?” he asked lazily, putting an arm on the edge of the sofa’s back to keep himself from catching her up in his arms.

“When would you like?” she asked, hardly believing she’d actually agreed.

“Soon. I’d like to see my parents again. I’d like you to meet them, too. Even if we marry from the Sinclairs’ country estate, it takes three weeks for the banns to be read, a week on either side to travel to and from…in six weeks?”

“Six weeks?” she gasped.

He raised an eyebrow. “You think double that—or triple—will make a difference in your decision?”

“I only meant, won’t people think we’re too hasty? Dearborne will probably spread stories, his evil tongue is probably itching to do it. I mean, they might think we
had
to rush to the altar…. Will I never learn to mind my own tongue?” she said in chagrin, her cheeks turning pink.

“No,” he laughed, “it’s not your tongue that’s at fault, it’s your math. We announced our engagement four weeks ago, add six weeks to that. Our wedding guests will be eyeing your waistline, but if you don’t stuff yourself with cream puffs every hour from now to then, I don’t think we’ll have a problem with gossip.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, “I mean to say…well, you’re very trusting. I told you I wasn’t…pure. I agree to a hasty wedding. How do you know I’m not bamming you?” she challenged him, because right now argument seemed the best way to stave off the nervousness she was beginning to feel about her decision. “How can you tell? I mean, how do you know I won’t present you with something unexpected, after all?”

“Because I believe in your honor,” he said seriously. “And,” he added, too nonchalantly, “because I’ve kissed you.”

“W
hat
?” she asked, sitting up straight and staring at him.

“You don’t kiss like a woman who’s in the habit of kissing, you see.”

“No, I don’t see,” she said in a fierce whisper, looking toward the doorway to be sure no one heard. “You
don’t think I
kiss
right? I’ve had no complaints…that is, I mean to say…Well, bother! I have kissed a fellow or two. When I grew up, I mean, and dressed as a girl at last.” She tilted her head, considering it. “It was to see if it would make me ill. It didn’t.”

“Gratified to hear that,” he said.

“Well, it was a consideration,” she explained seriously. “It didn’t want to make me do more, but it was all right. Since then, I let one or two others try it, for the same reason, of course.”
Two
, she thought, thinking of the hasty attempts she’d allowed her two suitors at home. “And you, of course, and you didn’t complain, as I recall.”

“No, certainly not,” he said reasonably, “but I could tell your experience was limited to those experiments of yours.”

“How?” She looked chagrined.

“Simple,” he said, suddenly so close he had to lower his voice. “Here, I’ll show you. Look at me. Now say, ‘Oh!’ as though you’re surprised.”

“Oh,” she echoed doubtfully.

“No, as though you’re
really
surprised. Yes, just so. But no! Don’t close your lips again. You see, dear Gilly, that kiss we shared was very pleasant…but you didn’t let me taste it, and you didn’t sample mine. Kisses are delicious. You really do have to taste them to know how much they are.”