The Notorious Nobleman (8 page)

“
Gracious!” said Julia, laughing. “If I
am to be such a success, I think I would be wise to embellish some
more of my old gowns!”

“
You said that in jest, but I think it
an excellent notion,” said Harriet, with enthusiasm. “I know the
very thing! I have an old sewing basket in which I often used to
save bits of lace and ribbons. And if I remember correctly, I kept
in it, too, a very sweet length of gold torsade; just the thing, I
think, for your blue satin evening dress. Now, let me see . . .
Where
did
I put that
basket?”

“
I have no idea but now that I have
heard of its treasures, I shall certainly help you find it,”
offered Julia.

“
Nonsense! You keep stitching the
ribbons to your gown while I search for the sewing basket. I think
I remember seeing it in my dressing room not too long ago. I shall
be back in a wink!”

As it happened, she was gone for a
considerably longer period of time, and when the door to the
drawing room opened at last, Julia fully expected to see her friend
march into the room and triumphantly present the sewing basket.
Instead, Harriet’s housemaid stepped into the room and announced,
in reverential accents, the Duke of Warminster.

“
The Duke!” Julia repeated, jumping to
her feet. “Heavens, are you quite certain?”

The maid responded by swinging the door wide.
Julia had time only to tuck an errant curl beneath her morning cap
before Lord Warminster swept into the room.

It had been three days since Julia had left
Merrifield in the Clouster’s coach; three days in which she had
thought of the Duke and wondered over him. Now that he stood before
her, she had to fight back an unexplained swell of emotion and a
sudden bout of breathlessness.

Her eyes flew to his. She detected there no
sign of the grim and harsh lines she had noticed the last time they
were together. Instead, there was a hint of expectancy about his
expression, as if he were on watch to her reaction at seeing him
again.

She dipped a very circumspect curtsy and
said, in a tolerably composed voice, “Good morning, Duke!”

“
Good morning,” he replied. “I didn’t
startle you just now, I hope.”

“
Not at all!” she replied, in a
tolerably composed voice. “I see you are much improved from the
last time I saw you. Is your arm better?”

“
Decidedly. You did a fine job of
patching it up.”

She smiled. “No thanks to you! You were a
horrid patient, you know. But now that your arm has healed
sufficiently, I shall at last have the answer to a question that
has been plaguing me for the last three days.”

“
What question is that?”

“
Whether it is your habit to be
difficult

Or was it your
wound that made you so surly and unpleasant?”

His dark brows flew skyward in momentary
surprise, but he said, quite temperately, “I am always unpleasant.
Didn’t you know?”

“
Oh, yes!” she answered, unable to
cudgel her brain into forming a more sensible reply. She did manage
to recall her manners, however, and invited him to sit down. Too
late she realized the dress she had been repairing was spread
across the chair.

“
Oh, dear! Let me move that for
you.”

“
Do not let me interrupt your work,” he
said, politely, as she gathered up the dress.

“
Oh, this? Why it is only an old gown I
have been reworking so I may wear it again to the assembly. I’ve
added bows to the sleeves, you see. It is nothing,
really!”

He cast her an odd look. “Adding bows to a
nightgown might be nothing; adding bows to a dress to make it
fashionable is another matter altogether, in my opinion.”

“
I confided to you my present
circumstance. I never dreamed you would one day make sport of
it.”

“
You mistake. Your circumstance, as you
call it, rubs too much against my grain for me to make sport of
it.” His eyes settled upon her. “What’s that on your
head?”

She started, and her fingertips flew to her
cap, fully expecting to find a spider or some other equally
distasteful object lurking there. Patting frantically about, she
found nothing out of the way. “Why do you ask? What do you
see?”

“
I see a dreadful bit of cloth covering
your hair. Why are you wearing it?”

“
My cap? Why—I am a widow
and

!”

“
You were not wearing it the other day
when we met.”

“
No, no, I wasn’t.”

“
It covers your hair.”

She smiled slightly. “I believe it is
intended to do just so!”

“
You are much more to my liking without
it.”

She should have blushed. She should have
scolded him for speaking to her so. Instead, she felt again that
same breathlessness she had experienced when first he had entered
the room. It was a difficult thing to equate the wastrel Julia had
met three days earlier with the man now standing before her. And it
was just as impossible to believe that a man who freely admitted to
engaging in duels and riding roughshod over the laws of the land
was one and the same as the man who had haunted her thoughts from
the moment their paths had crossed.

She tugged the cap a bit lower over her ears
and said, rather shakily, “I should never have ventured out without
it before, as if I were a young girl not yet out in the world. It
was wrong of me not to have been wearing it when first we met.”

He frowned. “I suppose you had that from your
friend.”

Her chin came up. “Yes. Harriet was good
enough to remind me that a widow in my position must observe all
the proprieties.”

“
In your position? What do you
mean?”

“
I mean that I intend to re-enter
society and I must, therefore, strive be circumspect in all
things.”

“
I see. And will you re-enter society
in London, or here, in the village?”

“
I am afraid London is out of the
question but Harriet has promised that she and her husband shall
conduct me to all the village functions. I shall attend musicales
and assemblies and I shall dance and play cards and delight in
every entertainment put before me!”

“
So you intend to make up for lost
time, do you?”

“
Indeed, I do!”

“
And catch the eye of some eligible
bachelor?”

“
As many bachelors as possible!” she
answered, smiling.

His dark brows came together. “Is that your
plan, then, Julia? To marry again?”

She was suddenly unable to meet his eyes, and
she made a great show of smoothing the wrinkles from the gown as it
hung over her arm. “Yes. Yes, it is,” she said.

“
I see. And how will you choose between
your suitors? Will you marry the most wealthy of them so you may at
last have some of your fortune restored you?”

That brought her head up quickly. “You make
me sound quite mercenary!”

“
Aren’t you?”

“
Certainly not!” she said, her temper
rising. “How can you speak to me so? You know I have nothing in
this world

Nothing at
all!”

“
And can you think of no other way to
remedy your situation than to marry?”

“
No,” she said, a little sadly. “I have
no means of supporting myself, I am afraid, and I have lived too
long off the kindness of friends.”

“
You could make peace with your
father,” he suggested. “You could go to him.”

“
I told you, he won’t have me. Don’t
you think I tried?”

“
So it must be marriage, then. I hope
you may get what you want out the business.”

She felt herself stiffen again. “I
shall not make demands, you know, and I am not overly nice in my
requirements. All I ask for is a man of sense for a husband, who
will provide me with a place to live. In return, I shall provide
him with a home that is refined and peaceful

”

“
And boring,” interpolated
Gavin.

“
If the security of having a roof over
my head is boring, then I am content to be bored.”

“
You will marry for the wrong reasons,
Julia.”

“
Will I? You, I suppose, are an expert
in such things!”

“
Expert enough to know that I shall
never marry again

for any
reason!”

“
I do not share that luxury,” she
retorted. There had been something, she thought, a little hurtful
in the way he had spoken to her. She turned her back to him then
and made a great show of folding up the gown she had been sewing
and gathering up her needles and threads and ribbons.

Gavin silently watched her move about the
room. Until he had made her acquaintance, it had been a long time
since he had found himself in the company of a woman of Julia
Pettingale’s caliber. Too long. He had forgotten how pleasing it
was to see a woman move with gentle beauty. He had a sudden vision
of her, gowned in finest silk, and moving with easy grace from one
guest to another in a crowded drawing room. His drawing room.

His gaze dwelled appreciatively on her. As
she had been the first time he had met her, she was dressed very
simply in a gown that was rather out of date; yet she wore it with
a certain air of elegance that was unmistakable. No baubles or
jewels graced her ears or the slender column of her throat, yet he
thought she held her head in the same regal way she might have had
she been adorned with the crowned jewels of a queen.

His gaze traveled upward; upward to where
that wretched cap covered her hair. He wanted nothing more than to
pluck the thing off her head and he couldn’t think of a single
reason why he shouldn’t.

Gavin closed the distance between them in a
few easy strides and before Julia could turn about, before she even
realized he was there behind her, he pulled the cap from her
head.

Julia swung around, her eyes wide and her
lips parted in surprise. Her hair had been pinned up into a
profusion of curls beneath the cap; now freed, the fiery tendrils
caught the light of the sun as it streamed through the window,
making her hair look so soft, so appealing, that his fingers itched
to touch it. In the soft light of the morning, her skin was like
porcelain, perfect, and clear. It would have been so easy for him
to reach out and touch her. She was so close, he could see the
little flecks of gold in the depths of her wide, green eyes. And
she looked right back at him, saying nothing.

Before he could think, before he knew what he
was doing, he was reaching for her. “I can’t fight this anymore,”
he said, almost beneath his breath; and if his voice was gruff and
grudging, he lips, when they brushed hers, were tenderness
itself.

Her mouth was soft and inviting beneath his
and he took his time kissing her, savoring every moment. Then
slowly, alert to her reaction, he changed the tenor of their kiss,
deepening it until he held her completely in his power. His hands
move slowly over her, spanning her narrow waist, pressing her
against him, willing her to kiss him back.

Julia didn’t disappoint him. She raised one
arm up to encircle his neck and returned his kiss wholeheartedly.
She had never kissed a man back before. Having been taught that
ladies were merely passive recipients of such passions, she had
never initiated a kiss with her husband when he had been alive. But
she wanted to kiss Gavin. She wanted to return to him a small
amount of the pleasure he was giving her.

After a moment he raised his head and look
down at her. “You’ve never been kissed that way before, have you?”
he asked.

“
Never,” she answered, feeling a little
light-headed.

“
Not even by your husband?”

“
No.”

He looked down at her, at her kiss-bruised
lips raised so enticingly toward his. He tightened his arms about
her and whispered, “William Pettingale was a fool.”

Julia wasn’t sure what exactly he was talking
about, but she heartily wished he would stop talking altogether and
just kiss her again.

She was to have her wish. Gavin’s mouth met
hers once more and this time, his kiss was long and lingering and
tender. His kiss was unlike anything she had ever experienced and
it left her hungry for more.

After several more minutes of such heaven,
Gavin raised his head. Slowly, and more than a bit reluctantly, he
loosed his hold of her and stepped away. “God, what you do to
me.”

Julia watched him move very pointedly toward
the other side of the room. Her eyes met his and she saw that he
was regarding her rather fixedly. He was also smiling slightly. The
thought occurred to her that he could no doubt very easily make a
woman fall in love with him when he looked at her in just such a
way; and that thought was swiftly succeeded by the startling
realization that he had just succeeded in doing exactly so.

She strongly suspected that she was fast
losing lost her heart to him and she was a little bit stunned to
realize that of all the men in the world, she was half-way in love
with a man who had long made it his practice to scorn society and
fan the flames of gossip concerning his reputation.

But the irony was that she could listen to
the stories of his notorious behavior and the logic of shunning him
only in his absence. When he was with her and her eyes met his, she
became instantly convinced that he was an honorable man, worthy of
her friendship and of her affection.