The Temptation of a Gentleman (33 page)

Her mother shook her head. “I’m probably not the best one to ask, but perhaps you should share with Noah how you feel about him if you haven’t already. You’ll certainly see where he stands and come away with a better understanding about what your life with him will be like. Have you told him you love him?”

“No.” Marion shook her head. “I’ve been too much of a coward. I was afraid he’d laugh at me or turn me away. But perhaps it would be better to know that now than in a few years when it will hurt all the more.” She gathered her hair back into a clumsy bun at the nape of her neck and thanked the heavens she hadn’t changed.

“Where are you going?”

She paused at the doorway and glanced back at her mother. “Downstairs to tell him right now. If I don’t, I’ll never sleep, and tomorrow I may convince myself that I don’t want to know if he could ever grow to love me.”

Her mother stared at her. “Marion, you are so brave. I admire that. I admire you. I wish have could have been more like you.” Marion blushed and her mother blinked at tears. “He would be a fool not to love you. Now good luck.”

Marion nodded, then slipped into the hallway. As she shut the door and leaned back against it, Marion drew in a long breath. She needed more than luck to face the handsome man downstairs.

***

“You look as though you could use a drink.”

Noah looked up from the fire burning brightly and met his best friend’s dark eyes. He hadn’t realized he’d been lost in thought for so long, but from Griffin’s expression he had been.

“Perhaps two,” he chuckled, though he had to force the laughter.

“We’ll start slowly.” Griffin handed him a glass of brandy as he motioned to the two chairs before the fire. Noah followed his friend’s silent order and sat. “Things seemed to have gone well tonight.”

Noah nodded. “Yes, mother and Audrey were pleased, and after a few moments of terror, Marion seemed to relax as well.” His eyes returned to the fire as he recalled how beautiful she was that night. “I’m glad. I only want her to be happy and the sooner she feels at ease with Society, the happier she’ll be.”

A small smirk lifted one corner of Griffin’s lip as he took a sip of his drink. “Her happiness is important to you.”

Noah froze as the trap Griffin wished to set closed around him. Though he trusted his best friend with his life and with his sister, he wasn’t certain he was ready to reveal his feelings for Marion just yet.

“We are to be married. I suppose my job is to insure her happiness the best I can, isn’t it?” He sighed. He sounded defensive.

Griffin shook his head. “Seems to me to be more than that. I’ve never seen you so focused on one woman before. You breathe, eat and sleep Marion Hawthorne.” His friend grinned again. “And you blush like a schoolboy when the subject is broached. Sort of like you are now.”

Noah’s hands came up to his face and he did feel the telltale heat of a blush warming his cheeks. Damn Griffin for taking so much pleasure in his discomfort.

“You’re a bastard, you know that?” He gave his friend a half-teasing frown. “You poke your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

Rising to his feet, he paced across the room to refill his drink. Though Griffin laughed, he could feel the other man’s eyes following him, concerned and intrigued.

“I think you need a friend to talk to. And since I’m the only one left in our circle who can stand you, I’ll have to do. Do you want to talk about what’s going on? Or shall I just wheedle it out of you the deeper in drink you sink?”

Noah spun back around for a biting retort, but found he could think of nothing to say. Griffin was right. He needed to talk about his confused emotions. At least sober he could control the way he said what was on his mind.

“I had a plan, you know.”

Griffin laughed. “You always do.”

“And this was not the plan.” He set his drink down on the mantel and folded his arms. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to go down to Woodbury and get tangled up in this mess.”

His friend arched a brow. “Why
did
you go to Woodbury?”

“Investigation.” He waved off the question with a shake of his head. “It was only to be a bit of an adventure before I settled down and got married like I was supposed to do. To a respected young woman in the
ton
. To Charlotte.” He frowned as he thought of the pain he’d caused Charlotte, of the promise he’d made to her and broken.

“Sounds like heaven.” Griffin twisted his face.

“Perhaps not, but it was controlled and staid and proper.” He ran a hand through his hair as he sank back into his chair. “I was definitely
not
supposed to meet some country chit and get coerced into marrying her.”

Griffin let the silence in the room stay for a long moment as he stared at Noah. Noah knew why his best friend did it. He wanted the comment to hang in the air for a moment, to let the emotions Noah felt behind his words build as he waited. Finally, Griffin smiled.

“And you weren’t supposed to fall in love with said ‘country chit’ either, were you?”

Noah sighed, surprised at the relief that filled him when Griffin said the words. Now that
someone
had expressed them, the tension that filled him every time he thought of his feelings for Marion left him.

“No.” He gave a hollow laugh. “I was most definitely not supposed to fall in love with her. But I did.”

Griffin couldn’t cover the shock that leapt to his brown eyes. Noah couldn’t really blame him. After years of avoiding love, even professing that it didn’t exist, this was a change for him. Even more of a change was being able to admit his feelings.

“I know.” Griffin cleared his throat. “It’s obvious by every way you behave when she’s around. But how long have
you
known?”

Noah shrugged one shoulder as he swirled the liquor in his glass. “I’m not sure. One day I looked at her and I just knew. It was like… like…”

“No.” Noah thought of the night they made love. The way he had held her, the way he’d kissed her. Weren’t they ways he’d told her he loved her? “Not in words. I want to do it right.”

Griffin shook his head and poured himself a second drink. “The words are important. Women need to hear them. If you feel this way about her, you need to say it.”

Noah ran his hand through his hair a second time as he set his drink down on the sideboard between them. “I know. And I will tell her… I will when the time is right.”

“When?” Griffin’s eyes narrowed and Noah felt him searching his face. He turned away from the scrutiny.

“Soon!”

Instead of reacting to his friend’s sudden outburst, Griffin leaned back in his chair with a short laugh of disbelief. “Incredible. After all these years. Incredible.”

Noah glared at his friend. “What?”

Griffin leaned his elbows on his knees and met Noah’s gaze evenly. “You’re afraid.”

The statement hit Noah like a punch to the stomach and he reeled away to press his back flat against the cushioned seat. His first reaction should have been anger to be accused of cowardice, but that wasn’t what twisted his gut into knots.

It was recognition that his keen friend spoke the truth.

“I…” he stammered, trying to find the words. “I’ve never loved anyone before. I’ve risked my life for cases, but never my heart. I don’t know even how to do it.”

Griffin’s laughing face softened. “You just say how you feel and trust it will set you free. Risking your heart is terrifying, but the alternative is even worse.”

“I know what I must do,” Marion muttered as she stumbled up the back staircase toward her room. Her eyes blurred with tears and she came to a halt to lean back against the stairwell.

What an idiot she was! To go downstairs ready to confess to Noah how much she loved him only to hear him telling Griffin how sorry he was that he’d ever become involved with her. That it ‘wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen’.

All of Noah’s reassurance that she would make a good wife, that they could be happy, had been an act on his part. A chivalrous way to ease her worries even while he hid how unhappy he was at the thought of a union with her… what had he called her?

A country chit
.

And what had making love to her been? Just another night with a warm body? Or a way to make her believe, yet again, that he cared for her even though he obviously didn’t.

Nausea swept over her but she choked back the bile in her throat and continued up the stairs. The hallway was nothing but a blur, but her feet found her room from feel and memory. She twisted the door handle and fell inside. When her body hit her bed she allowed herself to succumb to the wracking tears she’d wanted to shed since she heard Noah proclaim that she wasn’t in his plans.

She’d run away so she wouldn’t hear more. Run away from his tired voice, from Griffin’s agreeing silence. But the pain in her heart she couldn’t escape. It kept her in its grip. Unavoidable and inescapable.

“Marion? What in the world?”

She glanced up from her tearstained pillow to see her mother enter from the adjoining door. She stood in the doorway for a brief moment before she rushed to her daughter’s side and gathered her into a warm, comforting embrace.

As a little girl, Marion had believed if only her mother had been there to hold her all her pain would have gone away. But she now realized just how wrong she’d been. Even her mother’s comfort couldn’t wipe away this agony.

She broke into hard tears again as she pressed her face into her mother’s lavender scented shoulder. Ingrid clucked her tongue and Marion could hear the anger in her mother’s voice. “Heartless man.”

“No.” She struggled to sit up. “He is a decent man trying to do the right thing. I’m glad I kn-know.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Now I can do what I need to do.”

“And what is that?” Her mother dug a handkerchief from her pocket and handed it over to Marion. She took it with a wordless smile of thanks.

“I must leave here as soon as I can. You were right. I can’t marry a man who doesn’t love me. A man who views me as an inconvenience and a duty.” She choked on another batch of tears. She had to be strong. “Please, Mama. Will you help me?”

Her mother’s face softened. “For years I could do nothing to make your life easier. I’ll do anything I can now.”

“Then take me away from here. Help me leave with as little upset as possible. Help me hide until Noah’s sense of duty has been spent and he’s gone back to the life he wanted in the first place. With the
ton
, with a woman of breeding.”

She shivered at those words. Of course Noah would find a new woman to marry. She’d seen the predatory looks on the women’s faces at the ball when he walked by. Many of them wished to have him as their husband, even more as a lover. Would he choose one of the young women who’d fawned over him? Or would he make things up to Charlotte Ives? Call Marion a dalliance he regretted but that he’d come to his senses?

“Oh!” She struggled to her feet and hurried to the window to look out as she twisted the handkerchief in her hand around and around.

“When do you want to go?”

“Tomorrow.” She nodded at her own reflection in the glass. “We’ll behave as if nothing is wrong and simply climb into your carriage and ride away. We can enlist Sally’s help to prepare us for our journey without rousing the suspicions of the house staff.”

She turned to face her mother. Ingrid looked uncertain as. “Are you certain you want to do something so rash as to sneak away?”

Marion nodded. “I have no choice. If I confront Noah, he’ll try to appease me with pretty words and with…” She blushed. “Making a clean break is best for us all.”

She could only imagine what Noah would do if she confronted him. He would try to convince her to stay and it would only break her heart even further. She couldn’t bear the thought of him lying to her in order to keep her near him, or worse yet, tell her the truth that he could never love her but that he was planning to force her into the marriage regardless.

Her mother pursed her lips. “Very well, my dear. If you feel running is your only chance, I’ll help you. I certainly understand wanting to flee. I’ll make all the arrangements for our leaving and for a place for you to stay until Lord Woodbury has ceased any search for you.”

Marion nodded, but a sudden wave of exhaustion worked through her. Now that the decision had been made, the only thing she wanted to do was collapse on her bed and cry herself to sleep. Alone.

Her mother nodded slowly as she leaned down to place a kiss on her daughter’s forehead. “Marion, Marion. You’ll find your happiness someday, my dear. I promise you.”

Marion somehow found the ability to nod as she watched her mother slip from the room. As soon as she was gone, she dropped her head into her hands and let out a low sob.