“But he is my
father,
” she whispered.
“And not alone in his perversion. I’ve read the Bible.”
“Ian seemed shocked enough. I trusted him to keep my secret.”
“He has, more or less. He thought I knew.”
Anne shut her eyes, closing off the hurt she saw in Gareth’s. “I couldn’t tell you.”
“Well, now you have. Was it so bad, this belated confession?”
“There’s a lot more.”
“You mean your spirited rebellion.”
Anne choked back a laugh. “That’s one term for it. I am not quite the thing, Gareth. The newspaper reported only a fraction of what I’ve done.”
“Yet you said you hadn’t murdered anyone.”
“Of course not! And I never slept with the men—or the women—reputed to be my lovers,” she added, mortified and anxious that he know she had not fallen down into sin completely.
Except with him. It was not so much falling down as flying up, either.
“I know you were a virgin. Even if you had not been—” Gareth shrugged. “I’m not one of those men who insists on one rule for gentlemen and the opposite for the ladies. I would be an utter hypocrite after the life I’ve led.” He grinned suddenly. “The
women
?”
Anne felt herself blush to her toes. “Just one. Rosa Parmenter. It was just a bit of nonsense designed to enrage my father.”
Gareth gave her a devilish laugh. “You underestimate the effect on the average man, my dear. The sight of two lovely girls together—”
“Gareth!”
“Oh, it holds no titillation for me,” he hastened to add. “But you really are an innocent.”
“I don’t feel innocent,” she said mulishly.
“Well, we’ve got to remedy that. The two of us are in a scrape now, aren’t we? Me a bloodthirsty killer and you a regular Delilah. Or perhaps Salome, what with the dancing in the fountain. I’d better watch my head or I’ll wind up like poor St. John the Baptist.”
“I thought Ian was the religious one.”
“One could not grow up here without hours and hours in chapel, my love. Some of it sunk in.”
Anne marveled at his teasing. Whenever she had imagined this conversation, she had expected disgust and disappointment from him. Tears for her. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my past first. But I didn’t want to spoil what was between us.”
“It has been a lovely week, hasn’t it?”
It had been a miraculous week. But Anne no longer believed in miracles. “Y-you still wish to marry me?”
The only sound in the room was the rattle of the casement window and the hiss of coal in the fire. Anne’s heart dropped.
C
HAPTER
23
A
lovely week, and the potential for a lovely life.
If he could figure out how to manage it, and find the right words to assuage her fears.
After a moment, Gareth rose from the chair, bringing Annie up by the hand he still held. “Of course I still wish to marry you. Do you still wish to marry me? You’re an earl’s daughter, even if he is a blackguard. I am a nobody. You can never go back to the kind of life you were expected to lead.”
“I don’t want to go back! I don’t give a fig for the rules of the ton or what my father wants. I believe my past behavior tells you that much.”
She looked almost angry, and she had every right to be. London had been a severe disappointment in ways too horrible to contemplate.
“It’s very quiet in Llanwyr.”
“I like quiet.”
“I think,” he said carefully, “that if my neighbors discover your true identity, things might become difficult for you. For us. They are the strictest of Methodists, you know.”
“I’ve changed. Surely they will see that.”
“One would hope.” From very personal experience, Gareth had seen how quickly one’s good reputation turned bad. How to turn a bad reputation good was out of his ken.
“They don’t need to know, do they? Ian promised to fiddle about with my name. They all think I’m just your housekeeper, and never need to know any different.”
“Once my financial situation takes on such a spectacular turn, there are bound to be questions.” He was becoming tired looking down at her bristling little form and began edging her across the room.
To the bed. Where questions could go unanswered for the next hour at least. Was he a coward for wanting to lose himself in the most primitive way?
“You can say my great-aunt died and left me an unexpected inheritance.”
He brushed a tendril of hair from her warm cheek. “Do you have a great-aunt?”
“There is no one.”
Save for her bloody father. She’d had no one to turn to.
“We can plot and plan later. Right now, I want to show you my intentions toward you are most dishonorable.”
She almost smiled. “I thought you said you still wanted to marry me.”
“Aye, but if I were not such a rogue, I wouldn’t touch you until the ring was on your finger. I find I cannot wait that long, Annie.”
Her eyes darted around the room. “Not here.”
Blast. She’d been ready to crawl into bed with him earlier, but she’d changed her mind. He should have finished cleaning the room, but he’d been overwhelmed with head and heartache. “I’m afraid I have to agree. This is no place for the Infamous Lady I.”
“Oh, good lord. I could kill Evangeline for what she wrote in her newspaper, but then she brought me here to you.”
“I’ll have to thank her. We’ll muddle through somehow, don’t worry. The important thing is that we’ll do it together.”
His reassuring words had an unexpected effect. Annie burst into tears. His shirt was still wet from the earlier bout, so he simply held her to his chest and let her weep and snuffle. The poor girl had plenty of reason to cry in her past, but Gareth was determined to change her future.
He didn’t want her to hide, but he couldn’t see how she would ever be accepted here. He didn’t mind so much for himself—he was already
persona non grata,
but their children would doubly suffer.
He wanted children. And the making of them. Gathering her up, he made for his mother’s room. The Holland covers were draped over the furniture, so Gareth deposited Annie in a canvas-covered chair and tugged the fabric from the bed. The mattress was bare.
“There is fresh linen in the hall c-closet,” she hiccupped. “Or fresh enough.”
Gareth remembered the Monday mornings when the kitchen yard was hung with wet sheets. He and Ian had played hide-and-seek among the flapping wall of white, inevitably getting dirty handprints everywhere and a tongue-lashing or worse from Cecily. Little boys were thoughtless creatures, and they had been more thoughtless than most. He hoped he had been kinder to the old woman in her last days.
Gareth tugged open the bowed door to the linen closet and inhaled a burst of lavender air. Grabbing a well-worn stack of sheets, he went back to his mother’s room and made up the bed as quickly as he could one-handed, with no help from Annie. She still sat sniffing, chewing on a luscious lip, her pale eyelashes brilliant with teardrops.
“It will be all right, you know,” he assured her. Somehow.
“I was never as wicked as the paper said.”
“Even if you were, I don’t care.” Gareth was fairly sure he meant this. Annie should not be made to feel guilty for trying to escape the attentions of her father, even if her schemes had been cork-brained. He swept his hand on the wrinkled sheet. “Come here.”
“I—I don’t know if I’m in the mood.”
Damn and blast.
He
was the one with a headache.
“Well then, I’ll just have to see that I get you in the mood.” He’d lain down for his nap in his shirt, trousers, and stockings, so there was not much to shuck. But he would take his time.
He’d once been to an amazing dinner in India, where sloe-eyed ladies removed their veils and costumes bit by bit to the music of strange instruments. To be sure they weren’t really
ladies,
and their effect upon the males at the table proved they were not gentlemen. There had been a great deal of whooping and hollering at each slowly revealed expanse of flesh.
Even if Annie laughed at him, it would make for a nice change. He counted to one-hundred and eleven, as good a number as any, and unbuttoned a button. Keeping his eyes downcast, he waited.
There was no music, and he did not caper around the room, but he sensed she shifted in her chair.
“Wh-what’s wrong? Do you need help?”
He raised his eyes and shook his head slowly. This time it took him only to sixty-eight before he loosened the second button, staring at her all the while. He was spared from doing the next because it had come off long ago. He fisted the bunched-up fabric at his waist and gradually pulled it out of the waistband of his trousers. Gareth knew the voluminous fabric did nothing but make him look as if he was
enceinte,
so he hurried his process up and tore the shirt over his head, his stump not getting caught in its casing for once.
He straightened his spine, throwing his shoulders back a little for Annie’s benefit, and tossed the shirt into her lap. He knew he was thinner than he’d ever been, but his muscles were still sound. He’d worked like a slave last spring and summer once he’d limped out of bed.
Annie’s eyes were fixed on his chest, still brown from laboring bare-chested under the sun, for all the good it did him. He would be lucky if there was enough hay in the stable loft to feed two horses over the winter.
Gareth had captured her attention. He didn’t fancy dropping his trousers only to be left standing in his much-mended mismatched stockings—somehow that picture was not particularly appealing. His hand hovered over his falls.
“I believe I could use some help
now
.” He walked toward her purposefully.
Her damp lashes flickered, and in a riveting instant Gareth realized where she sat in relation to his manhood. He was not fully erect yet, but the image of her opening her lips to him altered that.
Ye gods. This afternoon was meant to be for her—to soothe her and strengthen their bond. To convince her he wasn’t some shallow drunken cad who couldn’t be depended on to keep a promise. He’d had plenty of adversity in his time. The Infamous Lady I would not slay him.
Except in bed, where her tentative touch was becoming his undoing. Her hands trembled now as she dealt with the fastenings, each tremor sending a shock to his core. He was thinking with his little head now, pushing any uncomfortable bits of reality far into a corner. Gareth caught his pants once his cock sprang free.
“Are you in the mood now?” he asked, his voice rough.
“I-I’m not sure.”
He dropped to his knees before her and lifted her skirts. Lilac and feminine musk swept his senses, making him harder than iron. Canting her hips forward, he eased her to the edge of the chair, parted her legs and plunged his tongue between her curls. She stiffened immediately, gasping his name.
This was as much for him as it was for her. Gareth reveled in her taste and her compliance. Every lick brought Annie closer to losing control. He thought he might come as well just from the helpless way she rippled against his mouth. He wanted her to stop worrying about the “whys” of her life and just enjoy the “when”—to live in the moment, give herself up to sensation, allay all doubt.
He was filled with enough doubt for both of them.
Her hands were wild in his hair as she came apart. His mission a success, he dragged her up off the chair and fell with her onto the bed. His trousers were a tangle, and he kicked them off. There was no time to divest Annie of her dress and petticoat, stays and shift. So many layers of clothing, but thank God she had not been wearing drawers, the minx.
Damn it, he was still wearing his socks but she wouldn’t have time to notice. Her eyes were shut in any case, but he wanted her to look at him. To
see
him. To know that she was safe.
“Annie. Anne.”
She looked up, her cheeks flushed.
Once he might have slunk from his troubles and attempted to drink them away. Lady Imaculata Anne Egremont was trouble—much more trouble than he’d bargained for when he’d agreed to her addlepated proposal. But she was worth so much more than her fortune to him, and he wanted her to know it. In less than a score of days she’d almost stitched him back together.
“I love you.”
Was it true? He rather thought it was. And she needed to hear it.
A fresh tear leaked from her left eye. “You don’t have to say that to make me feel better.”
“I know I don’t
have
to. I
want
to. You have made me love you, Imaculata Anne, although I cannot love your name. Anne it will have to be.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Why not? Taste yourself on my lips and tell me how I could ever resist you.”
“It’s just sexual congress, Gareth. You’re a man, and I’m here.”
“Oh, you foolish girl.” He pressed his cock into her rucked-up skirts. “Yes, you make me hard, when I never thought to have anything to do with a woman again. That in itself is a bit of a welcome miracle. But it’s not just your beautiful body, Anne. Your heart, your spirit—what you’ve gone through—I would have had you by my side in the army, fighting off all enemies. You are a wonder.”
“You feel sorry for me.”
He nodded and watched her face fall. “Aye, I do. And I respect you as well. It’s not just pity that’s made me hard, for heaven’s sake. I’d pass you a handkerchief instead of want to spend the rest of my life with you. And it’s not the expectation of your inheritance that keeps me hard, either. If you never want to confront your father again and hold on to your secrets, we can stay right here and manage somehow. With you as my wife, I’m fairly certain I can accomplish most anything.”
Her lips quivered. “Fairly certain?”
“Hubris, Anne. I don’t want to court the gods’ wrath—they’ve played about with me enough as it is.” His lone arm was getting tired as he propped himself over her, proof positive that he’d been punished for his past transgressions.
“I love you, Anne. I’ll say it as often as I must to make you believe it. I know why you have such difficulty accepting compliments—the men you’ve known have not been a trustworthy lot, have they? But I mean what I say. I imagine I’ll love you more and more as each day passes and we get to know each other even better. Can you love me back someday?”
“Oh, Gareth.” Her eyes filled. “You stupid man.”
“Guilty.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “I can do a smart thing right now, though.”
He sheathed himself inside her before he even kissed her mouth. Hot wet tight perfection. Annie still flexed with the aftershocks of her climax, and he drove her to new heights, her walls clenching to a private rhythm. It was she who had control of him now, and he could not have lasted if Napoleon were to come back from the dead and hold a gun to his head.
Did she love him already? The artless kissing, the soft muttering, the sighs, the gentle touches might indicate she did. Gareth held her as her emotions crested and ebbed and he poured himself into her.
She was so very young. Even with the alleged wisdom of age, he hoped he was man enough to protect her from whatever the future held.