Page 29 of The Dangerous Love of a Rogue
The stubborn insistence that he only desired her money made him angry. ‘You were right earlier, you do not know me. Money is not everything to me.’ He picked up her gloves and thrust them at her.
She took them. ‘I must go.’
He caught her elbow before she could leave. ‘Next time?—’
‘There will be no next time!’ Her elbow pulled from his grip, and then she was gone, disappearing into the darkness.
Bloody hell, he had lost more ground than he had gained tonight. If she would no longer come to him then how the hell was he to progress? He could not approach her, that would make her family suspicious. They would remove her from town.
When he left the glasshouse, he did not bother heading back to the ball. He needed to drink, and think, and the best place for that was at his club.
9
Mary left the breakfast table with her mother, Kate and younger sisters. She had nibbled at the edge of one slice of fruitcake, her stomach in too much turmoil to eat. They retired to the drawing room. The boys walked upstairs to begin their lessons.
Mary sat on a sofa in the sunshine, beside her sisters, Helen and Jennifer. They had collected their embroidery samplers and Mary guided them on the stitches they were practising. Kate held her son on her lap, amusing him with a silver rattle. Her mother sat on the same sofa, with Mary’s youngest sister, Jemima, studying a picture book.
‘Excuse me, Your Grace.’ Mr Finch stood just inside the door, a small silver tray balanced on his fingers. ‘A letter for Miss Marlow was delivered to the door.’
‘Mary?’ her mother said in disbelief.
Heat flared in Mary’s cheeks. She received letters regularly from her friends and cousins, but they came with the general post.
Everyone watched her walk across the room and lift the letter from the tray.
The writing was unfamiliar. The strokes were long and bold. She broke the blank seal and looked at the bottom of the page.
D. F.
Drew Framlington.
Her heart pounded against her ribs as Mr Finch left the room.
‘Who is it from?’ her mother asked.
‘Lord Farquhar.’Danielwas one of her friends. She’d met him at her first ball. Her mother knew him well.
She smiled warmly at Mary, before returning her attention to Jemima and the picture book.
Her mother had noticed her absence last night. Mary had said she’d gone to the retiring room. Even so, her father had admonished her for not telling her mother and Kate had cautioned her about rousing gossip, saying she’d experienced such things and would not wish them on Mary.
By the time she left the ball, Mary was thoroughly chastened and felt painfully guilty. She’d cried herself to sleep, then woken scarcely an hour later.
Mary longed to take the letter up to her room, but that would look odd. Instead, she sought seclusion on a window seat, slipping her feet from her shoes and lifting them on to the cushion before her.
My dear Miss Marlow,
Has any man told you what a treasure you truly are?
The rogue, he’d actually referred to her fortune in a pun. She smiled, more amused than angry.
What I would give to make you mine, you cannot imagine. I am yours, a hundred times over. I adore you. Your ebony hair and your alabaster skin. Your eyes, so pale they are like diamonds catching the sky. They make me shiver when you turn your gaze upon me. Turn it my way often and forever, Mary dear. Make me yours, make me love you. If love is what you want, bring me to your heel. I will come. I will beg for you if that is what you wish, only never turn your smile away from me, that is what I live for, to see your perfect smile.
And your lips, I have not yet spoken of those…
It was nonsense of course, all nonsense, and it went on and on, profoundly expressing her beauty and his adoration, while not once claiming to love, but pleading for her to give him the opportunity to fall in love. It begged her to tame him. It asked her to show him how to love her. Then he finished it all with a silly poem about love.
When she refolded the paper, a smile curved her lips.
