Page 53 of The Seductive Love of a Lady
She looked at him. ‘Andrew…?’
‘Mary.’ He broke off a stem of long grass and brushed the tip across her nose. She made a face which said,tell me.
‘So, you insist I go there even though I said I hate the subject.’
Her arms wrapped about her knees, her vulnerability showing through, the buttercup bobbing in her hand. ‘Are we going to argue, when we have only just been reunited? If you tell me, I will not need to ask again.’
‘If you meet Caro, she will tell you about our parents.’ Emotionally naked, he took her left hand from its grip about her knees and held it up between them. His thumb pushed up the third finger that bore his ring, with the little leather cord wrapped about it to hold it in place. ‘You asked about this, and I told you T R, whoever he is, is my father. Caro and I are products of my mother’s peccadillos. Moments she would like to pretend never occurred. However, when wailing children arrive nine months later, they are rather hard to hide. I suppose I should be glad the Marquis named me Framlington and did not leave me in a basket to die somewhere. But when I said I was an evil bastard, I truly am. Sins of the parents and all that.’
‘Do not?—’
‘It is understandable,’ he stopped her protest, ‘that the Marquis hates me. What I have never been able to accept is that my mother hates me with equal wrath. I am a constant reminder of her shame, an embarrassment, nothing more, as is Caro. Their manner of resolving the issue is to ignore our existence.’
‘I am sorry.’ Mary unravelled from her self-protective pose.
‘Why? It is not your fault, and I did not ask for your pity.’
She lay down beside him, mimicking his posture, her head on one palm as her free hand settled at his waist.
He closed his eyelids. ‘If I see pity in your eyes, you will make me intensely angry again.’
‘What about love? Can I look at you with love? It is not pity I am offering, it is love. If you are hurting, I hurt. I care. Is care allowed?’
Opening one eye, Drew gave her a crooked smile. Her eyes shone with concern, but mirth caught there too.
He opened his other eye and she laughed.
‘Very well, I will accept care and raise it. I admit, I want to hate her, and I tell myself I hate her, and the rest of them – butI still desperately want to belong among them – and now you know I am not an evil bastard but a bitter unwanted child.’
‘Not unwanted.’
Damn it.Her eyes glittered with pity. It pricked like a thorn in his side.
No. It is care.Someone cares for me.Warmth not anger stirred in his chest.
Mary threw away her buttercup and wrapped her hand about his, the one that still held the strand of grass. ‘You are wanted.’ She kissed the corner of his lips, then rolled onto her back and looked up at the sky.
She was so beautiful. He brushed the tip of the grass about her cheek and down her neck. ‘But not by them; it is a hard lesson, well learned. I steel myself by saying I do not give a damn for their opinion, or anyone else’s for that matter. But then I met you and I care for yours. You wished to meet them and for some ridiculous reason I thought perhaps, just perhaps, my mother would like you and be proud of me. I should not have taken you there.’
‘You should have told me why you did not want to go. Had you said, I would not have persisted. The moment we walked in the door I knew it was wrong. But how could I have imagined that?—’
‘When your family all adore you.’ He grazed the tip of the grass along the skin above her bodice. ‘The Pembroke lions prowl and protect, preventing scandal or harm attacking their pride. Did you realise your womenfolk have been waging a subtle war against me, while your menfolk scowl?’
She smiled. ‘You do not expect me to pity you for that, I hope? You chose to take them on.’
‘And I have had my money’s worth.’
‘My money. And you chose to fight. Instead of making friends with them, you made them enemies.’
He dipped the tip of the grass into her cleavage, smiling. Pink stained her skin from her bodice upward. She was modest even now. A Pembroke to the heart. She would never cuckold him.
‘Old habits die hard, darling. I do not trust people, especially families. I am judged by my birth and if the issue is their ignorance, why should I defend myself?’
‘So now we are at the crux.’ Her gaze gripped his. ‘You do not like to be rejected, but you say you do not care and try to mask it.’
Drew threw away the piece of grass and instead picked a head of clover. ‘I made up my mind, the afternoon you were ill and I saw how much I hurt you, that I was going to declare my love for you in your brother’s drawing room.’
She laughed. ‘Then, if they did not believe you, you would have told them all to go to hell.’
