Page 7 of The Seductive Love of a Lady
‘Why would you subject my daughter to their lechery?’ Marlow accused when Peter, Harry and Mark were barely out of earshot.
‘Papa…’ Mary touched her father’s arm.
‘Mary.’ Drew held out his hand. This was another moment when she must make a choice. He was all or he was nothing to her. ‘I will take you home.’
To his irritation she hesitated. Drew’s jaw clenched and he lifted his hand higher. She had taken a vow to obey him but he wanted her to come because she wished to.
Her pale blue gaze met his, just as Pembroke joined the altercation. Her father was the brother of an Earl, but her wider family commanded influence across the whole of society through her mother’s connections.
‘I will go home with Andrew, Papa. John.’ She looked at them, and her uncles. ‘I’ll call on you tomorrow, Papa.’
When she took Drew’s hand, he held hers tightly, emotion wrapping about his heart. ‘Good evening, Lord Marlow, Your Graces,’ Drew said, before turning away with Mary.
He strode from the room briskly, meaning Mary had to hurry to keep up.
They were watched by other guests the entire length of their flight. When they reached the door, he could not help himself, he looked back and glared at everyone who still stared.
The men of her family had huddled together in the centre of the room, forming a conference, undoubtedly planning what to do about him.
Fuck them!
He obtained Mary’s shawl and his hat and had a footman send a stable boy to find a hansom carriage. The same footman held the carriage door as Drew handed Mary in.
When he climbed in beside her, she had pressed herself into the far corner of the small two-seater carriage and looked through the window.
After the door shut, the carriage lurched into motion.
She would make a wonderful subject for a portrait in the lantern light of the carriage, staring at nothing in the darkness, her face reflected in the glass.
‘Did your friends come just to play their games with Emily?’ she asked the window. ‘Could you not have stopped them?’
He sighed. The ground he had gained earlier was lost.
She looked at him. ‘I was pleased to see you until you said they were with you.’ Her voice grew in strength. ‘How can you condone their behaviour?’
Her condemnation of them was condemnation of him, and she knew it. ‘Lord Brooke is not such a bad catch, he is remarkably wealthy.’
‘But we both know he is not thinking of marriage, is he?’
‘If she is properly chaperoned, what does that matter? You never know, he might fall for her.’ The last was a quip at his own expense, which of course she would not understand as she did not believe he had fallen.
‘But we both know chaperones can be avoided.’ Her pitch soured as she shot a wisecrack back at him. ‘I suppose you have all played these games a hundred times.’
Drew turned, one knee lifting onto the seat between them as he faced her, his arm stretching across the squabs behind her shoulders. His body jolted with the pain from the rib her father had broken – when he discovered the deeply in love runaways they were two days ago.
‘So we are back to how many, are we? Well, for your information, you are the first woman I have courted, and the first woman I have known who had any need of chaperones, and for all Peter may play around and act the fool, he has never courted a virgin before either. Judge them how you like, but at least my friends are loyal. I caught yours gossiping about you.’
How did she have the power to make him feel like a belligerent child?Because I love her.This was what love did. It made you weak and miserable. This was why his heart had forgotten love as a child. But he was not giving in yet, he was fighting for her.
‘I suppose you frightened my friends into silence.’
‘Do I frighten you?’
‘Yes. Sometimes. When you feel threatened and become angry with me.’
Her admission shocked him. His anger fled instantly. ‘Then, I am sorry. I do not mean to make you afraid.’
His hand lifted, needing to hold her, and without his urging, as though they had the same desire in the same moment, she rose and turned to sit on his lap. Her arms reached about his neck, but then a sob sounded against his shoulder. ‘I do not want to argue.’
