Page 42 of His Forgotten Bride
“Do you make proposals of marriage often, then?” The words were unnecessarily caustic. She knew he had recently been engaged; the breaking of that engagement had caused a furor all over London—but it was unfair of her to harbor resentment over such a thing, when he hadn’t even known until recently that he’d been married in the first place.
“More frequently of late than I’d prefer,” he admitted. “The last one was a mistake, undertaken for all the wrong reasons. I was, in all honesty, elated to have a reason to call it off.” He gestured again to the empty chair. “Please sit, Claire. You’ll be more comfortable.”
Doubtful. There’d been few less comfortable situations she’d endured in the whole of her life. But she sat anyway, drawing in a bracing breath, and hoping to head a proposal off at the pass. “Sir—”
“Gabriel,” he corrected, taking the seat across from her.
“Gabriel,” she repeated, ignoring the awkward little flutter of her heart in her chest. “While I appreciate the, er…honor you would do me, you must know that we wouldn’t suit.”
“I beg to differ. I think we would suit quite well.” He was looking at her speculatively, as if he were attempting to divine her thoughts, counter her arguments before she could think of them. “I’m thirty-one. I’ve no inclination to subject myself to theTon’sinane courtship rituals, and even less desire to saddle myself with a woman I hardly know. I have a great deal of respect for you, Claire. You’ve never been less than honest with me. Do you know how rare that is?”
Her eyes closed on a wave of shame. She had lied to him—by omission, at least—from the moment she had entered his household. She hadcontinuedto lie to him, and the guilt of it seared her inside, churned in her stomach like a ball of molten lead, painful and nauseating.
“You would be my marchioness,” he continued. “And eventually the Duchess of Bridgewater. It’s an old and esteemed title.”
She had been his marchioness for seven years, for all the good it had done her. She pressed her lips together and took a deep, cleansing breath.
“You would never have to work for your living again,” he said. “Matthew’s future would be secure. You would both have the best of everything, and you’d never have to be parted from one another. It would mean security for a lifetime for both of you.” He shifted in his seat, his expression wavering. “I don’t mean to bait you into agreement, or to give the impression that your refusal will provoke my ire,” he said. “So I suppose I ought to tell you that I have already promised Matthew that whatever your answer, both of you will always have a place in my home.”
Claire swiped at her eyes as her heart fractured in her chest. Would they, though? Matthew, surely, he would want. But if he ever discovered her duplicity, if he learned of how little faith she had had in him seven years ago, would he still want her? He still harbored a love for the woman from his past that he could not recall, but she hadn’t been that woman in years. And unless he could be brought to remember her, to remember their shared past, there could be no connection with the present.
“Matthew wants a father, Claire. I want to be that for him. I swear to you, I will love him as if he were my own.”
She choked on a sob, clapping her hand over mouth to stifle the sound. Squeezing her eyes shut, she ducked her head and struggled to swallow back the grief that those softly-spoken words evoked in her.
Warm fingers touched her cheek, swiping away the tears that coursed down her face. She hadn’t heard him move, but when she opened her eyes, he was there, kneeling before her, his mouth twisted in regret. “Damn,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to make you cry.”
She didn’t want him kneeling there before her, offering her a chance that he had no idea she could never deserve. But when his fingers curved over her cheek, she turned her face into his hand, grateful for the comfort it offered. His thumb rubbed across her cheek as his fingers curved over her neck, and she started at the familiarity of the gesture, as his hand effortlessly found the same place, the same position of years ago.
For a moment he stilled, his eyes going distant—as if something in him had recognized it as well. Her breath caught in her throat, a desperate hope seizing her heart that this might be the catalyst to restore everything he’d lost, to remember her and everything they had once meant to one another.
Instead he heaved a sigh and leaned in, his lips touching her forehead. Whatever had gripped him had been fleeting, ephemeral. Disappointment seared her straight to her heart, and in the icy grip of despair she let fall her half-finished glass of brandy, which toppled to the floor and splashed upon the carpet, and shamelessly took refuge in the one thing in the world she wanted beyond life.
Him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Though he had not precisely posed the question so much as outlined all the reasons he could think of that it would be to her benefit, to her son’s benefit, to accept his suit, Gabriel had been certain she had intended to reject him.
And then she had kissed him.Shehad kissedhim. Her mouth was tremulous, her cheeks still wet with those heart-wrenching tears, but she had leaned forward in her chair, slid her arms about his neck, andkissedhim.
For a moment he was too stunned to react. Her lips were cool and soft, and her arms settled over his shoulders and her right hand clasped the back of his neck in a way that felt alarmingly familiar.Allof her felt alarmingly familiar, from the way her body settled against his, to the achingly soft brush of her lips to the corner of his mouth—to the way his right hand settled at the small of her back, his left splaying between her shoulder blades. The temptation arose to seize her to him, an impulse he had not expected…as if his every muscle wished to bind her to him, never to let her go.
Her teeth nipped his lower lip in silent demand, and he stifled a groan. How badly he wanted to accept her challenge, to indulge in her—but it was still relatively early in the evening, and even if it was doubtful that anyone would intrude upon them, the library was hardly the place for this sort of activity.
“Claire—”
She smothered his attempt at speech, and for a moment he let himself be pulled into the kiss, let it blot every thought of protest from his mind. His arms pulled her closer and she slid off the chair and into his arms with a kind of catlike grace, and he was struck with the strange sensation of completeness, as if they had interlocked like puzzle pieces made to fit together. Everything that had until so very recently felt wrong and jarring faded to the back of his mind, which settled into a quiet reverence at how veryrightClaire felt in his arms.
Of course, it had been rather a long time since he’d had a woman in his arms, a long time since he’d evenwanteda woman—it might well have been little more than the heady pleasure of a woman’s softness after so long an abstinence.
But he didn’t think so. It had to be Claire. He’d had years and years of opportunities to take any number of women to his bed, and he hadn’t been even remotely tempted. For a long while he’d feared more than his memories had been stolen away from him, feared that his accident had left him more than deadenedwithin, but deadenedwithoutas well. Eventually he’d stopped fretting that someone would discover his inadequacy, stopped caring entirely—and then Claire had come into his life, and like the warm caress of spring over the barren earth, she had breathed life into him once again. Inallways. What manner of man, cold and withered as he had been,wouldn’thave seized her, if only to bask in the glow of her presence?
Her silky tongue touched his, and she tasted sweet and fresh, like the apple tart that had been served after dinner. Beneath his hands he felt the stiffness of her stays and wished he could feel the heat of her skin instead. Of their own accord, his fingers inched down her back, toward the tempting swell of her bottom. Though he’d imbibed little more than a glass of brandy this evening, preferring instead to keep his head clear, his thoughts swam about his head dizzily, drunkenly.
Damn. It would be so easy to let himself be swept away in her, but he could not let it happen. By sheer dint of will he managed to pull himself away, and her breath puffed across his cheek in the inch of space he had forced between them.
“Claire. You’re going to marry me.” She had to. Shehadto, because he needed her. He needed the both of them, her and her son. Because she was the sun, and he’d lived too long in darkness, a wretched creature devoid of humanity, mired in bitterness and rage against the unjustness of the ruined life that had been left to him.
