But Jane was different. In every way. She had been his teacher, his friend, his lover, his partner. When he closed his eyes, it was easy to imagine a future with her. A family with her.
“If it takes you this long to answer,” Fenton said coldly, “then perhaps that says it all. She deserves someone who will love her, Stoneworth. And if that isn’t you, then I will offer my hand to her again.”
Nicholas sucked in a breath. “What?”
“Someone must marry her,” the other man said. “In case there is a child. And at least I know I shall treat her well. I shall love her if you cannot.”
“If there is a child, then it is mine to protect. Mine to legitimize,” Nicholas snapped, unable to stop himself from picturing Jane holding a baby in her arms. His baby.
Fenton shook his head. “But do you love her?”
Nicholas swallowed hard. The idea of losing Jane was akin to pulling his heart from his chest. The idea of her marrying another man was even worse.
Did he love her? Did thinking of her every day, wishing to be near her, wanting to talk to her, equal love?
It did. He realized it in a flash, but then perhaps he had always known it but denied it. He loved Jane. He loved her passionate and brave nature. He loved her acceptance and defense of him, with all his flaws. He loved her laughter. He loved her touch, her taste, her smell.
And he didn’t want to lose that. He wouldn’t lose that. Gladwell had been right. This was the fight of Nicholas’s life. And he had no intention of losing.
“I love Jane,” he said. “More than my life. But winning her, especially in the state she is in currently, isn’t going to be easy. But nothing worth having ever is.”
“Indeed. And if that is the case, then I think I know a way to help you.”
Fenton looked away, and Nicholas pitied and respected him. He was willing to give Jane up in order to ensure her happiness. Nicholas couldn’t imagine the loss and hoped he wouldn’t have to face it himself before this was through.
Clearing his throat, Nicholas said, “What is your plan?”
Jane sat in Lady Ridgefield’s parlor, staring at the fire as it slowly ate away at a log. Around her, Lady Ridgefield and a few of her companions were chatting, but Jane hardly heard their talk. She was too wrapped up in her own thoughts, her own memories, her own tangled emotions.
“Jane?” Lady Ridgefield said so that no one else would hear. She set a hand over hers and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Are you well, dear? You have been so quiet.”
Jane shook off her tangled emotions and smiled. “I’m so sorry, my lady. I am woolgathering. I’m afraid I did not get much sleep last night and I am tired.”
And that was utterly true. By the time she snuck back into the house it had been almost dawn. And then she had lain in her bed, thinking about Marcus, thinking about Patrick…and thinking about Nicholas. So much about Nicholas and his proposal and the fact that he had lied to her when she had believed, so strongly, that he never would.
She sighed.
“You do look tired, my dear,” Lady Ridgefield said. “Perhaps when your cousin arrives, we should send him away, rather than have you go riding with him.”
“My cousin?” Jane said, wrinkling her brow. “Patrick is coming today?”
“Yes, my dear. I mentioned it at breakfast, did you not hear me?”
Jane dipped her chin with embarrassment. At breakfast she had been completely in her own world as she fingered her late brother’s ring beneath the table and thought of the one Nicholas had offered her. She couldn’t remember anything about the meal. She might have agreed to invade Spain, for all she knew.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I will be more attentive.”
Lady Ridgefield laughed softly. “My goodness, Jane, you never have need to apologize to me. But yes, your cousin is coming today, in fact he should be arriving any moment. I must say I am very happy to hear that you two have repaired the breach between you. Families should be together.”
Jane bit her lip. She and Patrick were on their way to repairing the rift that had developed between them. She owed him a great many apologies for her deplorable treatment of him. And he owed her the same for keeping her father’s secrets. But they would forgive each other.
So why couldn’t she forgive Nicholas, too?
Jane squeezed her eyes shut, ignoring the little voice that kept asking her that question. She was too raw to answer it.
“The air might do me good,” she said, giving Lady Ridgefield a smile. “I think I shall go riding with my cousin when he comes, after all.”
She was certain Patrick had an agenda in mind for their outing. Probably further insistence that she marry someone to solve the problem of her ruination.
Marry Nicholas. That was the thought that kept echoing in her mind. And it was getting harder and harder to silence it.
Lady Ridgefield’s butler stepped into the parlor and cleared his throat. “My lady, Lord Fenton has arrived.”
The feminine sounds of pleasure that filled the room made Jane look at the women in her company. Two of them were close in age to her, and they were blushing and giggling like girls at the thought of seeing Patrick. She smiled. He was handsome, of course. She had just never really considered him as a man.
Obviously, these women did.
“Send him in,” Lady Ridgefield said as everyone in the party got to her feet, including Jane.
She forced another smile and hoped she would not blush as her cousin stepped into the room. He did not look any worse for wear after their long night, though when his green gaze fell on hers, she felt his lingering concern move through her. She was both embarrassed by and appreciative of it.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” Patrick said with a smile and a bow for the room. “How fine to find such a lovely group here.”
The ladies twittered, and for a brief moment there was conversation and flirtation. Jane smiled through it all, but her thoughts wandered again, only to be brought back when her cousin said, “Well, Jane. Would you care to come riding with me? We could go to Hyde Park and take a turn around the lake.”
She nodded. “Of course, Patrick.”
Saying her farewells to the ladies in her company, including the very disappointed younger ones, she took her cousin’s extended arm and allowed him to lead her out the front door. As they moved to the drive, she frowned.
“You brought your carriage, rather than your phaeton?” she asked as she looked at the enclosed boxy vehicle parked on the crunchy gravel.
He shrugged as he moved to open the door. “It could rain.”
As she stepped inside, Jane was about to point out the cloudless sky, but before she could, her cousin abruptly shut the door to the vehicle and rapped on the wall outside. The carriage began to move.
Jane moved to grab the door handle, but before she could grasp it, a hand darted out of the darkness in the corner of the seat and caught her wrist.
She cried out in surprise as she looked down at the imprisoning hand. Before she even peered through the dark, she knew who her companion was. After so many days and nights, she recognized the scarred, pronounced knuckles.
“Nicholas,” she hissed as her eyes finally adjusted and she could see him.
He smiled, but the expression was tight. “Hello, Jane.”
Although she couldn’t deny how much she liked the brush of his skin on hers, Jane still tried to shake his fingers from her wrist. He held fast.
“Why don’t you sit back?” he asked, his voice low and calm. “We’re driving quickly now. I wouldn’t want you to be hurt.”
She frowned. It would be childish to hurtle herself from the moving vehicle, even if she wanted to do such a thing. And she had no thought in her head that Nicholas would try to harm her.
At least not with his body. His words, though. His explanations and excuses…those were another story entirely.
“I am not ready to see you,” she said as she moved to the seat opposite his and settled
back. “I wish you hadn’t come.”
A sudden thought entered her head and she stared at him. “How ever did you convince my cousin to assist you?”
“Very simply. Patrick Fenton truly has your best interest at heart. He says you love me, even though you want to say that my lies killed that emotion. And he thinks that marrying a man you love would make you happy.”
Nicholas leaned forward, and she caught a heady whiff of his masculine scent. She fought with every breath in her not to draw closer to it and to him.
“Is your cousin right, Jane?” he said softly. “Do you love me? Despite your own objections?”
She stiffened her spine. The last thing she wanted to do was admit that. She had regretted saying she loved him last night, even if she had softened it by implying that emotion was in the past. Now he could use her vulnerability against her to get what he wanted. Whatever that was.
“I don’t want to talk to you about this.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “That is fair enough. Perhaps I don’t deserve to hear you declare your feelings. But I think I do deserve to say my piece.”
“Defend yourself, you mean?” she said with a shake of her head. “Make excuses for your actions?”
He shook his head. “No. There is no excuse for my actions. You were absolutely right in everything you said to me last night. I lied to you when you put your faith in me. I withheld information that you deserved to know for far too long. I thought it would be best to wait until we were married and I could be there for you in your grief. But I was wrong. Very wrong.”
Jane was speechless. Those words were the last she had ever expected to hear from him, and now she had no idea how to respond.
“However, that isn’t what I want to say,” he continued.
She felt her hands begin to shake, and she shoved them in her lap so that he wouldn’t see her weakening to him. “What do you want to say?”
He nodded. “I wanted to express to you that I am deeply, passionately, and completely in love with you.”
She caught her breath as a burst of unstoppable joy rushed through her being. But then the doubt crept in behind it.
“Don’t say such a thing to me in order to obtain what you desire,” she whispered. “Don’t say it so that I’ll agree to forgive you or marry you or whatever it is you want from me.”
He reached out and took her hand gently. She allowed it, for the brush of his thumb across her skin was just too good to deny.
“I would never say that in order to manipulate you. Once, perhaps, I would have, but you changed me, Jane. Not because you helped me relearn the ways of a good gentleman, but because you reminded me what it was like to be a good man. You believed that is what I could be, and it made me want to try. To make you smile. To make you laugh. To make myself worthy of you.”
Jane could only suck her breath in loudly. He couldn’t be saying this. He couldn’t be pouring his heart out and making her believe again. Have faith again. Love him even more than she had before she saw his face in the darkness.
“Sweetest, loveliest Jane,” he whispered, and now he moved to sit beside her. Close in the darkness, his breath stirred her face and his warmth wrapped around her body. “I do love you. I love you enough to let you go, if that is truly what you desire. If I have irrevocably broken your trust, then you should push me out of your life forever. Love someone else. Find whatever happiness you so richly deserve.”
He stroked a finger down her cheek.
“But if you can forgive me. If you can see some way, today or in the future, that you could release your anger and love me again…then I want you to marry me. I want you to be my wife and the mother of my children. And my constant teacher in behavior and deportment and love and life. Give me the chance to prove that the faith you once put in me was well placed.”
He leaned down and brushed his lips, feather light, over hers. She shut her eyes with a quiet sob as he did so. But he didn’t take the kiss further. He simply released her and moved to the other side of the carriage.
“That is what I wanted to say, Jane.”
She stared at him. He was quietly sitting, muscular arms folded, awaiting her reply, but not demanding it. But for once she could read him as he always read her. In the dim light, she saw how nervous he was. How anxious. It was in the lines around his mouth, in the expression in his bright eyes. In every fiber of his being.
He was desperate for her reply. Desperate to hear her say that she would forgive him.
And that realization, the idea that she had brought a strong and powerful man to such a level of need, broke her final resistance.
“Do you think I’m strong?” she whispered.
He nodded. “The strongest woman I have ever known. Unlike your father and your cousin, I didn’t keep this secret because I thought you were weak.”
“But you believed I needed you through my grief,” she whispered. In her heart, she knew he was likely right. The truth that Marcus was gone cut through her like a saber. She wanted Nicholas’s arms around her. She wanted his soothing words of comfort.
But she didn’t want to marry a man who believed her to be weak. Too many men in her life had thought that of her.
“Great God, Jane, to lose your brother is a thing one should never endure alone.” He blinked, and she was shocked to see tears glistening in his bright eyes. “I know that better than most. How I wish I had had you by my side those first few months after Anthony died. To lean on. To talk to. To simply be with so that I could feel whole in some way. But I don’t think having support from one you love makes you weak. It just makes you human.”
She shut her eyes. That was what she needed to hear.
“I do love you,” she said, letting her eyes come open. “I have probably loved you since the first moment I came into your home and you terrified me.”
He smiled, and she did the same through her tears before she continued, “And though I do not like what you did, I don’t want to lose you. Because I-I do need you, Nicholas. And I want to share all my grief and sadness and all my joy and triumph with you, as you share yours with me.”
“Then you will marry me?” he asked, his voice all but trembling with emotion.
She nodded, and his grin was her reward. Wide and full of hope for their future and unwavering love for her.
Now it was she who moved across the carriage toward him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and smiled up at him. “And you can spend at least the first ten years of our marriage making up for the fact that you lied.”
He pulled her closer. “I shall start now.”
She pushed at his chest playfully, her joy overriding her sadness, at least for the moment. And she recognized that was what he had clumsily tried to give her by keeping the truth from her. Not as a betrayal, but as a gift.
And she loved him more for it.
“Nicholas! We are going to Hyde Park,” she protested. “I wouldn’t want to be mussed, people will talk. Do you remember nothing of my lessons?”
He shook his head. “Oh no, my dear. We are not heading for Hyde Park. You and I are off to Scotland. Gretna Green, to be precise.”
Her mouth dropped open and she stared at him, flabbergasted. “Gretna Green! But—but what if I had refused to hear you?”
“Then I would have had a very long trip to beg,” he said, his fingers trailing to the buttons along the back of her gown. “But I much prefer using the days ahead of us for more pleasurable activity.”
Jane sighed as his lips found her throat and his skilled fingers made short work of her buttons.
“So do I, my love. So do I.”
About the Author
Two of JENNA PETERSEN’s childhood dreams were to be a ballerina and a baseball player. Those didn’t work out, but she’s pleased to be following another childhood dream, writing books for a living. And what better than romance, where dreams come true on every page? Jenna lives in central Illinois with her high school sweetheart husband and two taskmaster cats. Sh
e loves to hear from readers!
Her website is www.jennapetersen.com.
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Romances by Jenna Petersen
HER NOTORIOUS VISCOUNT
LESSONS FROM A COURTESAN
SEDUCTION IS FOREVER
DESIRE NEVER DIES
FROM LONDON WITH LOVE
SCANDALOUS
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
HER NOTORIOUS VISCOUNT. Copyright © 2009 by Jenna Petersen. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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