Aldora forced her gaze over in Michael’s direction. His face was an impenetrable mask, carved of immobile granite. There was no outward reaction to her admission.
Uncomfortable with his intractable silence, she dipped a stiff curtsy. “Thank you for…saving Benedict. I’m s…” The word trailed off. What was she to say? I’m sorry that I fell completely in love with you? I’m sorry you have such a low opinion of me?
She spun on her heel.
His arm shot out, his fingers in an oddly gentle manacle like grip closed around her wrist.
Aldora gasped from the heat of his touch more than the alacrity of his movement.
Michael forced her back around to face him.
“Do you love him?”
Aldora blinked.
“Do you?”
“No!” she blurted. How can I love him when you stole my heart in Lord and Lady Havendale’s gardens?
“I am wealthy. I will care for your family.”
Aldora’s heart picked a funny staccato rhythm within her breast and soared on the wings of hope before logic sent her careening painfully back to earth.
“Your reputation.” Her voice emerged as a pained whisper.
Michael’s head jerked back like she’d slapped him.
“It is not my reputation I worry about,” she rushed to reassure him. “I have to think about my sisters making respectable matches.” It was very important to her that he understood it was not her own inflated ego that she cared for. That if it were her sole happiness that mattered, then she’d say to hell with the marquess and wed Michael regardless of his wealth, history, or lineage.
Michael released her wrist like he’d held a venomous snake within its grasp.
“I’ll not convince you to wed me, Aldora. I’ll not humble myself any more than I’ve already done.”
Aldora bit back a protest when he spun away and stalked off down the hill.
A single tear fell, then another as she stretched a hand out toward his retreating back.
Don’t go! Please, don’t leave me.
Of course, he could never hear the tortured unspoken thoughts of her ravaged mind.
Chapter Nine
I’m a bloody fool.
Michael stared out into the gardens below, arms folded behind his back as he contemplated his earlier meeting with Aldora.
At last she’d been honest with him. She was scheming for a match with his brother. Like many of the other grasping debutantes, it stung to accept the truth. She was out for the wealth, power, and title like all the others.
With a growl, he stalked away from the window and began pacing a path in front of his packed trunks. Except she wasn’t like the others.
He’d witnessed the naked fear in her eyes when she’d discovered her brother nearly drowning. In those eyes was the gleam of a woman who’d do anything for her family—even if that anything meant marrying for reasons other than love.
Love. He scoffed at the thought of it. When had he ever put serious thoughts behind a marriage of love verses a marriage of convenience? He’d merely accepted that he wouldn’t wed. After all, his brother was the marquess and would possess the requisite heirs which would leave Michael free to…
He paused.
What?
Free to sulk and lament the path his life had taken following the scandal of his youth?
Michael had prided himself on his resilience and strength in the face of his banishment. Only now did he realize, he was controlled by his past.
Michael dragged a hand through his hair.
Just as Aldora felt controlled by her family’s past.
Except they didn’t have to be. If they were courageous and bold, and if she loved him with the same soul-binding power that gripped him, they could confront their pasts and make a future not just for themselves, but also a future for her family. With his brother’s connections and Michael’s own financial power, he was not weak.
When Aldora had expressed her fears, he’d been too wounded by his own self-pity that he’d stormed off like a petulant child. He’d not stayed and fought like a warrior with assurances of protecting her and her family. Instead, he’d expected her blind love to conquer all the obstacles between them.
He needed her.
His eyes snagged the ormolu clock at the fireplace mantle and his heart fell.
She’d been expecting his brother’s audience that afternoon. Even now their meeting was surely at an end.
Dagger like pain wrenched through his insides, and threatened to tear him apart like a vicious creatures sharp talons. His brother had gone to offer for her. Michael was certain of it.
The other scandals they might have overcome. A broken betrothal was not one of those.
He glanced again at the clock.
Perhaps their meeting hadn’t yet taken place? Perhaps their betrothal was still not agreed upon?
For the first time in ten years, not logic or reason propelled Michael out of the room and into the foyer.
He bellowed for a servant.
“I need my mount readied!”
The servant hurried off to do his bidding, smartly recognizing that Michael was not a man to counter.
He had a betrothal to stop.
Aldora stared down into her nearly empty teacup.
What would she do when she finished the last of the brew?
Oh, she supposed she could serve herself a second cup but that might look gauche to the Marquess of St. James. It wasn’t really that she cared so much what he thought, but she cared that her mother was glaring quite pointedly at her and would surely snatch the teapot, and well, that would be terribly humiliating.
“His Lordship asked you a question, Aldora,” her mother snapped.
Aldora jerked her attention up toward the marquess. She expected to see impatience in his frosty blue gaze but oddly found a flicker of warmth and something else. Something that looked an awful bit like commiseration.
“Aldora!”
“Forgive me, my lord. I’m afraid my mind wandered.”
He inclined his head. “I admit that I was curious as to whether you prefer London to the countryside.”
“I abhor London,” she blurted.
Her mother groaned like an animal in pain, an indication that Aldora had managed to provide the incorrect answer. The marquess was gracious enough to ignore her melodramatic mama.
Aldora bit the inside of her cheek, tempted to ask him what the appropriate answers were for the questions he’d peppered her with all afternoon.
“Tell me more about that, my lady. I’ll admit, I’ve never met a young lady whose ever admitted anything but love for the city.”
“Then you never met a lady who was telling you the truth,” she muttered.
Her mother’s gasp was lost in the marquess’s unexpected bark of laughter.
Aldora glanced up at him for the first time that morning with real interest. It would appear that St. James was not as stuffy as her dear friend, Valera had insisted.
Mother hurried to explain. “What my daughter means is—”
The marquess held up a staying hand. Mother snapped her lips shut like she was a chastened child in a schoolroom.
Aldora smiled. Perhaps there was something redeeming about His Lordship, after all.
He turned back to Aldora, his patient expression indicating that he waited for her to continue.
She ticked her chin up a notch. If she were to marry the man, she should at least be honest with him—in this, anyway.
“I hate London. The air lacks an elemental purity and cleanness that one finds in the country. I miss the lush fertile land to ride on, the crisp water to toss stones upon.” Her throat closed up as she remembered her childhood home, the Tudor estate in Leeds, which they’d lost to father’s debts. It had been the one place she had been truly happy.
Mother tittered nervously behind her hand. “My daughter over exaggerates her sentiments, my lord. She—”
“May I have a moment alone with Lad
y Aldora?”
Mother’s eyes went wide in her face. She stared unblinking like a night owl before wordlessly exiting the room.
Aldora tamped down the swell of panic that crested as her mother left her unchaperoned with His Lordship. She half expected her mother to defy all convention and pull the door closed in her wake, but alas it would appear not all sense of propriety had escaped her desperate mother.
She distantly registered the marquess rising and crossing over to the window. He parted the curtain and peered out into the streets below.
“I wanted to speak to you alone, my lady.”
Aldora’s fingers twisted in the fabric of her skirts. She stared down at the crumpled blue fabric and forced herself to relax her grip. She smoothed her palms along the creased satin. “Did you?” She was mere moments away from everything she’d hoped for, everything she’d dreamed of for her sisters and brother. There should be a euphoric feeling of elation. Relief. So where was it? Why was she left with nothing more than this suffocating, cloying sense of…absolute wrongness?
His Lordship dropped the curtain back into place and peered over his shoulder at Aldora. His penetrating blue eyes pierced through her and she shifted, feeling like he knew her secrets, knew her love for Michael, her scheming to wed him for no other reason than because of the title he possessed.
“I came here to ask you something, my lady.”
Oh, God. Here it comes. Nausea churned in her belly until she had to fold her arms protectively under her waist. She could not do this. “My lord, I cannot do this.”
His eyes narrowed.
Aldora’s choppy breath made speech impossible. She counted to three and stood. “My lord, you must forgive me.” Sheer bravery leant her legs the energy to move in his direction. “I cannot marry you.”
The marquess’s brows snapped together. “I beg your pardon?” he barked.
“It is not that I don’t want to wed you. You’re a fine man.” Of course, not really knowing him, she couldn’t say that with any absolute sincerity. “But I cannot wed you.” She took a deep breath and said the words that would serve as the death knell for her family. “You see, I love another.”
The air seemed to leave the marquess on a sudden exhale. “Well,” he said.
Aldora thought to the first time she’d met Michael; he’d not stood on ceremony with her. He’d been teasing and…and real. And in a society filled with glittering falsities and deceptive cheer, there was something so very important, so elemental to one’s survival and that was realness.
“I must say that isn’t why I’ve come today.”
His Lordship’s words jerked her back to the moment.
Aldora pushed her spectacles up on her nose, though it was her hearing that had failed her in that moment and not her eyesight. For surely the marquess hadn’t said what she thought he had.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I didn’t come to offer for you. Why, I hardly even know you, Lady Aldora.”
Yes, there was that. Not that a lack of familiarity had stood in the way of other esteemed Society matches.
“Oh,” she blurted. Because really, what else was a young lady to say after that? She expected she should feel the stinging red of shame and humiliation staining her cheeks. Or regret. Yes, there should be that, too. And yet, oddly, all she felt was…
Her shoulders sagged on a tidal wave of relief.
“I suppose I should be offended by your reaction,” the marquess drawled, more than a touch of humor laced his response
“Oh, I meant no offense.” Goodness, it was a good thing her mother wasn’t standing outside the room. Aldora would imagine they would have heard the thud of her body fainting dead away had she been. “I must confess to curiosity as to why you’re here, then, my lord?”
The marquess leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest in a very marquess-like pose. “Why, my dear. I want you to marry my brother.”
All the air went out of her. “Well,” she breathed.
“I’ve seen the two of you.”
“You have?” Her question emerged as a garbled squeak. She tried to remember back to whether there had been any perfectly formal and appropriate meetings between her and Michael and came up blastedly empty.
The marquess settled his elbows upon his knees and leaned forward. He lowered his voice. “I’m sure you know of the scandal in my brother’s past.” When she didn’t respond, he continued. “What happened was a horrible, tragic accident that has forever haunted Michael. He was a victim of a foolish lord’s rash temper and his own sense of young masculine pride. He has made a life for himself, a life that I’m vastly proud of. Not many ladies can see past the scandal and his lack of title to the man he has become. You have, though. Haven’t you?”
Aldora glanced down at her tightly fisted hands. She studied the thin green bulging vein that spoke of the tension radiating throughout her body. Michael’s past hadn’t mattered to her…and yet, it had too. It had to for reasons that had nothing to do with her own happiness but her siblings’ security. “You don’t understand.” Her words sounded lame to her own ears.
“I think I do.”
His immediate reply brought her head swiftly up. There was a gentleness in his eyes when he spoke. “I’m aware of your family’s circumstances.”
“Oh.” She closed her eyes wanting to blot out this humiliation. She and Mother had thought they’d been so skillful, so clever in concealing the truth and yet here it was, public knowledge to the ton. She wanted to wilt beneath the frayed Aubusson carpet that served as another stark reminder of their financial woes.
“You are hardly to blame for your father’s poor decisions. Just as I’m not to blame for my father’s decision to banish Michael.” His gaze skittered to a point beyond her shoulder, to a place she suspected he could see only in his mind. “And yet, I know what it is to live with the guilt of actions that had nothing to do with me.” When he returned his eyes to her, they were glacial blue and emotionally detached. “But this is your choice, Lady Aldora. If you reject Michael, you are doing so of your own volition, and I imagine that would be very, very difficult to carry with you for the rest of your days.”
The weight of his words settled in her heart, affirming the truth she already knew. Aldora reached up and touched the tips of two fingers against the gold pendant that hung from her neck. It radiated hot and heavy against her flesh, pulsating a steady rhythm. The words Valera had uttered to Aldora on the day of her wedding to the Earl of Ravenswood drifted through her memory. “I’m marrying the man of my dreams today, Aldora. And that necklace is going to lead you to the man of yours, too.”
The pendant had done just that. It had brought her to Michael.
Aldora had been so desperate to make a powerful match that dreams of finding the love Valera had with the Earl of Ravenswood had seemed like nothing more than a child’s dream. Only now, with the Marquess of St. James before her, Aldora realized she didn’t want to sacrifice her happiness for her family. She wanted Michael with a selfish, self-serving longing. Michael’s brother was correct; if she made the decision to forsake Michael, she would live with an aching painful regret.
Aldora forced her hand back to her lap. She didn’t need the old gypsy woman’s reminder. She knew what was in her heart and God forgive her, Michael was her fate.
She waited for the guilt, and yet this time it did not come.
Her sisters were beautiful. They were accomplished. They would make matches. Her brother was certainly young enough to weather the scandal when her father’s failings were privy to all of Society.
The marquess cleared his throat.
Aldora looked up at him.
“I imagine you are concerned with your father’s—”
She nodded curtly, effectively ending his words. She didn’t need him to finish the sentence. The fact that he and others knew of her family’s shame raked like hot coals along her skin.
“My brother has enough money—�
�
“I do not love your brother for his money,” she snapped.
The marquess angled his head. “Love?”
Aldora nodded. “I love—”
A loud commotion from outside the room jerked her attention to the door.
Her mother’s high-pitched screeching effectively buried whatever it was she was prattling on about.
“Where is she?” a deep baritone thundered from somewhere within the house.
Aldora leapt to her feet. Her heart raced in her chest as Michael’s brother dissolved into an afterthought of her periphery.
She raced to the door and collided hard against the wall of Michael’s chest. Her spectacles popped off her nose and skittered across the floor. His image blurred.
A watery smile turned her lips. She didn’t need her spectacles to know he was there, to sense the emotion that emanated from every fiber of his masculine form.
“Michael,” she breathed.
Chapter Ten
Michael bent down and retrieved Aldora’s spectacles, and with an informality that set Lady Adamson off on another wave of caterwauling, he placed them back on her freckled nose.
“Aldora,” he murmured.
His attention shifted to the familiar figure that rose from the ridiculously small chintz sofa. The same smoldering rage, jealousy, possessiveness that had fueled Michael’s footsteps and led him to do something as rash as invading Lady Adamson’s home, filled him when he spied his brother standing there, his face a blank, flat mask. Emotion raced through Michael’s being until his fingers twitched from the intensity of it.
He should have respected Aldora’s desire for a respectable match but she was his and if he didn’t fight for her, he would be forever filled with a regret that would eventually destroy him.
“I—”
“You can’t marry him.”
Through the thick glass of her spectacles, Aldora’s eyes went wide.
“I know.”
She wasn’t the conventional beauty he’d always favored. There was far too much unique in her heart-shaped face. But it was a face that was more precious than any other and he could not live without her.
The Heart of a Duke Page 23
