An Unexpected Gentleman (21 page)

“It’s true, then,” he whispered and let his hand fall.

“I . . . I’m fine. It’s over.” She looked for a way to change the subject. “You’ve not told me why you returned early.”

“Did you think I’d stay away after hearing of this?”

“You heard . . . In
Edinburgh
? Good heavens, the ton must be starved for good gossip indeed—”

“I didn’t make it to Edinburgh. Word reached me en route. I’ve had my men keep an eye on you.”

“Oh.” She thought it rather sweet that he’d been concerned enough to watch out for her. “Well, if you knew it was true, why did you come to check?”

“I like to make sure I’ve all the facts before I shoot a man.”

And with that, he turned about and headed for the door.

“What?” Adelaide blinked at his back, twice, before moving to intercede. “No! For pity’s sake, not this again.”

She raced forward, grabbed hold of his arm, and pulled. Connor didn’t throw her off, but he didn’t stop either, merely dragging her along.

“Connor, stop. Please. Be rational.”

“No.”

“Remember your quest for vengeance.” She tugged on his arm again. “A single shot and it’s done? What sort of revenge is that?”

“Expedient.”

“But it’s not what you’ve planned.” He’d never expounded on his plans, so she had no idea if that was true, but it seemed a reasonable assumption that if a quick murder were Connor’s intention, Sir Robert would be dead by now.

“Plans change.”

Desperate, she jumped in front of him. “I will agree to marry you if you will cease this—”

He stopped at the edge of the parlor and looked down at her with a frown. “You have to marry me. You haven’t another choice.”

“I do. There are other gentleman in this world aside from yourself and Sir Robert.” Pity she didn’t happen to know any.

“I compromised you.”

Sensing an opening, she jabbed a finger into the center of his chest. “Yes.
Yes
, you most certainly did. And if you have a duel with Sir Robert now, and you miss and he does not, I will . . .” She trailed off, surprised by what she’d been about to say.

I will be left alone
. But that didn’t make any sense. She had Isobel and George, and Wolfgang, if one was willing to stretch the definition of good company.

“You’ll what?” Connor prompted.

“I . . . will . . . be left without a wealthy husband,” she improvised.

“How touching,” he said dryly and gently moved her aside. “I don’t miss.”

She jumped in front of him again and put a restraining hand against his chest. “Then you’ll end on the gallows, or be forced to flee the country, and I will still be left without a wealthy husband. You
owe
me a wealthy husband.”

Connor’s lips thinned into a line. He looked to the door, to her, and back again. She could feel his body hum with frustration, like a bow drawn taught and lightly plucked. With bated breath, she waited to see if a seemingly logical, and indisputably obstinate, man could be persuaded by such a ridiculous argument. Owed a wealthy husband, indeed.

“Fine,” Connor relented at last. His eyes came back to her face and stayed. “I’ll not demand a duel. I’ll not kill him.”

“Thank heavens.” She let her hand fall.

He raised his hand and cupped her face. “I will never do this,” he said gruffly. Lifting his eyes from her cheek, he caught her gaze and held it. “I would never raise my hand to you.”

Adelaide said nothing. Words came easy to Connor; changes of mood came swiftly. But there was no doubt he meant what he said now, and she believed him . . . for now. She had no fear of him or his temper. Not once had she felt threatened in his presence. But her faith in his promises was limited. Only time would tell if she’d misjudged another aspect of his character.

She nodded, but lest he should begin to think she had reverted to blindly accepting everything to come out of his mouth, she added, “If you do, it will only be once.”

He wasn’t pleased with the response. Dropping his hand, he scowled at her. “You’ll believe me.”

He wasn’t predicting the future, she realized. He was issuing a command. She would believe him
now
. It was so
un
believably absurd that she broke out into laughter.

Connor didn’t appear the least amused. “This is not a laughing matter.”

“It is,” she assured him. “It most certainly is.”

How like a man to presume he could demand trust from a woman. How like one to take offense when that woman refused to cooperate.

“Adelaide—”

“Oh, stop glowering.” Her laughter faded, and she was within an inch of following it up with a sound lecture.
You’ll believe me . . .
Honestly. But she was more than a little weary of arguing, of being angry. She had a lifetime to spend with this man. She could spend it hoarding her resentment, finding fault with everything he said and did, and plotting vengeance for what had occurred at the house party, or she could make some effort to be civil . . . and, perhaps, plot a bit when he wasn’t around.

“As it happens, I do believe you.”

 

The tight knot between Connor’s shoulder blades loosened but failed to disappear altogether. It didn’t worry him overmuch that Adelaide wasn’t sure of him in a general sense. A little time and some careful maneuvering would remedy the problem. But the idea that she might fear him in a physical sense, that she suspected him capable of striking a woman in anger, that was intolerable.

He’d never raised a hand to a woman. Never. Oh, he’d wanted to. There had been the boardinghouse mistress in Boston who’d taken the rent he’d risked life and limb to steal and kicked him out on the street, and the urchin who’d stolen the bread he’d bought with a hard day’s honest wages. God knew, he’d had the opportunity to retaliate for both insults with his fists. He’d never laid a finger on them. He’d be damned to hell before he laid a finger on Adelaide in anger.

His eyes tracked over the angry bruise on her cheek.

He’d be damned if he didn’t lay fists on Sir Robert.

Rage was a towering flame inside him, blistering his skin and threatening to consume his control. He banked it through a well-honed force of will and let it simmer below the surface. Later, he would let it spill over, when it was Sir Robert, and not Adelaide, who would suffer the burns.

He strove for a lighter tone. “I’d not thought Sir Robert would make it so easy for you to decide in my favor.”

Her eyes darted away. “I didn’t decide because of this. This is because I had decided.”

“Had you?” It gave him a ridiculous amount of pleasure to hear her say it. “Dare I ask why?”

She looked at him again and gifted him with an adorably cheeky smile. “The fifteen thousand pounds.”

“Naturally.”

He didn’t believe it. That she would marry for money, he never doubted, but she hadn’t chosen him because he had
more
money. Sir Robert’s income was sufficient to see her family comfortably settled, and she would have been content to accept sufficient, if it had been offered by the better man.

Damn if he didn’t like knowing she’d thought him the better man, even before Sir Robert had betrayed his true nature. But knowing for himself and hearing her admit it were not the same thing.

It was ridiculous that he should need the words from her.
He
knew, didn’t he? Clearly, she knew as well. There was no reason for the obvious to be said aloud. And yet, he couldn’t stop himself from asking to hear them.

“I would like the truth, Adelaide. If you could see your way to giving it.”

A
delaide considered Connor’s request and the manner in which it had been given. There was a new kind of hesitancy in his voice, something she’d not heard from him before. If she’d not known better, she might have called it uncertainty. She knew better. Men like Connor were never uncertain of themselves. They were confident to a fault.

She was tempted to repeat her insistence about the fifteen thousand pounds, but in the interest of beginning their new life on a more affirming note, she decided to try for a bit of honesty.

“I chose you because you told me . . .” She trailed off and reconsidered her words. Almost, she’d said she’d chosen him because he’d told the truth. Which was perfectly absurd. “You told
more
truths than Sir Robert. You said you’d taken notice of me before you knew of the baron’s courtship.” She nodded once. “That was the truth.”

It wasn’t the only reason, or even her first reason, but it was the one that carried the most weight with her now. After her temper of yesterday had passed, she’d looked beyond the tangle of lies and latched onto that one truth.

Connor had wanted her, just for her. Only until he’d found other reasons to want her, of course, and it hardly excused him from having played merry hell with her reputation. But still . . . He’d wanted her, and that was something.

“You believed me.” Connor didn’t sound stunned, exactly, but there was an unmistakable note of surprise.

Good heavens, he had been unsure. Amusement tugged at her lips. “Yes.”

“And do you believe he stole my inheritance and sold me to a press-gang when I was a boy?” he asked, a hint of eagerness in his tone.

She remembered the fury and violence in Sir Robert’s eyes. “It is possible.”

“And tossed me in prison and made another grasp at my fortune when I returned?”

“Yes, of course.” She’d believed that from the start.

Now he was just looking smug. “And that I have, in fact, saved you.”

Insomuch as a gentleman could save a lady from a burning building
after
he had set it on fire. She opened her mouth to inform him of Sir Robert’s own plan for revenge but thought better of it at the last moment. Connor may have noticed her first, but it didn’t follow that his first thoughts had been of marriage. Would his offer stand if he learned Sir Robert had never really cared for her? That there was no revenge to be had in marrying her? She wanted to think it would. She wanted to believe he would keep his promise. But she couldn’t be sure.

“You provided a viable alternative,” she replied.

His mouth turned down at the corners. “An equivocation, but I’ll accept it.”

“Generous of you.”

He didn’t smile as she’d hoped. His gaze was steady and intense, his voice soft and even. “You’ll be Mrs. Brice. You will not regret it.”

For the life of her, she couldn’t tell if he was making a promise or delivering an order. She nodded, thinking it was an appropriate response either way.

“You’ll not see him again,” Connor said.

She nodded with more enthusiasm, not caring if it was an order or a promise, so long as it was true.

Connor caught her chin gently and brushed a whisper-soft kiss against her lips. “Until tomorrow,” he murmured. Then he dropped his hand, spun on his heel, and strode toward the door.

“But . . .” They had more to discuss—more details and negotiations to work through. There was still that awful matter of
how many times a day
. “Where are you going?”

He threw a sharp smile over his shoulder. “To not kill Sir Robert.”

 

T
here were quite a few things a person could do to a man without killing him. Arms and legs could be broken, or even removed. A body could live without all its limbs. A body could live without a number of things—the eyes, nose, ears, and tongue.

Connor hadn’t included mutilation in his original inventory of ways Sir Robert would pay. But he was a flexible man, and he’d always meant for the list to be open-ended.

He took dark pleasure in adding to that list now, carefully selecting each gruesome punishment. It gave him something to do while he waited in the dark alley between Banfries’s tavern and the mews. He needed something to distract himself from the image of Sir Robert lifting his hand to Adelaide, and visions of divesting Sir Robert of the offending appendage almost did the trick. Almost.

The fury he’d kept carefully concealed for Adelaide’s sake had boiled over the moment he’d walked out her front door.

The bastard had used his fist. His
fist
.

So, it would be the hands first. He’d break each finger individually. The tongue next. A fitting price for the lies that had spilled from Sir Robert’s mouth. Then . . .

He turned his head at the sound of the tavern door swinging open and laughter pouring outside. When Sir Robert and his man stepped into the alley, the list was forgotten. Connor forgot everything but his fury. The urge to attack clawed at him, but he waited, letting the rage build higher, until the men were in the dark of the alley. Then he stepped from the shadows and reached his quarry in three purposeful strides.

He gave Sir Robert time to defend himself—he gave Sir Robert time to try, anyway—but the man just stood there, immobile but for the widening of his eyes.