By Love Unveiled (36 page)

“Would you?” Garett said in a husky rasp as he took a step toward her. “You could be happy here, living for no one but your father all your life?” He hesitated. “Or perhaps you don’t intend that,” he added, a tinge of bitterness in his voice. “Perhaps you’ve an eye for some other gentleman—someone more lively, like Hampden.”

Tears flooded her vision so she could hardly see. “No, no one else.”

He closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms. “Don’t cry, my gypsy princess. You’ll break my heart. And I can’t afford that, for I only have one, and it belongs to you.”

She lifted her gaze to his. “Please don’t say such things if you don’t mean them.”

“Ah, but I’ve never meant anything more.” He brushed her tears away with one finger. “I know you’re angry with me for not telling you of your father. You have every right to be hurt, but I swear I’ll make it up to you if you’ll just marry me. I want you to be my wife, Mina. And not because I wish to keep Falkham House, either.”

“Then why?” she asked, needing the words, feeling as if she’d die if he couldn’t speak them.

He smiled then. For the first time since she’d known
him, she could truly say he looked like the boy Garett she’d imagined all those years before.

“Because you’re sweet and kind. Because my tenants adore you, and my valet and your aunt would undoubtedly kill me if I left you here.”

She couldn’t suppress a quick smile.

His eyes darkened to the color of midnight rain. “And because I want you more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life. More than my estates or even my revenge against my uncle.” He swallowed hard. “But most of all because I love you. I didn’t realize it until today when I talked to your father, but I felt it long before.”

Her heart swelled with joy. At last she’d found a way through all the barriers to his heart. After all the distrust, all the fear, he was hers.

“Well?” he asked as she stared up at him with shining eyes. “Can you find it in your heart to love a reprobate like me, with scars and old wounds always giving me something to grumble about?”

She raised herself on tiptoe to press her lips sweetly to his. “Perhaps in time, my lord—” she teased.

He growled and forced her mouth back up against his, kissing her with such passion that he left her weak in his arms. “Say it,” he whispered when he’d torn his lips from hers. “Say it, Mina!”

“I love you,” she admitted. “I’ve loved you so long, my poor, dear exile.”

“And you’ll marry me,” he added in a tone that brooked no argument.

“And I’ll marry you,” she repeated.

Then her mouth was once again smothered by his.

At that moment the king and her father thrust their heads inside the room to see how matters were coming along. Father bristled immediately, ready to put an end to what he saw, but the king pulled him back with a smile on his face.

“Don’t worry,” the king whispered. “I think they have matters quite in hand.” Then he nodded Father from the room and followed him out, shutting the door behind him.

F
ather! Mother! Look what me and Aunt Tamara found!”

Garett turned to see his daughter, Beatrice, come skipping across the grass toward where he stood beneath an apple tree.

Tamara followed more slowly behind the four-year-old, who clutched something black in her tiny fist and waved it like a banner over her head.

“What is it?” Marianne asked from her seat on the ground next to where Garett stood. Her face was wreathed in smiles.

Garett felt his breath catch in his throat as he gazed down at her tawny hair and her face aglow with the knowledge that her next child—
their
next child—would soon arrive.

Beatrice stopped before her parents, all out of breath. She looked up at Garett, the winsome smile on her face reminding him so much of Marianne that he instantly felt the same stab of protectiveness he always felt for his wife.

Gently he ruffled his daughter’s hair. “What have you there, poppet?”

Her soft blue eyes alight, she held out the crumpled piece of black silk. Garett smiled as he recognized it, then glanced at Marianne.

“My mask,” Marianne murmured. “Where did you find it?”

Kneeling beside her mother, Beatrice laid it on Marianne’s lap, smoothing it out reverently. “ ’Twas in a box of old clothes. Aunt Tamara said I could play with them ’til Uncle Will came to fetch her. Then we found this!” She looked up into her mother’s face. “Aunt Tamara said it was yours once.”

“Aye,” Garett told his daughter. “Your mother wore it the first time I saw her.” An image flashed before him of Marianne in Mr. Tibbett’s shop. How vividly he remembered his first glimpse of her defiant hazel eyes through the slits in the mask.

Marianne looked up at him now and smiled. She, too, remembered. He laid his hand on her shoulder, pleased when she laid her hand on his.

“Why did Mother wear a mask?” Beatrice asked him.

“She didn’t want me to see her beautiful face, dearling,” Garett answered with a chuckle. “She knew the minute I saw it I’d want to marry her.”

Tamara’s snort reminded Garett of her presence. “She knew you’d be wanting something else, I’m thinking,” she said dryly.

The quick blush that suffused Marianne’s face brought forth another chuckle from Garett. “Aye,” he agreed and squeezed her shoulder.

“You two shouldn’t say such things in front of Beatrice,” Marianne protested as she tried to smother a laugh.

But Beatrice had hardly noticed the exchange, let alone understood it. One of the dogs from the rebuilt kennels went racing by, and she jumped to her feet to run laughing after it, the mask suddenly forgotten.

“I’ll get her,” Tamara muttered as she lifted her skirts and walked briskly after Beatrice, scolding her all the way.

Garett knelt beside Marianne and plucked the mask from her lap. Marianne’s eyes locked with his as he held the mask up to her face.

“You may not believe this,” he told her as he surveyed her critically, “but the entire time you were treating my sword wound that fateful night, I couldn’t bring myself to believe your lie about the smallpox. I felt certain your face had to be as captivating as your voice.”

She looked skeptical. “My voice? But my words to you were harsh.”

He dropped the mask into her lap. “Not all of them. You spoke of flowers when all that grew in my heart was weeds. That’s when I knew I had to have you. I wanted the flower you hid beneath your veils of mystery.”

Settling onto the ground beside her, he took her hand. “It took me some time to unveil you, didn’t it? Thank God I managed it at last.” His other hand cupped her cheek; then his thumb began rhythmically stroking her lower lip.

“And did you find the flower you sought?” she whispered, her breath quickening.

“That and so much more,” he murmured. “I found a garden. The garden of my heart in yours.”

Then he swallowed her smile of delight with a kiss.

Turn the page for a special look at the first delightful romance in the new Duke’s Men series

WHAT THE
DUKE DESIRES

by
New York Times
bestselling author

Sabrina Jeffries

Coming Summer 2013 from Pocket Books

L
isette had serious trouble feigning sleep once Mrs. Greasley started talking again.

“Forgive me,” she asked, “but what does a land agent do, exactly?”

Holding her breath, Lisette waited to see how the duke would manage this. He’d been stubborn about taking up
her
choice of profession, and now she couldn’t even help him with his choice without giving up her pretense of sleep.

“He collects the rents,” Lyons answered easily, to her surprise. “He makes inventories. He surveys the farms, keeps a terrier of the common lands . . .”

As he continued to list an impressive number of duties, Lisette marveled at his knowledge. She could not have helped him with this, to be sure. Papa had always just said that his land agent “managed the estate,” indifferent to what the man actually did. And Papa had only been a viscount. She’d assumed that a wealthy duke with vast properties would have even less need of such knowledge, and would know little about the inner workings of his estates.

In Lyons’s case, she’d been wrong. Mr. Greasley asked more questions, and the duke answered every one easily. Astonishing.

As the two men began to talk of leases and enclosures and things that were far beyond her ken, the rumble of Lyons’s voice and the swaying of the carriage began to lull her into a doze. She
had
been up very late and had risen very early. And they wouldn’t reach Brighton for some time . . .

She came slowly awake a while later to find the coach dark and the duke’s arm about her shoulders. Her head had slid down to the center of his chest, and her hand was on his waist.

Horrified, she jerked herself upright, embarrassment filling her cheeks with heat as he pulled his arm from around her shoulders. “Where are we?” she asked, trying to get her bearings.

“On the outskirts of Brighton,” he said in that low timbre that did something unseemly to her insides.

She couldn’t look at him. She’d been practically on his lap! How mortifying. He must think her the most vulgar creature imaginable.

“You were sleeping very sound,” Mrs. Greasley offered. “You must have been tired, deary.”

It was said so kindly that Lisette winced. She felt a little guilty about how her fake tiff with her “husband” had led to a very real tiff between Mr. and Mrs. Greasley. Still, they seemed to have patched it up. The woman was leaning companionably against him, and he didn’t seem to mind.

Lisette turned her face to the window. Thank God this nightmare stretch of the trip was almost over. The incident with the Greasleys had proved only too well that she couldn’t necessarily travel with impunity.

The duke had known it, too, and tried to take advantage. She couldn’t fool herself that she’d gained the upper hand with her little performance. She’d just gained a reprieve, that’s all. He could have chosen to drop the facade the moment he realized he might get the truth out of the Greasleys. He could have revealed that she was
not
married to him, and asked them flat out what he wished to know. And in one fell swoop, he would have ruined her and possibly Dom’s business.

Why hadn’t he? Because he was a gentleman?

More likely it was because he could tell that the Greasleys didn’t know enough to help him. Thank God she’d mentioned both Toulon and Paris to them in the past, and thank God the two cities were in very different parts of France. Otherwise, she was almost certain Lofty Lyons would have abandoned her in Brighton to hunt down Tristan in whichever one they’d named definitively.

She’d made a narrow escape. Too narrow.

Fortunately, she had little chance of encountering more neighbors. So once they parted from the Greasleys she ought to be safe from discovery, at least until they were on their way to Paris.

Surely Lyons would never abandon her in France. That would be most ungentlemanly, and he was nothing if not a gentleman.

Most of the time.

A shiver skittered down her spine as she remembered the feel of his strong arm about her shoulders. And worse yet, the way his hand had toyed with hers earlier. She should have tugged hers free. Why hadn’t she?

Because it had been so . . . intimate. No man had ever held her hand in such a fashion, boldly but tenderly, too. It had utterly unnerved her. Even now, with her hand still tucked in the crook of his arm and his thigh pressed against hers, she felt that same quivering in her belly that she’d felt when he’d caressed her hand.

She stiffened. Skrimshaw was right. She’d better take care. The duke had been the one to assert he was her husband, and that shifted everything. Now there was no reason for him to treat her like a sister, no reason for them to have separate rooms . . . anywhere.

Her pulse gave a flutter at the thought of spending several nights on the road alone in an inn room with him.

Lord save her. She’d better be careful.

She slanted a gaze up at him. He was looking entirely too unreadable. After her little display, she’d expected him to be a good deal angrier. But he’d conceded defeat and acted as if nothing had happened. It had put her on her guard again. He had something up his sleeve. What could it be?

They reached the coaching inn a short while later. As the Greasleys took their leave, Mrs. Greasley surprised her by murmuring, “Don’t let the man bully you, deary. If you don’t stand up for yourself at the beginning
of the marriage, he’ll be no good to you for anything but grief.”

The sage advice, coming from a woman who clearly had her own husband tied neatly in knots, bemused her. Had Mrs. Greasley noticed more about their relationship than Lisette had given her credit for? Or was that just the woman’s usual advice to newly married couples?

It didn’t matter. Lisette had to survive the duke’s presence only long enough to extricate Tristan from this trouble. And standing up to Lyons when he tried to bully her wasn’t the problem. She could manage that. It was when he was being sweet that he was most dangerous.

Was that his current course—to kill her with kindness?

Trying to figure out his game consumed her throughout the next hour, while he went off with the innkeeper to arrange for their room and their passage to Dieppe, have their bags sent up, and ask that a meal be provided. So much for traveling as a regular person. Clearly he had no idea how a regular person traveled.

Then again, he’d changed the rules by claiming to be a land agent. Such men did have some money—they would be able to afford a decent room in an inn, and they would be used to giving orders.

She had to admit it had been rather clever of him to hit on that role. It put him in that nebulous land between gentleman and tradesman. He worked for a living, but it required a certain amount of polish and skill. It meant that his accent wasn’t
too
odd, nor his knowledge of
certain things too unbelievable. And clearly he had realized that he knew the role well enough to play it.