Her Notorious Viscount (27 page)

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.”

Her website is
www.jennapetersen.com.

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LESSONS FROM A COURTESAN

SEDUCTION IS FOREVER

DESIRE NEVER DIES

FROM LONDON WITH LOVE

SCANDALOUS

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.

Microsoft Reader February 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-180372-7

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