How the Marquess Was Won (44 page)

He was a terrifying man, as far as Phoebe was concerned.

Her limbs were all-over ice.

Shot.

And then suddenly she made a fist and slammed it into her thigh. And then she did it again. She gulped in breaths, but the air seared her lungs. She hated herself for her cowardice, for the consequences of it. If he died . . . If he
died
. . . Fear was a choking hand round her throat.

She looked up into Jonathan’s face, who watched stoically, with sympathy, clearly accustomed to histrionic displays. Then again, he had Violet Redmond for a sister.

She thought:
He’ll make a remarkable man one day.
And it was his stoicism that restored a measure of calm and dignity.

“Thank you for telling me. Will you take me to him?” she managed.

She could barely hear her own voice over the roaring in her ears.

Jonathan turned for the door. “That’s why I’m here. Come with me.”

S
he burst through the pub door with Jonathan. She blinked in the light, gasped from the warmth.

It seemed a sacrilege that the Pig & Thistle was warm and well lit and filled with laughing, drinking, people, much like any other night, when Jules was lying bleeding, perhaps dying, in the room behind the bar.

“Where is—”

Jonathan pointed. In front of the door to the room behind the bar stood a man she knew to be Captain Chase Eversea—hardly as recognizable as his brother Colin but unmistakable nevertheless. She was uncertain whether he knew her by name.

He barred the entrance of the door and regarded Jonathan coldly.

And received a glare in return.

Jonathan spoke curtly. “This is the woman in question.”

This earned upraised eyebrows. “He says you don’t love him,” Chase said flatly. She suspected it was a test.

“What do
you
think?” she snapped.

He studied her. And then his mouth quirked ruefully and he knocked once on the door, opened the door and gestured her through.

She stopped in the doorway. She’d always thought she was brave, but she was terrified now of what she might find.

She took a deep breath and made herself look.

Oh, but God. He was alive. He looked in fact
very
alive. Jules was naked above the waist, bandaged at the shoulder, reclining on a pallet, sipping at a flask of whiskey, and otherwise looking very alert, and reflective.

He turned and saw her. She was certain he stopped breathing then.

She was also certain only holy relics knew what it was like to be gazed upon the way he was gazing at her.

“Did you have to go and get yourself shot?” She still heard her own voice as if she were underwater.

It was a moment before he could speak, as he didn’t seem to be done simply looking at her.

“Clearly, yes. For here you are. Unless, of course, you’ve stopped off on your way to Africa.”

Instantly the room cracked and sizzled with such powerful emotion, nearly visible as fireworks, that even Chase Eversea was taken aback.

More silence of the fraught variety ensued.

Chase cleared his throat. “We’ll just leave the two of you alone in—”

Neither of them looked at him.

He backed out of the room and closed the door.

Phoebe stared at him for a dazed moment longer. And then she crumpled.

She sank to her knees next to him. She ducked her head, shuddered, relief wracking her body. “Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God, oh God . . . I thought . . .”

He shifted to stroke her hair, and murmured her name, over and over. “Shhhh. Hush now. It’s all right. It’s all right.”

“Are you going to live?”

Then she glanced up from between her hands and had her answer. His voice was strong and he in fact looked quite well, if a bit pale. Now that she was closer, she could see the blood through the bandage. Her head swam, and she closed her eyes again.

“Live? I’ve already died and gone to heaven, for here you are.”

She rolled her eyes at that, trying for insouciance. She could feel hot tears coursing down her cheeks, which embarrassed her. It was a curse to be a woman, sometimes. A very rare
few
times. But when one could make love to someone like the marquess, it was very much a blessing.

“Please don’t cry. It makes the pain worse.”

This made her laugh, knocking tears away with her fists. “Does it hurt very much?”

“When the whiskey wears off I will know more. They sent the vicar in, that tall handsome fellow—”

“Mr. Sylvaine.”

“And it was the strangest thing, but I could swear I felt the pain ease when he touched me on the arm, only briefly.”

“I imagine a man of God and a flask of whiskey are bound to take one’s pain away.”

He smiled. “Likely it was that.”

There was a pause.

“I
will
die, however,” he said quite seriously, “if you leave me again. Just watch me.”

“Jules . . . I’ve been such an unforgivable coward, but you knew all along that I was afraid. I . . . love you.”

“I know,” he soothed. “You’re forgiven.”

She was almost amused he didn’t say “I love you,” in return.

Almost.

She waited, but it wasn’t forthcoming. Very well, then.

“You were right. About everything,” she said finally. “About me.”

“So were you. About me.”

“Both of those statements can’t possibly be true.”

“Ah, but they are, schoolteacher. I love you so much I can hardly tell my own heart from yours anymore, and I’ve never said it to another woman in my life as it’s never until now been true. It’s clear I cannot live without you. There’s naught I can do about it. I can’t put it in a box, and clearly I’ll never behave normally again, or be free of bodily injury, until you’re mine, only mine, forever. I surrender. But I want something.”

Despite his warning about tears, her eyes were swimming. “Anything,” she whispered.

“I want children with you. I want to wake up next to you every day. I want to bicker with you about foolish things and buy you gifts and make love to you every day in a shocking variety of ways. I want to . . .”

Here his glibness failed him abruptly.

He turned to the wall, and said bemused, to himself, “This is harder than I thought it would be. Quite humbling, actually.”

He breathed in deeply, turned with resolution toward her.

And when he spoke, his voice was faint, from nerves and emotions and sheer momentousness.

“I should be honored and fortunate beyond all reason if you would consent to be my wife.”

Such lovely pomp!

A tentative knock sounded.

They jumped.

“What is it?” they snapped in unison.

Ned Hawthorne opened the door a crack. “Lord Dryden, there’s a pair of stricken gentlemen here who have something to say to you. And I think you’d better speak with them straightaway.
Straight
away.”

Jules exchanged a glance with Phoebe. “Send them in, then.”

Two men stood in the doorway. A ruddy, stocky, country squire, gray-faced and resolute, mud on his boots. The other a young man, lean as a sapling, dressed in fashionable clothes, young enough to feature a few spots on his complexion . . . sporting a long forelock that dropped down over his eyes.

They bowed low.

“Lord Dryden, I am Mr. Frederick Hart, and this is my son, Jem. Tell him, Jem,” the older man ordered grimly.

The young man swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He looked near to casting his accounts.

“Were you shot with a .45 caliber pistol, Lord Dryden?” His voice shook. The hat in his hands trembled violently in his grip.

The marquess frowned warningly, began to sit up, winced, and Phoebe put a protective arm over him, preventing him from moving.

Jem opened his palm, and inside was a ball the precise match of the one they’d taken out of him.

The expression on Jules’s face had the boy taking a step back.

He stammered, his words clicking from dry-mouthed nerves. “We were taking target practice, sir, you see . . . I’m an excellent shot, most days . . . the light was dying and I know we should have stopped, and my hair . . .” he lifted up his forelock “. . . well, it fell into my eyes as I fired. I fired wide, and the ball in all likelihood ricocheted . . .” He closed his eyes and swallowed. “Would that I’d shot myself instead!” He was anguished. “Are you very injured? I cannot tell you how sorry I am.”

“Damned foolish hair on the fast young men these days,” his father muttered. “That ridiculous hairstyle. When we heard what befell you—word travels fast here, you ought to know, in a small town—I insisted he accept the consequences. I couldn’t bear it otherwise. And nor could he, am I right, son?”

The young man hesitated, then nodded his head miserably.

Jules was frozen with incredulity. In truth, he could not speak. He was touched by the display of honor in two country squires, and by the humbling—in truth,
hilarious
—definitive evidence that some things
were
beyond his control. And life knew what was best for him better than he did, and had brought to him, not with graceful precision, but with magnificent, ridiculous poetry.

“Well,” he said quietly, very sternly, when he could speak, “the consequences will be grave, indeed. I shall need restitution.”

The young man closed his eyes and swallowed. His face was the color of parchment, and his father had a white-fingered grip on his arm, lest his son fall to his knees.

The young man deflated before their eyes. “Name it, my lord,” the young man said, his voice gravelly with resignation.

“I’d like you to cut off that damned forelock.”

There was a silence.

“Is that . . . all, my lord?” his father ventured.

“Yes.”

The boy looked about wildly, as if he’d lunge for a pair of scissors immediately. “Straightaway, sir.”

Jules suddenly envisioned a ton full of young men who’d shaved their hairlines. He sighed.

“That will be all,” he told them. Every inch the imperious, impersonal marquess, icily intimidating, entirely certain they would do precisely what he wished when he wished it.

They instantly leaped to do just that. “If we can ever do anything for you . . .”

“Oh, you have. That will be
all
,” he reiterated. “You may leave.”

They bobbed their heads frantically and bowed and backed out of the room, lighter in step.

The father muttered something they didn’t hear. But they heard the son’s reply.

“. . . don’t know, Da. Read in the broadsheets he might be going crackers. Something about a cat . . . ?”

He turned to Phoebe, whose eyes were watering and brilliant. Mirth or tears or some combination of emotions.

She was biting her lip.

“I’m going to bronze the pistol ball Chase Eversea took out of me. Because it brought you to me. Speaking of which . . . come here,” he whispered.

He cupped the back of her head with his hand, eased her face down to him.

The kiss was lingering, desperate, joyous, searching.

And when he ended it, his fingers played in the hair at her nape.

“So . . . ?” he whispered against her lips.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes. I should be delighted beyond all reason to be your wife.”

He closed his eyes against an enormous wave of relief, and shook his head wonderingly on a smile that near broke her heart. He took a few deep breaths.

“
How
did I get so lucky?” His voice cracked. He gave a short laugh.

She kissed the fading bruise on his forehead. She kissed his cat scratches. She kissed the bound wound on his arm. She kissed his eyelids. She laid her head over his beating heart. He covered it with his hand, and sighed. They would take care of each other from now on.

And as he eased into sleep, Phoebe murmured, “I
knew
you were meant for me.”

Epilogue

T
he marquess arranged the next part of his life as swiftly and purposefully as he arranged the first part of it. A special license was discreetly obtained and they were married in London just days after he was shot. Marquardt was kept busy dispatching messages to the members of the marquess’s family informing them he now had a wife. Given Phoebe’s experience with recalcitrant girls, he had no doubts at all she would be able to command servants, not to mention cope ably with his family. A skilled modiste named Madame Marceau (recommended by his friend, Mr. Cole) was enlisted to provide Phoebe with a glorious wardrobe befitting the wife of a marquess.