Falling for the Marquess - Julianne MacLean Page 0,99
nightfall if you choose to ignore that fact.”
“She belongs to you, does she? American women are not little lambs, Rawdon. You should have learned that by now. Clara is a bold and daring woman, and one should not try to put her in a cage.”
“My reason for coming here is not to cage my wife. It is to get rid of you.”
Tucker raised an eyebrow. He sat down on the bed, leaned back on an elbow and crossed one leg over the other. “If you send me back to America, you will make Clara very unhappy. Is that what you want?”
“She won’t be unhappy.”
“Yes, she will.”
Seger wanted to end this conversation immediately by throwing Tucker out the window, but he smothered the urge because he wanted information.
“I understand that you forced your company upon her today,” he said.
“I wouldn’t call it that,” Tucker replied. “She received me in her drawing room like the proper lady that she is.”
Seger cleared his throat. She received him?
If that were true, it meant Clara had lied about what had really happened.
But God! Even after hearing Tucker uphold Quintina’s claim, Seger still had trouble believing it. He wanted to trust Clara—all his instincts were steering him in that direction—but how could he, when three people were now saying one thing, while she said something completely different?
He loathed being in this position—in a battle, unarmed, ignorant of his enemy. Unaware of the terrain.
He decided to take a risk. “She didn’t receive you. You forced your way into her coach.”
Tucker rose to his feet. “Is that what she told you? She’s a sneaky one. You probably shouldn’t have married her. I’ll tell you what—I’ll take her off your hands and marry her myself, if you’ll agree to give her to me. A quiet divorce shouldn’t be difficult for a man like you. You’re an aristocrat. You must have connections in high places. I reckon she’d be happier with me, anyway. She doesn’t have it in her to stay in one place for too long. Besides that, we’re drawn to each other.”
All at once, Seger felt a rush of blood pounding in his ears. He clenched his jaw, hauled back an arm, and threw a hard punch at Tucker, knocking him flat onto the bed.
“Bloody hell!” Tucker cried, cupping his chin in his hand.
Seger turned to leave. “Be out of here by tonight, sir, or I’ll be back in the morning to continue this conversation exactly where we left off.”
Gillian heard the hotel door click shut and stepped out of the wardrobe. Heart racing, she smoothed a hand over her skirts and observed Gordon sitting on the edge of the bed, clutching his jaw. He glanced up at her with a feeble expression in his eyes. His lip was bleeding.
“He punched me!”
She crossed over the carpet to stand before him, took a look at his lip, and removed a handkerchief from her reticule. “Here. Use this.”
He reluctantly accepted it. “I thought you English were supposed to be polite and reserved.”
“Not Seger,” she replied. “Well, he’s polite when he wants to be, but never reserved.”
Gordon shook his head. “I don’t know what you see in him. He’s a brute if you ask me.”
“You were plenty brutish yourself.”
He didn’t look up at her. He just dabbed at his lip with her handkerchief.
For a long moment, she watched the top of his head. His hair was a shiny brown color. She liked the way it parted in waves.
“I would have thought you’d be used to fighting,” she said, “after being in prison.”
He tried to give her back the handkerchief, but it was stained with blood.
“Keep it,” she said.
He stuffed it into his pocket and stood. He was very tall. He towered over her, and he smelled like cigarette smoke.
“I had a talent for talking my way out of most fights,” he told her.
“I’d wager you did.”
The side of his mouth curled up in a careless grin. “Not this one, though. Seemed more like I was talking my way into it.”
Gillian shrugged. “It’s what you agreed to.”
“Yes, and I also agreed to a hundred pounds. I said exactly what your aunt told me to say, so where’s my reward?”
She paused and looked up at Gordon Tucker.
This man was a criminal. She’d never known a criminal before.
“I have it right here.” Gillian reached into her reticule and pulled out a bank note. She held it between two fingers and waited for him to take it, but he didn’t right away.