Notorious (Rebels of the Ton #1) - Minerva Spencer Page 0,21

how rude the gesture was and reveling in her widening eyes and frowning lips more than was probably normal or healthy.

“You sit there on your . . . your”—a phrase from the nursery rhyme his twin nieces incessantly recited echoed through his head and Gabriel spat it at her—“tuffet.”

She opened her mouth, but Gabriel was only warming to his task.

“Yes, on your tuffet—and you judge me, when I am only trying to spare you. Perhaps you might turn your keen sense of observation on yourself, Miss Clare. Perhaps you might ask yourself what you were doing alone in that conservatory without—”

She leaped up and Gabriel met her halfway, closing the distance between them with one long stride.

“Don’t. You. Dare.” She punctuated her words with her finger—poking him hard in the chest between each word. Her own chest heaved, the heat of her body against his scorching. Her eyes were narrowed slits of gray as sharp as the edge of a sword. “Don’t you dare blame me for that drunken rake’s unforgiveable actions.”

Gabriel stared down at her; the slight tremor in her chin gave away something of the tumult that must lie beneath her bravado—not to mention making him feel like a cruel, insensitive, and selfish brute.

Which of course brought to mind his father.

Gabriel had known, even as a boy, that Sultan Abdul Hassan had been a man with a notorious temper—a temper like Gabriel’s, not that his mother didn’t have an impressive temper, herself. But the sultan had coupled his temper with absolute power, and he had wielded that power without any check. His father’s harsh behavior had been something Gabriel never wanted to consider when the sultan was alive; after all, he was his father and Gabriel had loved him. But that did not mean Gabriel ever wished to become him.

Although the sultan had shown him nothing but affection and indulgence, it had pained Gabriel to see his father did not love or honor his mother. But such had been the way of things in that household. Only when he was older did he understand that not all households operated as the sultan’s had. Again, it had been his mother who had disabused him of his ignorance. She’d caught him with one of the servants—one of the many women who’d angled at Gabriel since he was barely thirteen. By the time his mother caught him, he was no callow youth as he’d been when a woman three times his age took his virginity. No, by the age of fifteen Gabriel had been an arrogant young man who’d bedded dozens of women and believed his father’s people were his possessions: the women to serve the urges of his body, the men to follow his orders without question.

His father, the women of the harem, everyone around him, none of them except for his mother had challenged him in that belief.

They’d had their first argument the day she caught him with a harem servant, and Gabriel still shuddered to remember it.

“Debauching one’s servants is the act of a weak and despicable man, Jibril. That girl might have knelt for you but remember that she cannot say no to you. These people who serve our needs are like slaves.” Her face, which had always shown him nothing but love, had gone hard. “As I am a slave. And you are inflicting yourself on people who will not say no to you—never let yourself think otherwise—even when they may appear willing.”

Those words rang inside his head as Gabriel looked down at Miss Clare, a woman who had been compromised by an arrogant, selfish, thoughtless young man tonight and would now be forced to give all power over her person to another man: to him.

Shame mingled with myriad other emotions that had been surging and roiling inside him ever since he’d entered the conservatory and encountered Visel and Miss Clare. But it was not Miss Clare’s fault he was trapped. It was neither of their faults. Yet he was behaving as though it was.

He exhaled and nodded. “You are correct, Miss Clare, and I apologize for even daring to imply that you are somehow culpable in this mess. Please, forgive me.”

The moment stretched before she gave an abrupt nod.

She was, Gabriel realized, for all her self-sufficiency and outward strength, deeply shaken by the incident this evening. And his ill-conceived suggestion had not helped.

“I accept your generously tendered offer of marriage. You needn’t get down on your knees and do the pretty for me, Mr. Marlington.”