Passions of a Gentleman (Gentlemen of Honor #3) - Rose Gordon Page 0,40
her eyes. “Then everything happened so fast in a whirlwind of rough hands and sloppy kisses and a horrible pain that makes me wonder if Juliet is addled when she remarks about enjoying marital pleasures or perhaps something is wrong with me.”
“Nothing is wrong with you,” he assured her, wishing in vain he could erase all of her pain. He reached up and wiped the tears from her left eye with his thumb before fully pulling her against him as tightly as he could. “He deserves to hang.”
“No,” she said on a sob. “I’m the fool who believed him.”
“Does anyone know?” He had a feeling he already knew of one person who knew.
Beneath his arms she stiffened. “My father,” she said, confirming his suspicion of the man’s expression earlier.
Simon brushed a kiss atop the crown of her head. “Is he the only one?” He found it hard to believe she’d told her father and not someone else.
“Lady Townson.” She gripped his coat and pressed her face into the fabric of her shirt. “I had to tell her or else I’d have been married within a week!”
Another time and circumstance Simon would have howled with laughter at her words. “Is that why you wanted to come back? Was she unsympathetic?”
“No, not at all.” Rae straightened and blinked back her tears. “She said I wasn’t the first ruined young lady to grace Almacks and fight off suitors with her fan.”
“With all of the husbands she’s had a role in snagging, she would know,” Simon said lightly.
“Actually, she said the last unvirtuous lady has the most devoted husband in all of the land,” Rae said with a doubtful, self-deprecating smile.
“I don’t doubt her on that score, either.” He pressed his forehead to the top of her head. “Ruined doesn’t mean unmanageable.”
“But he refused to marry me,” Rae said, choking on another sob. “He knows nobody else will have me now, but he refused to do right.”
Simon ground his teeth. “Why the hell do you insist on wanting to marry him?” He didn’t mean to sound so unkind, but truly, why would she want to attach herself to that arse for the rest of her life?
“I don’t,” she said with conviction. “It’s everyone else who thinks I do.”
“Because you’ve led them to believe that,” he pointed out.
Rae lowered her lashes. “I know,” she said at last. “I thought if everyone believed I didn’t want to court because my heart was otherwise attached, they’d leave me alone.”
“How has that worked for you?”
“Very well,” she said with a wobbly grin.
“But are you happy?”
Rae’s countenance fell. “I will be once Juliet allows me to be a spinster.”
Simon didn’t believe that. He tapped his fingers against her left hip. “Why haven’t you told her the truth?”
“I can’t.” Her voice was barely audible.
“Are you afraid she’ll be upset that she can’t play matchmaker with every gentleman on the Mart?”
“No, I think she’ll be disappointed in me.”
Simon studied the odd young lady he held on his lap. “You’re more concerned about your sister’s opinion of you rather than your father’s?”
“I didn’t tell him by choice,” she admitted softly. “When I got home, he saw me before I could get into the house. He just knew, I suppose. He told me the next day that he’d spoken to Mr. Fisher and he refused to make things right. He suggested we ask Drake to force his hand, but I didn’t want to bring such humiliation to their doorstep so I agreed to go to London with Juliet and let her think I just didn’t find anyone I thought might suit.”
“But what if one did suit?”
She looked at him as if he were a simpleton. “He didn’t. None of them did.”
“If you speak of that old goat I saw you with at that unsightly museum, I can understand your feelings. But what of the others?”
“What others?” She laughed shakily. “There weren’t any others.”
“Hmmm, and here I thought I was the only one you rebuffed.” His lips itched to kiss her cheek, but he refrained. “I wish you had told me you didn’t have any interest in Mr. Fisher before I wasted so many nights this week dreaming up ways for you to snare him,” he teased. “Alas, your future is not nearly as bleak as you might think. Your Prince Charming is out there. We just have to look a little harder.”
“We? Don’t you think you need to be looking for your own Princess Charming?”
Not unless you’re offering yourself for the position.