She shot him a dark glance. “I notice you haven’t said that because we’ve been intimate I have to marry you to preserve my reputation.”
“Indeed—do, please, notice that.” He cast her an equally sharp glance, then started tying his neckerchief. “If I thought such a ploy had a hope in hell of succeeding, I’d be pushing the argument for all it’s worth. Explaining the facts of life to Harry—”
When she gasped, he shot her an irritated look. “But as I know you’ll only dig in your heels harder if I take that tack, I didn’t even consider it.”
“Good—because it won’t work.”
“I know—see? Understanding at work.”
She humphed, and wrestled her riding dress into place. “You’ll have to help me with these laces.”
Shrugging on his jacket, he came over and did so, swiftly redoing what he’d earlier undone. She felt him tie off the knot, but then he paused. Then he turned her to face him.
His hands on her shoulders, he looked into her face, into her eyes. For once let her see into his, past his guard—see clearly and without equivocation the possessiveness he was reining back.
“I want you as my wife—and I don’t like having to wait. But I know you’re not yet ready to agree. However, as I told you at the outset, I want you warming my bed—for the rest of my life. Whatever you want, whatever you need to get you to agree, I’ll do it, I’ll give it. Whatever it takes, I want you as mine.”
She held his gaze steadily, let a moment tick past, then simply said, “I need to think.”
He nodded and released her. As he moved away, heading for where he’d left his boots, he murmured, “If you feel anything for me, don’t take too long.”
Gervase insisted on riding all the way back to the Park with her. Which did nothing to clear her head, or stop her whirling thoughts.
When she woke the next morning—late—she felt muddle-headed, but found she couldn’t think about, couldn’t concentrate on, anything else. Not until she’d decided on this, on them, on him and how she should deal with him.
What she wanted from him in order to agree to be his. What else she needed to know. Whether she dared.
Marriage between people like them was not something to be embarked on lightly, not a link to be recklessly forged.
Leaving Harry to face the ledgers alone, she pleaded a headache and went to walk in the rose garden. To pace.
She’d seen falling in love with Gervase as a risk, a danger, but had embarked on their liaison, their affair, anyway, then, when love had sneaked up on her and blossomed so easily, she’d blithely—recklessly—surrendered to it. She’d meant to stay on guard and be wise, but it—he—had somehow slipped under her shield and lodged in her heart.
That was one thing. Unrequited love when she was merely his temporary lover was a scenario she’d been willing to face and cope with…at least she had been until she’d realized just how strongly she felt about him, how possessive of him she’d grown.
Regardless, she’d accepted the risk and couldn’t now retreat. So she loved him, and knew it. But did he love her?
When they’d been no more than lovers, that hadn’t truly mattered. Now he’d asked for marriage, it did. A liaison lasted for a finite time; marriage was forever. If she agreed to marry him and he didn’t love her…what then?
Could she bear it if, years from now, he found another, a lady whom he did love, and turned from her?
She honestly didn’t think she could.
Head down, hands clasped behind her back, she paced unseeing along the paved path between the burgeoning bushes.
How could she learn if he did, or could, or would, love her? She was too well acquainted with the male of the species to place any reliance on words, especially those uttered in the heat of the moment, under duress—especially, for them, emotional duress. No matter what he swore, or how sincerely he spoke, she wouldn’t accept mere words as proof of his affection.
Where else to look for such proof? That was the first of the questions facing her—the first she had to answer.
The scent of roses wreathed about her. She paced, and thought, and wrestled with her feelings, and tried to imagine his. After a largely futile half hour, she headed inside, her way forward unresolved but her goal at least clear.
To avoid a potentially soul-destroying marriage, or alternatively to grasp a shining prize, she had to find some way to discover whether Gervase Tregarth truly loved her or not.
Somewhat to her surprise—to her unease—the one question she hadn’t even needed to ask was whether she wanted to marry him. That, she’d discovered, not entirely happily, was a want already engraved on her heart.
A little before noon, Gervase called in at Tregarth Manor, the manor house outside Falmouth where he’d been born. He spent an easy half hour chatting with his cousin, who now lived there with his wife, confirmed that he no longer felt any strong connection to the place—it was no longer “home”—then headed on to his destination, Falmouth itself.
He paused on the last hill above the town, studied the roofs sprawled about the harbor, then shook Crusader’s reins and headed down, the steady clop of the big gray’s hooves following his thoughts around and around.