The Temptation of a Gentleman (25 page)

His mother sent a pointed glare in his direction. “If Noah made that arrangement with you, Marion, it was unfair. He should have done the honorable thing and removed you from that situation immediately. Or at least left you alone.”

Noah turned his head at his mother’s sharp accusation. She might as well have added ‘like your father would have’, for he heard the silent addition in his head. Wasn’t that what his whole life had become in the past year? A race to earn the name his father had possessed. A battle to fight his own adventurous, passionate spirit and ease into the calm, staid life his father had led.

But even with all his vows to marry the right woman, to do the right things, he had failed and failed miserably.

“My mother is right.” He choked the words out as he kept his head down. “I never should have made an agreement with you. It was unfair to drag you into my case and use you as a pawn to catch Josiah Lucas.”

Yet why had he? He certainly hadn’t needed Marion’s help. His informants could have gleaned most of the information he’d acquired from her. He could have broken into Lucas’s home without her open window. But he’d struck an agreement with her instead.

Because he wanted to be near her.

The realization struck him like a thunderbolt. With a jolt, he stared at her. She was so beautiful, but it was more than mere beauty that had drawn him to her. She had a quality about her. A wit, a zeal for life even though hers hadn’t always been a happy one. With every moment they’d spent together, she had slowly wound her way into his soul.

She stared from one to the other, her eyes pleading with them both to reconsider. When both returned her stare with unwavering eyes, she let out a little sob and hurried from the room.

Noah covered his eyes with his hand. What a mess.

“She’ll come around.” Tabitha crossed the room to rest her hand on his arm. “It’s obvious she cares for you a great deal.”

“Yes.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. Exhaustion was beginning to set in. “But she lied to me more than once, which makes me wonder about the strength of a future together. And worse yet, I’ve been forced to take a dream from her that’s she’s cherished for years. I don’t know if she’ll recover from that.”

His mother’s face became amused. “Oh, Noah. For all your years as a rake, you still understand so little about women. You believe you’ve taken her dreams?”

He nodded.

“Then give her new ones. And as for her lies, that’s something you two will have to work out. But don’t forget that the lies she told you were to protect herself. If she doesn’t feel she has to protect herself anymore, she won’t lie.”

Noah’s eyes widened at her observant statement. Somehow he’d thought his mother wouldn’t understand. How wrong he was. “I should speak to her.”

“Give her an hour or so,” Tabitha advised. “Give her time to adjust to her new position before you press her further.”

He stared at the open door where Marion had just fled. “I don’t know, Mother. I don’t know if she’ll ever be able to adjust to what has happened.”

Chapter Twenty

Marion sat on a wide bench in Noah’s opulent rose garden. The scent of the petals hung heavily in the air around her, soothing, yet stifling her at the same time.

Like Noah.

Part of her yearned to be with him. To share her life with him would be like living a fantasy. But a prison, no matter how pretty, was still a prison. She had fled her father for forcing her marry. But in doing so, she’d walked unwittingly into a situation where she would, again, be forced to take vows that would bind her for a lifetime. She covered her face with both hands and a sigh escaped her lips.

“May I join you or would I be intruding?”

Marion kept her head down at the gentle sound of Noah’s voice. Slowly, she eased her gaze up until she looked at him. As always, she was taken aback by how handsome he was with his sparkling blue eyes and tall, strong body. And she knew that body intimately, had felt it pressed against her. God help her, she still wanted to feel his touch, to finish what they’d begun the night before.

“Marion?”

She shook off her thoughts. “Please sit.”

He eased his large frame down on the bench and sat silent, merely staring at her for a while in the soft summer air. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Shrugging one shoulder, she dropped her gaze to the grass below her feet. “What is there to talk about? Everything is ruined now.”

Noah winced at that assessment. The sting worked through him until he had a bitter taste in his mouth. “That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?” His voice was harsher than he’d intended it to be.

“For you perhaps.” Her eyes came up to meet his a second time. “Whether you marry me or marry Charlotte Ives is meaningless, you’ll be allowed to continue your life just as it was before.”

He contemplated that point. There was no way Marion and Charlotte were interchangeable in his mind. Charlotte he’d chosen for pure connection. Her good name and breeding would make her the perfect Marchioness. She would keep a good home, raise him well-behaved children.

But Marion was a completely different story. He’d been drawn to her of her own accord, without thought to what she would bring to his future. Except her smile. Her laugh. Her intoxicating touch. And now a future filled with those things seemed much brighter than his first choice had been.

She sighed. “The only difference to you between marrying me and marrying her is that you’ll have a much keener sense of disappointment when you look at me across the breakfast table. After all, I’ll bring nothing to a marriage except myself.”

Marion blushed. Did he have to bring up her lies? She hadn’t had time to explain to him why. She would later, but now the future between them was much more pressing than the past.

“Do you love her?” She held her breath.

“Who, Charlotte?”

She nodded. Noah drew back with a look of surprise on his face as if he’d never even considered that question before. For a long time, he seemed to struggle with an answer. Her heart sank with each passing moment.

“No,” he finally stammered out. “I don’t love her. I don’t even know her.”

She soared with relief. If he didn’t love Charlotte, perhaps they had a chance after all. “Why are you marrying her then?”

“I
was
marrying her for her background,” he admitted with a sheepish look in her direction.

Her relief faded. “Then you
will
be disappointed in any union we make, no matter what pretty words you say to deny it.”

“No!”

She cut him off with a shake of her head. “Yes. Can you honestly tell me you aren’t desperate to create a certain image?”

Noah drew back in surprise. Here she’d touched on the very fact that had been plaguing him for months. Yet if he demanded honesty from her, there was no way he could be a hypocrite and give her less.

“You’re right.”

Her face fell with distress at his short answer. For a moment she didn’t speak, but finally raised her gaze back to his. Her face was full of sadness and loss and other things he couldn’t identify.

“Whose image are you trying to recreate, Noah?”

“My father’s.” He was surprised at how quickly he answered her. This wasn’t a subject he’d discussed even with his family, yet he easily revealed the truth to a woman he hadn’t even known a month before.

Marion’s face softened. “What was he like?”

A knot formed in Noah’s throat at her question. He tried not to think of his father in terms of a person, just a goal he had to reach. When he dared to think of the flesh and blood man, it invariably hurt him to his very core.

“His name was James. He was actually a second son, but when his older brother died, my father took over the title.” He glanced down at his fisted hands. “And did more with it than even he would have wagered in the beginning. He had studied shipping and trade and in two years time he doubled the wealth of Woodbury. He instituted changes in how business was done with our tenants and our servants. He made them partners in our successes as well as the shire’s woes. He even learned their names and found out at least one personal thing about them so he always had a connection.”

Marion tilted her head with a small smile. “But what was he like, Noah?”

“He was…” Noah shook his head as he searched for the right words. “Everything. He loved with all his heart. He worshipped my mother, did all he could to protect my sisters, no matter how misguided that protection might have been. He taught me to be a man, not just a lord of a manor.”

“You loved him.” Marion’s eyes grew distant and pained. “You’re lucky you were so close to him.”

For the first time since he’d come to sit beside her, Noah touched her. Heat rushed through him even though he only brushed her hand. She jumped at the caress, but didn’t move her fingertips from beneath his.

“I
was
lucky. But I took him and his lessons for granted.” His heart sank. “Though he never said it, in the end, I let him down.”

Marion looked at the man who now sat with his fingers laced with hers as if they’d been together for years, not weeks. His normally jovial exterior was gone, replaced by the true emotional pain of a man who craved to live up to a dead man. Yet, in her eyes, Noah was already everything anyone could possibly admire.

“Why would he ever have been disappointed in you as a son?” She squeezed his fingertips. “You worked to protect your country while he lived. And since he’s been gone, you’ve driven yourself to meet some expectation that perhaps he never had.”

His brow wrinkled in consideration, but he still didn’t look convinced. “I chose the path of a rake, Marion. A path he never looked down, let alone traveled.”

“Why did you?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “I was young. I liked the pleasures of the world.” His gaze came up to hers with heat. “Of the flesh.”

She drew in a short breath at the desire in his eyes, but kept herself focused on their conversation. Noah wouldn’t distract her from it with amorous diversions.

“Many men choose that path and eventually come back to one more admirable. But from what I’ve seen in you, Noah, you’ve never been dishonorable. If you played, it was for a purpose. You may have gleaned some pleasure from it, yes, but you also used that reputation to help your country.”

For the second time, Noah was stunned and touched by the observations of the woman beside him. How did she know what he needed to hear? How did she see exactly how to ease the ache in his heart?

He lifted her hand to his lips to place a soft kiss along her knuckles. A visible shiver moved through her at the action and some of his tenderness turned to lust at her responsiveness.

“I’m sure your father was proud of you, Noah.”

“Perhaps.” At the reminder of his father and his choices, his lust faded. “But when he died, I realized I’d have to give that life up in order to be a good Marquis. In order to be a good man, I must become more like him.”

She withdrew her hand from his to touch his face. “Noah, what’s wrong with just being you? Being who you are and leading your shire in your own way? No man can take another’s path.”

“You don’t understand what it’s like to live up to someone else’s image.” The oppressive weight of desperation pressed on his heart. “Especially someone who was so good.”

Her eyes saddened. “But you shouldn’t have to. You may believe you’re still some kind of rogue, but you aren’t. By the way you’ve treated me alone, I know you’ve never been anything but a good man. And you’ll never be anything else. Perhaps you aren’t an exact replica of your father, but you are… perfect.”

Marion looked up into the eyes of the man she loved and saw a vulnerability there she wouldn’t have believed existed even a few hours before. Not when he’d stared at her with the steely resolution of a man not to be questioned and told her he would marry her.

She never would have guessed how driven she would find herself to take his pain away. Inching closer, she flattened her palms against his chest, then slid them up to wrap around his neck. His breath came shorter, warming her face as she leaned up to press her lips against his.

For a moment the kiss was only giving, the gentle healing of a friend to another. But then giving turned to possessing as she parted her lips. Noah’s hands came around to grasp her waist and she found herself pressed against him, her blood rushing hot and fast in her veins as she tangled her fingers into his hair.

Noah smiled against her lips, and she felt the tension ease from his body. “Do you remember how good I made you feel last night? Before your father burst in?”

Blood rushed to Marion’s face at his reminder of their intimate moments together. She’d been able to think of little else since her whole world had exploded in a dazzling, pleasurable flame. He’d kissed her in the most intimate way possible, had brought her to the edge of a place she’d never dreamed existed, then promptly taken her over the edge. And she craved more.

His answer was to deepen the kiss, drawing her closer to him until she could feel every inch of him against her. He feathered kisses along her jaw, down her throat until she burned and every nerve crackled with awareness and desire. Yet there was still a niggling doubt in her mind. He’d obviously shared these kinds of pleasures with many other women. Eventually he’d tired of every one of them. If this were all they shared, he would tire of her, too.