‘Ironic, isn’t it? I cannot force you, Caroline. I may be a scoundrel, but I do draw the line at that. I just want you to see that it is no help at all, you being noble and refusing me.’
‘But you hope my sense of honour is at least as well developed as yours.’ She rather feared it was.
Gabriel stopped prowling around the room, sat down on the other side of the table and rested his forearms on the cloth. It should have been better because he was no longer looming over her, but his focused, unsmiling gaze was no more comfortable. He looked weary, she thought, seeing the shadows under the dark eyes, the tightness of his mouth.
‘I hope that you will see that, unsatisfactory though this is, it is the only way for us both to deal with the situation,’ he said with the control of a man hanging on to his patience by a thread. When she did not reply he flung himself back in the chair. ‘Surely I have to be better than Woodruffe?’
‘Of course you are. But I do not want to be married to anyone. Not my father’s choice, not someone who has been trapped into it.’ It sounded mulish, but it was the truth. The thought of perhaps fifty years of marriage to a man who resented her, tolerated her, was repellent.
‘Waiting for hearts and flowers and a meeting of soulmates?’ Gabriel enquired perceptively. ‘You’ve more patience than I have and more romance in your soul than is good for you.’
Caroline gritted her teeth at the mockery. ‘Your three friends married for love, did they not? I heard how you tried to stop Tamsyn marrying the marquess because you thought she was unsuitable, but you have accepted it now, because they are made for each other and even you can see it. What are they going to say about you settling for this?’ She waved her hands to encompass the whole impossible situation.
‘You are neither the illegitimate offspring of a bigamous marriage, nor the mother of a child out of wedlock nor the widow of a man who was almost hanged as a smuggler, which between ourselves, describes the brides my friends have taken. You are an eminently suitable match, if one ignores your father, which I devoutly intend to do. My friends have no right to dictate my emotional life—’
‘Or lack of it,’ Caroline flung back. ‘What if we marry and then you fall in love with someone else? Or I do?’
‘We do what aristocrats down the ages have always done, we cope with it. An heir and spare is non-negotiable. After that, provided you don’t fall for a short redhead there is no problem.’
‘How can you be so cold-blooded? You wouldn’t be if the situation did arise—you would be shooting my lover at dawn.’
‘Why do you think my brother Louis is half a head shorter than his older brothers, has green eyes and sandy hair?’
‘No! Did your father know?’
‘Of course.’ Gabriel’s expression was bleak. Then he shrugged. ‘So does Louis. He took one look at Lord Belmond and announced it was a relief to finally know who his father was. No one in the family treats him any differently.’
‘Poor boy. As if I could do that to a child of mine. If I married you I would be faithful and I would expect you to be faithful, too.’
‘The rules require me to be discreet.’
‘The vows demand rather more,’ she snapped, more shaken by his cynicism than she would have thought possible.
Gabriel shrugged. ‘I am a sinner. You knew that from the very first.’ There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in, damn it!’
‘Mrs Crabtree, should we clear now, or bring tea, or what, ma’am?’ Jane hesitated on the threshold, the wooden tray clutched to her skinny chest like a shield.
‘Tea, in the drawing room please, Jane.’
Gabriel followed her through in silence that persisted while she poured and drank two cups of tea. That did something for the raging thirst that had suddenly gripped her, but not a great deal for the confused misery inside.
He left his own cup untouched, waiting with a controlled patience that frayed at her nerves more than ranting and temper would have done.
I suppose I am used to ranting, she thought miserably. No one is ever in any doubt about my father’s mood or desires. I cannot read Gabriel’s.
‘Is there no other way than marriage?’
‘No. Not to escape without a major scandal and ensure your future. It will be a nine-day wonder, but everyone knows how eccentric and difficult your father is, so there will be sympathy for your desire to flee his roof. And I may not be society’s darling, but there are not many who hold much of a brief for Woodruffe.’ He picked up the cup and drained the cold tea, then smiled at her. ‘Caroline, we get on well enough.’ He reached out, touched the back of his hand gently to her cheek. ‘We will be good in bed, I think, even if we have not had the best of beginnings in that respect. Now what are you blushing about?’
‘I am not used to such frankness.’
‘This from the woman who tried to barter her virginity for this estate? And I still have that IOU. Your marriage has been announced and I intend to call it in.’
Of course she expected that this would be a full marriage, a man in need of an heir did not propose a union in name only. But surely he did not mean... ‘You mean before we are married?’ I need time. ‘We have not fixed the date.’
‘Five days’ time should be perfect. We’ll go up to London tomorrow. Then there are three days for you, Tess and Tamsyn to shop for all the things you’ll need. I’ll sort out the licence and the legal details and find a clergyman. I’m hoping that Cris will let us use his house in St James’s Square. That will prevent any hint of the hole-and-corner about the marriage.’
‘It certainly will,’ Caroline said hollowly. The thought of Crispin de Feaux’s cool blue regard simply made her want to curl up into a ball and seek out every hole and corner she could find.