Alathea waved him to the sofa beside her. She'd sent a note to Brook Street asking him to call. She waited while he sat; the wicker sofa was small-it left them shoulder to shoulder. He leaned back, stretching one arm along the sofa's back to ease the crowding. She drew breath and resolutely took the bit between her teeth. "There is absolutely no reason for us to wed. No!" She cut off his immediate retort. "Hear me out."
He'd tensed; his expression hardened but he held silent.
Alathea looked out over the lawn to where her stepsisters and stepbrothers chattered gaily. "Only you and I know about the countess. Only we know we've been intimate. I'm twenty-nine. As I keep trying to remind everyone, I've set aside all thoughts of marriage. I did so eleven years ago. I'm accepted as a spinster-your recent attentions notwithstanding, there's no expectation that I'll marry. Short of our liaison becoming common knowledge, which it won't for we're both too wise and too aware of what we owe our families and ourselves to bruit the fact abroad, then there's no need whatever for us to wed."
"Is that it?"
"No." She turned her head and met his gaze directly. "Regardless of what you decide is the right thing to do, I will not marry you. There's no reason for you to make such a sacrifice."
He studied her. "Why," he eventually asked, "do you think I want to marry you?"
Her lips twisted. She gestured to her stepsiblings, blissfully unaware of the clouds hovering on the family's horizon. "You want to marry me because of that same quality I counted on when, as the countess, I asked for your aid. I knew if I explained the danger to them, then you'd help. I've told you before-you're obsessively protective." He was her knight on a white charger; protectiveness was his strongest suit, and one of his most basic instincts.
He'd followed her gaze to the girls. "You think I want to marry you to protect you. Out of some notion of chivalry."
She'd tried to avoid that word; it sounded so melodramatic, even if it was the naked truth. Sighing, she faced him. "I wanted to trap you into helping-I never intended to trap you into marriage."
Gabriel searched her eyes, hazel pools of absolute sincerity. The vulnerability that had haunted him ever since he'd discovered the countess's identity evaporated.
She didn't know. She had no idea that he worshipped her, that his fascination was obsession, overwhelming and complete. He'd forgotten her naivete, that despite her age, despite knowing him all her life, in certain areas she was an innocent. She didn't know that she was so very different from all who had gone before.
He looked back at Mary and Alice while he mentally scrambled to reorient himself. "At the risk of shattering your illusions, that's not why I want to marry you."
"Why, then?"
He met her gaze. "You can hardly be unaware that I desire you physically."
Color touched her too-pale cheeks. She inclined her head. "Desire in our circles doesn't necessitate marriage."
She looked away, leaving him studying that all-too-revealing line of her jaw. Strength and vulnerability-she was a combination of both.
His reaction to the sight was immediate but no longer surprising-he now knew how primitive his feelings for her were. Last night, when she was fussing over her hair, trying to fashion it into some arrangement that would pass muster, he'd been visited by a violent urge to haul it all down again and march her through the house, past all Lady Richmond's guests, Chillingworth especially, so all would know that she was his.
His.
The powerful surge of possessiveness was achingly familiar. It was the same emotion she'd always evoked in him, the wellspring of that godforsaken tension that had gripped him whenever she was close. The emotion had clarified, crystallized. In unveiling the countess, other veils had been torn aside, too; he could now see his primitive impulse for what it truly was-the instinctive desire to seize his mate. To Have and To Hold was the Cynster family motto; hardly surprising he felt the impulse so keenly.
But how much was it safe to reveal to her? "How long have we known each other?"
"Forever-all our lives."
"Weeks ago, you told Chillingworth that our relationship had been decided for us. I agreed. Do you remember?"
"Yes."
"The earliest memory I have of you, you must have been all of two years old. I would have been three. From our cradles, our parents told us we were friends. I was twelve when treating you as a sister started becoming difficult. I never understood why-all I knew was that something was wrong. You knew it, too."
Her "yes" was a whisper; they were both looking back down the years.
"Remember that time we had to slip out of old Collinridge's barn by the back window and your habit got caught on a nail? Lucifer was already mounted, holding the horses-I had to catch your hips and hold you up so you could unhook the material."
He paused; a second later, she reactively shivered.
"Precisely. All that time, it was a peculiar blend of heaven and hell. I could never understand why I always gravitated to your side, always wanted to be near you, because whenever I was close, I felt… violent. Crazed. As if I wanted to grab hold of you and shake you."
Her laugh was shaky. "I was never certain you wouldn't."
"I never dared. I was too afraid laying hands on you-touching you in any way-would drive me mad, that I would behave like some bedlamite. That one dance we shared was bad enough."
They both gazed blindly over the lawns, then he continued, "What I'm trying to point out is that I've felt… possessive of you for a very long time. I didn't know what the feeling was until after that night at the Burlington, but it isn't something that only recently evolved. It's been there, between us, growing stronger for over twenty years. If our parents hadn't set us up as brother and sister, that feeling would long since have resolved itself in marriage. As it is, your masquerade has opened our eyes and given us a chance to rescript our relationship into what it ought to be." He glanced at her; she was still stubbornly facing the lawn. "I'm more than sexually attracted to you-you're the woman I want as my wife."
She tilted her head. "How many women have you known?"
He frowned. "I don't know. I haven't counted."
She looked at him, one brow high, disbelief in her eyes.
He gritted his teeth. "All right. I did count at first, but I gave up long ago."
"What number did you reach before you stopped counting?"
"That is neither here nor there. What point are you trying to make?"
"Merely that you seem to like women but, until now, that liking hasn't prompted you to beat a path to the parson's door. Why now? Why me?"
He saw the trap but was ready to turn the questions to his advantage. "The now is simple-it's time." The fateful words, "Your time will come," resonated in his mind. "I knew that at Demon's wedding. I just didn't know the who. You know how edgy Mama has been getting-much as it pains me to admit it, she's right. It is time for me to marry, to settle, to think of the next generation. As for the 'why you', it isn't, as you seem determined to think, because you're a friend of the family and that because we've been intimate, I think I've ruined you and needs must make reparation."
His increasingly clipped tone had her glancing his way; he trapped her gaze. "What I'm saying is that you are the woman I want as my wife. Just that-I need no other reason." He paused, then continued, "You might have noticed I no longer suffer when I'm close to you. I can sit beside you, more or less at ease, no longer feeling caged to the point of madness, because I know I can take you in my arms and kiss you, that at some point in the not-overly-distant future, you'll lie beneath me again." He let his voice drop. "However, if you're witless enough to try to fight this-all that's between us-if you try to refuse me and smile instead at Chillingworth or any other man, then I can guarantee that what has been between us through the years will be as nothing to what will be."