He grinned. “You aren’t, my darling. Do give me but a chance and I will do my best to ensure you will be!”
She laughed. “Oh, you are impossible! You know what I mean! They will gossip and assume—”
“Let them think what they want. Besides, you and I have known each other only a few weeks. Even if we had fallen into bed the night of the Carlisles’ dinner party, you could not yet know you were pregnant. And as for your staff, keep them. We will find places for them. Hawkins perhaps in one of mine in the country. And Mary? Keep her.”
“You are kindhearted. But the lease on my house… Oh my. I must cancel it. My orders for draperies and furniture. I bought my own piano, too.”
He saw her sadness that she would lose this precious item. He would not let her down. “Bring it to our house. Ours, Inès. You will bring us music with your presence.” He raised her hand and kissed her knuckles. “You will marry me Thursday.”
“Friday.”
He looked askance at her. “You aren’t delaying the inevitable?”
“I am being a woman, monsieur. A French one who is trying to envision a new gown, which I expect my modiste can deliver in four days, not three.”
“You won’t change your mind.” That statement was no question he dared pose.
She shook her head. “I won’t change my mind.”
He kissed her then, a ravenous thing bending her backward over his arm, branding her as his own.
#
She showed him to the door with swiftness borne of a frivolous desire to take him to her bed, then and there.
After closing the door on him, she picked up the skirts of her night rail and negligee and raced toward the main salon. She shut the door, locked it, put her back to it, and gasped for breath.
A hand to her hair, she wended it back over her shoulders. She squeezed shut her eyes and searched for sanity. Her heart tied to his, her mind full of him, her body yearning to live with him, she told herself to list all the reasons she should not marry him.
But she had already done that. It had not changed his mind. Nor had it hers.
She strode to the fortepiano and sat. Putting her fingers to the keys, she ordered herself to find the melody best suited to her love and surrender to this majestic man.
The sun pierced gray snow clouds and she followed the line of their descent to the foliage in the back garden. She should play some loud, raucous, obtuse piece. Or a silly French ditty, a minuet, or a frilly bit by Lully.
She snatched back her fingers from the long black keys.
She shuddered at how disastrously her decision could destroy noble Evan Mannerly, Earl of Halsey.
She should play to denote the chaos she would cause him.
But when she placed her hands to the keys, what came from her fingertips was a surprise that soothed her torn and battered heart. She played an erudite tune that spoke of springtime and rejuvenation, light and the natural growth of friendship to love. Over and over again, the music brought her peace.
How many times she replayed Beethoven’s Sixteenth Sonata, she did not know. She had not counted.
But the sun burned through the clouds and stood high in the sky when she felt finished and fulfilled.
She would marry him.
She loved him.
Chapter Fourteen
Friday, November 29, 1805
20 Grosvenor Square
London
