Page 65 of Redemption of a Marquess

Chapter Fourteen

Valan was loath to admit that even a flesh wound could ache. He was getting too old for such nonsense. Despite the fact he had bled only enough to ruin his crisp white shirt, Jeanine was still applying pressure to the ‘wound.’

Valan regarded her with a stern eye. “That was foolish of you.”

“Me?” She dropped onto the couch beside him, her fingers still pressed against the wound. “You are the one who ran straight into the barrel of a pistol.”

He grunted. “Gordon has always been a bad shot.”

Jeanine’s eyes widened, then she burst into tears and buried her head in his chest.

He grimaced when she squeezed his wound. Valan grasped her hand and held it. “Shh, sweet. All is well. I am not really hurt.”

“You could have been killed,” she wailed.

“I am not so easily killed.”

“You would have been better off to have never known me.”

His life had been far less complicated before her, quieter, colder…without love.

“Now the scandal will ruin you,” she sobbed into his shirt. “You won’t be able to marry Lady Claire.”

He frowned. “I believe I told you that I had no intention of marrying Lady Claire.”

“You just said that to make me feel better.”

“I never say things just to make anyone feel better. I have never had any desire to marry Lady Claire.”

“You wanted to walk with her in the gardens,” Jeanine blubbered.

He laughed. “That is a far cry from wanting to marry someone.”

She drew back and turned her tearstained face up to him. “What is wanting to marry someone?”

With the pad of this thumb, he gently wiped tears from her cheek. “Wanting to marry someone is being unable to imagine a day without them.”

She straightened. “Oh dear.”

He tensed. “What is amiss?”

She looked at her lap and shook her head. With a finger beneath her chin, he tipped her face up toward him. He lifted a brow and waited.

She stared back for a long moment, then sighed. “If wanting to marry someone is not being able to imagine a day without them, then I want to marry you.”

Longing twisted through him. “Perhaps there is a bit more to it than that,” he said.

“Such as liking to play chess with them? Or…” Her gaze dropped to his mouth and lingered there for two heartbeats, then lifted again to meet his eyes. “Or wanting to kiss them?”

He tweaked a lock of her hair that had come loose of the chignon. “You want to kiss a young man. I am too old for you, my dear.”

“That is silly. I said from the start that I wanted an older man.”

“You said that you wanted a man with one foot in the grave. I am, I hope, too many years away from that to qualify.”

“I do not want you to die,” she blurted. “I want—” She looked up at him through her lashes and nibbled on her bottom lip. “I want you to marry me.”

He smiled gently. “I do not think that’s what you really want.”