“What was what about?” Gabriel guided his hand to her waist.
“You were perfectly horrid to that nice gentleman. Lord Primly.”
The orchestra began to play the haunting stains of a waltz and he led them in the scandalous, yet equally delicious, dance. Gabriel lowered his face close to hers. Beneath her fingers, the muscles of his forearm tightened within his coat sleeves. “I did not like the way he was looking at you.”
She stumbled and he quickly righted her, bringing her closer to his frame. Only this misstep had nothing to do with her horrid dancing skills as Chloe had called them and everything to do with her husband’s stunning revelation. “Why does it matter how he was looking at me?” she asked curiously. “Why, if I do not matter to you?” She gave a vague motion to the dancers about them staring openly and whispering loudly. “What should it matter what they say about me? Why, if you don’t care?”
Gabriel leaned ever closer, shrinking the space between them. “Because I do care, Jane.”
Her heart started as she tried to sort through the significance of those words. “Because of your sister,” she put forth tentatively. With his concern for Chloe and all of his siblings, of course, her actions and her reception amidst Society mattered for that very reason.
He lowered his voice. “Because of you.”
*
Of all the admissions he’d made in the course of his life, those three words were the most costly ones he’d ever uttered. And yet, the onslaught of terror did not come.
Gabriel braced for the rush of fear, the sense of panic that admitting she mattered should bring. Jane was unlike any person he’d ever known. It mattered not the circumstances of her birth. For him it never had. It mattered she was so fearless as to take control of her life and shape it for herself. When others saw to their own comforts and security, Jane had carefully guarded her own dreams with the hope of helping other young women like her.
I need her. I want her. I…love her.
Gabriel staggered to a stop. A couple adroitly stepped out of his way to keep from tumbling over them.
“Gabriel?” Jane applied pressure to his arm. He gave his head a clearing shake and promptly picked up the motions of the dance once more.
For years he’d seen that emotion as weakening. It was a sentiment that would cement his connection to another and bring with it responsibility and through that, inevitable hurt, and he could not do hurt. Not anymore. Not because of his own failings. How humbling to realize the siblings he’d spent his life caring for had proven wholly correct in their warnings and urgings. The emotion of love had once represented a shackle and yet he’d shattered the manacles he’d wrapped about his heart and admitted—he wanted her love. He wanted to be loved. More importantly, he loved her. “Jane—”
She cocked her head and stared expectantly back at him.
“I—” Could not say it here. He registered the stares trained on them. She deserved this moment but away from the peering eyes of gossips and unkind lords and ladies. The music drew to a halt and they stopped. Couples politely clapped about them and he closed his mouth. “I will lead you back to my family,” he said lamely.
Jane nodded. “Of course.”
As Gabriel turned to lead her to the side of the dance floor, he froze. His gaze collided with a pair of familiar blue eyes—Jane’s eyes. From where he stood at the opposite end of the hall, the man skimmed his bored, ducal gaze over the crowd, as though he felt Gabriel’s frigid stare. And then their gazes collided.
He once believed he could never hate a soul more than that of his monstrous father. In this instance, he realized there was another. With every fiber of his being he detested the Duke of Ravenscourt who, with his pomposity and disdain, had forced Jane alone in a world in which she relied upon only herself. And for that, a seething hatred coursed through him and licked at his senses until it was all he could do to keep from storming the room and taking the man apart for his crimes.
“What is it, Gabriel?” Jane asked, concern in her voice as she followed his stare to the duke. She looked back to Gabriel. By the lack of recognition in her eyes, however, she did not know the man who sired her was just a floor’s length away.