She stood at the corner of the window, her mouth parted on a moue of surprise. “Gabe—”
“W-wait,” he rasped, sticking out a finger. “Just w-wait.” A slight frown played on her lips. “Please,” he added. He dragged a hand through his hair, damp with perspiration from running through the London streets. “I’ve always been rubbish at talking to people, J-Jane.” Gabriel panted, damning his earlier exertions that made a muddle of his words. He rested his hands on his knees and drew in several, slow, steadying breaths. “My sisters, my brother, my mother. I have but one friend. And even him I’m a miserable bugger to.”
She cocked her head as though trying to make sense of his words, except his thoughts tumbled around in his head, over each other, so that even he no longer knew what to say or how to say it.
He tried again. “I never wanted a wife. Or children.” She folded her hands before her and he stared at those interlocked digits so tightly clasped her knuckles turned white. “Until you. And even that, not until tonight. At the duke’s ball, and—”
“There was no three thousand pounds.”
Her soft whispered words cut into his profession. Gabriel straightened and stared unblinking at his wife. He shook his head in an attempt to process. “How—?”
“My father,” she said quietly. “He explained that he’d never settle any funds upon a bastard child.” Gabriel curled his hands into tight fists, torn between wanting to take her in his arms and hunt her father down and hurt the beast as much as Jane now hurt. “Is that true?”
He unclenched his hands and gave a terse nod. “It is.” With that utterance, the lie he’d never truly allowed himself to consider, wheedled around his brain, now damning and ugly for the deception he’d practiced. “I’d thought to—”
“Protect me,” she supplied, taking a step toward him. “That is who you are, though, isn’t it?” There was sadness to her tone that gutted him. “You would marry a woman you didn’t even like—”
“I liked you quite well.” Only, as those words left him, he grimaced at how inadequate they were. “Well, not quite at first.” He pressed his fingers against his temples. He was mucking this up, quite badly. He’d venture no lady had ever been won with such unromantic sentiments. “You infuriated me and do you know why?” He let his hands fall to his side.
She shook her head back and forth in a slow motion.
Gabriel closed the distance between them and took her hands in his bringing them close to his chest. “Because you made me feel and I’d spent my whole life trying to not feel anything. You terrified me with your bold challenges and your undaunted courage.” Emotion balled in his throat. “I have not given of myself in thirty-two years. I have let no one in. Not my brother or my sisters. Not any woman.” A dull flush stained his cheeks. “In any way.”
Jane widened her eyes as an understanding flashed within their blue depths.
Except, there was no shame with that truth. “I have not given any piece of myself to any woman and for that, I am thankful.”
Tears flooded her eyes. “Oh, Gabriel,” she whispered, stroking his cheek.
“I was waiting for you.” He captured her wrist in his hand and brought it to his lips. “I just didn’t know it. Jane Edgerton, I love everything about you. I love you for having carved out a life and slipping into my home in order to survive. I love you for wanting to open a school, because it is admirable and good. I love you because…” He placed a kiss against her lips and the familiar spark that had always been between them ignited. “I love you because there is no other reason than that I do.”
The muscles along the slim column of her neck moved. “Gabriel, you don’t have to—”
He claimed her lips once more, silencing her. “My whole life I’ve done what I thought I was supposed to.” It had been a futile attempt to right his sins. It had taken Jane to show him that those crimes belonged to his father. “This,” he drew her hands to the place where his heart beat for her. “There is no logic or reason to this. This is me, a man in love with you and if you leave me to go to your school, it will devastate me. Don’t leave me. I—”