Except there was. There were the funds settled upon her and her finishing school and a life free of a gentleman’s interference in her life. Where was the joy in those prospects that had once given her hope?
Her mother had depended on a man and it had cost her all. Yet in this moment, there was something sweetly seductive in the prospect of being wanted for her. She clasped her hands to her throat. “You would marry me?” Guilt twisted in her belly and she fisted the glass so hard, her knuckles turned white. She was undeserving of his apologies and his generous offer. “You would marry me, when you don’t even know me?” In a world with men who’d take their pleasures where they would, when they would and how they would, this was the kind of man Gabriel Edgerton, the Marquess of Waverly, was. He’d wed her, a stranger, to protect her. Or is it to protect himself, a suspicious voice needled. Was Gabriel so very committed to being the responsible gentleman that he’d marry her and sacrifice his own happiness in the process?
He rolled his shoulders and took it, however, as a question. “I see little choice in the matter.” She winced at those emotionless words, hating that they grated on her heart.
To give her mind something else to fix on, Jane took another sip. She dissolved into a sputtering fit of coughing. No, she could not do it. She set the glass down hard. Foul, stuff the spirits were. They did have a dulling effect upon her senses that at least drove back the edge of anxiety that had dogged her since her and Gabriel’s discovery at the opera.
“I’ll obtain a special license in the morning,” he said, with all the wariness of a man who’d been saddled with the weight of the world upon his shoulders.
Despite the disarray of her own life and her inevitable ruin, her heart tugged with regret. Poor Gabriel. He cared for his sisters and his brother. Would he take on Jane, a stranger, to appease his misplaced sense of guilt? Never would she steal a person’s freedom, not when she so craved it for herself. She gave her head a slow shake. “I cannot,” will not, “wed you.” Not in good conscience. Not when she’d long disavowed marriage to a nobleman. And most certainly not to a nobleman who appeared more eager to march the steps to a guillotine than find him wed to her. His reaction should not matter, and yet, oddly, a pang struck her heart. She could not maintain the lies between them. Not any longer.
Gabriel froze with his drink midway to his mouth. “Of course you—”
Before her courage deserted her, she cut across his defense. “The Earl of Montclair was not wholly wrong about me, Gabriel.”
Chapter 17
From the moment he and Jane had tumbled from the alcove at the London Opera House, horror had attacked his senses over the inevitability of his fate—he had no choice but to wed. He, who’d vowed to never take a wife, or bring offspring into this world, had lost self-control, and as such, had confined himself to a life with everything he’d disavowed. That horrifying prospect had occupied his thoughts—until now.
Jane shifted back and forth on her feet and wrung her hands before her.
The Earl of Montclair was not wholly wrong about me…
The other man’s allegations rushed to the surface. “What are you on about?” he bit out.
She cleared her throat. “I told you I was employed by the Marquess of Darlington,” she said over him when he made to speak. “I did not explain what happened after I’d been,” she wrinkled her nose, “relieved of my responsibilities from that post.”
Glass in hand, Gabriel stalked over to Jane. “Continue,” he snapped, impatient at her unfinished thoughts.
“Er, yes. Right. You see.” He didn’t really see anything this night. “I was given employment at Mrs. Belden’s. I served as one of her instructors.” Dragons as Chloe referred to those other women. “For nearly a year.” Jane ran the tip of her finger along the fabric of the sofa in a distracting manner and when she spoke, her words came fast and furious. “One of the ladies,” Bitterness laced that word. She slashed the air with a hand. “She spoke to the headmistress about me and I was turned out. I discovered your note.”