Jane stilled, sensing with an intuition that only came from her body’s inexplicable awareness of his presence. She turned in the middle of the room and folded her arms about her person.
Gabriel stood framed in the doorway, watching her with an inscrutable expression.
She wet her lips, and he followed that slight movement a moment and then closed the door behind him with a soft click. Jane clenched and unclenched her hands at her side. In that assessing manner of his, he dropped his gaze to that distracted movement. When he met her stare once more, a frown marred his lips.
Then, wordlessly, he strode past her and made for his sideboard. He swiped the nearest decanter, poured two snifters of the amber brew, and returned. “Here.” He thrust the glass at her.
Jane held her palms up. “No. I…” Something hard in his eyes silenced those words. She accepted the glass and cradled it in her hands. Of all the households she’d been employed in, every last man had drunk the dratted spirits. What was it about the favored spirits that called to a man? Perhaps the ability to make a person forget? Jane raised the glass to her lips and took a tentative sip. Her lips pulled in a grimace and she exploded into a fit of coughing. She glared at him. “Th-that is horrid.” She’d never understand men. There was no accounting for their interests and tastes.
Some of the hardness left Gabriel’s mouth and that ghost of a smile hovered on his lips. He took a sip of his drink and then carried it to his desk. With a casualness she marveled at, he propped his hip against the edge. Then, being a male and a marquess no less in their Society permitted one that effortless ability in all regards. And just like that, all hint of warmth was gone, replaced with that frozen impenetrableness so that she wondered if she’d merely imagined any softening.
Unnerved, she dropped her gaze to the liquid contents of her glass. “I am sorry,” she said quietly and then grimaced at how useless those regrets were.
“Do you think I hold you responsible for what transpired this evening?” That terse question brought her head up.
Jane stared unblinking, back at him. “I kissed you.” And then she darted her stare about the room, half expecting interlopers to charge forward with their accusatory fingers pointed. She raised the glass to her lips, took another sip, and then promptly choked. “It really is horrid stuff. Utterly awful.”
He took a long swallow and then set his glass down on the desk beside him. “I am sorry,” he said without preamble.
Jane cocked her head, but otherwise remained silent.
“It was not my intention to seduce you at the theatre.”
“Yes, you’ve said as much.” Three times now.
“We will marry,” he continued as though she’d not spoken.
Her heart fluttered and she touched her chest. Her reaction made so very little sense. Why should she have this odd lightening when she’d never before even considered marriage and to a powerful nobleman no less? Surely she’d heard him incorrectly. Though, there had never been anything wrong with her hearing. Or at least she didn’t believe there was. And yet it had appeared he’d said…
He nodded. “Marry.” Gabriel shoved away from the desk and stalked over to his sideboard. He poured several fingerfuls into his snifter, and then seemed to think better of it. “As in wed.” And then added another splash for good measure.
As in, she had heard him correctly.
“Wed?” Gentlemen like him did not wed women such as her. But then, he doesn’t know who I really am.
He gave a brusque nod. A flash of horror glinted in his eyes, the first indication as to just what Gabriel Edgerton, the Marquess of Waverly, felt about the prospect of marriage to her. Her heart dipped back into its proper place and resumed beating a steady, unaffected rhythm. She studied him as he downed the contents of his drink in a single, long swallow. “Of course, given the state of…” He tugged at his cravat. “Our discovery.” He was as awkward at picking his way through this discourse as she. Was there a gentleman in the whole of the kingdom less interested in sealing his marital fate than Gabriel? “There is no recourse except marriage.”