Only in this short time, Gabriel had become more than a powerful marquess. He’d become a person who’d care for those around him, who’d forgive her deception and give her the protection of his name, anyway.
He released her suddenly. “We will wed tomorrow morn.” Tomorrow? “If you’ll excuse me?” With that, he started for the door.
Panic pounded hard in her chest. She raced after him. “Tomorrow?” She flinched at the desperate edge to that one word.
He stopped so quickly she skidded to a halt to keep from slamming into him. Her skirts, another gift given her by him and his sister snapped noisily about them. Gabriel fished around the front of his jacket and withdrew a thick, ivory folded velum. “I took the liberty of securing a special license.”
That’s where he’d been all this day.
She’d become so accustomed to making any and every decision that impacted her life, she didn’t know what to do with a person who took on that role—and so boldly as Gabriel. “You were so very certain I would say yes?”
He grinned that crooked half-smile that made her heart flutter. “I was,” he said with an arrogance that made her point her eyes to the ceiling. “Do you know how I knew?”
Jane pursed her lips. “How?”
“I know you well enough after just a week,” Seven days. “To know that your school matters more than anything else, and as long as you have that, you’d be content.” With that, he pulled open the door.
She mustered a smile as he dropped a bow and then left. When he was gone, her smile died. He spoke of knowing her so very well. And yet, if that were true, then he’d know, in this moment, with his request and offer of marriage, she wanted far more than her finishing school—she’d wanted a family.
*
Gabriel’s skin pricked with the burn of Jane’s gaze on his retreating form. He increased his stride, desperate to put much needed distance between them. She’d accepted his offer. Of course she had. There had been little choice. No recourse really, for the lady.
He turned the corner and froze. Yet, in the moment when presenting her with the terms of their marriage, for one span of a heartbeat, he’d read a desire for more in her eyes. Dangerous sentiments had swirled within her gaze and filled him with terror at the prospect that he’d merely been staring into a reflective pool of his own thoughts and feelings.
“You don’t have the happy look of a man about to find himself wed,” Alex drawled from beyond Gabriel’s shoulder.
At the amusement underscoring his words, Gabriel stiffened and turned slowly to face his ever-grinning brother. “Alex,” he said tersely. How could the other man smile through life so effortlessly and easily as he did?
His brother strode down the corridor. He narrowed his eyes. He’d wager Alex had not been far from the parlor where he’d just spoken to Jane. The idea that he had heard their exchange grated. “Were you listening to my conversation with Jane?” he snapped.
His brother chuckled. “Despite what you believe of me, I ceased listening at keyholes for some time now.” He winked. “At least a year.”
Some of the tension left Gabriel’s frame. “Forgive me,” he requested. Jane was wreaking havoc on every part of his world—most particularly the reason and calm he’d always valued. “I appreciate your allowing her to remain here with you and Imogen until…” He choked on his swallow. “Until…well until.” Marriage. He would be married.
I will be married to Jane.
His brother looked at him for a long while and then tossed back his head and shouted with laughter. He laughed so hard tears seeped from the corner of his eyes and he dashed them back, not unlike Waterson earlier that afternoon.
“I am glad you should find amusement in my situation,” he said with a frown.
Alex slapped him on the back. “I do not find amusement in your situation,” he assured. He flung his arm around Gabriel’s shoulders and guided him onward. “I find great irony in you, the man who’d taken such umbrage with my roguish ways through the years, not even being able to choke out the word marriage.”