How to Impress a Marquess(8)
For a quiet moment, he forgot his rage, struck by the picture she formed by the curves of her profile against the hard jut of the wooden frame and the horizontal line formed by the sofa. Her mouth was drawn, her skin almost white; tired brown shadows had formed under her eyes. Even so, she was beautiful, like a gem showing different facets depending on the light. He wanted to rage at her, but at the same time he wanted to study her quietly until he could capture her essence.
Damn her!
He had to get her away from him.
“Lilith, this is it.” He set his arrangement of purple hyacinths and hazel—or, according to the language of flowers, I’m sorry and let’s make up—on the mantel.
“This is the last time I’m pulling you from the suds.” His voice boomed around him. He sounded like his own father when he’d lectured young George. “You will get married. I’ve given you enough time to find a suitable, responsible gentleman and all you’ve managed to do is cavort with half-wit artists and your dubious Dahlgren relatives, all the while spurning my wise advice. And you see where it has gotten you. Nowhere.”
He saw no change on her face, nothing to register that his words had made any least impression on her ramshackle brain. “I dislike being medieval about the matter, but you have persisted in your wild and foolish ways, leaving me little choice but to arrange a marriage for you.”
He expected a fight or a tease. The usual dance. She only gazed out the window. The light illuminated her pale skin and strands of red in her loose hair beneath her lavender hat.
“Once established in a sound marriage, the money is yours, and you’ll become the responsibility of another man, a new frog to kiss and manipulate,” he continued, trying to goad her into a response. “Until that time, you will remain under my care and tutelage. You will obey me.”
She closed her eyes.
“I expect you to be angry,” he said, unsettled by her silence. “I expect you to say that I’m trying to control your life, shattering your soul. What have you to say?”
“‘O Rose thou art sick!’” Lilith murmured. “‘The invisible worm, / That flies in the night / In the howling storm: / Has found out thy bed / Of crimson joy: / And his dark secret love / Does thy life destroy.’”
“Please, Lilith,” he implored. “No more Keats. No more melodrama.”
“It’s Blake, you idiot,” she cried, shaking her spread palms. “William Blake! The Sick Rose.”
“Can you just say what you mean and stop playing games?”
“I’m not…playing… I’m not…” She closed her eyes again and shook her head, as if she had given up on words. On him. “You don’t understand that poem, do you? Your dry, inflexible mind can’t even conceive its meaning?”
“Of course I do!” he replied. “You believe the vulnerable place in your heart, the wellspring of your tender passion, has been destroyed by what you sought to protect yourself from. And I am the invisible howling worm.”
He halted, unsure where the ridiculous words he spoke originated. It worried him that he was capable of such inanity.
But she stared at him now, straight at him and only him. Her eyes, in their glorious gold and brown tones, were luminous.
He slipped onto the sofa beside her. “Why don’t you want a true gentleman to take care of you?” All the hardness had drained from his voice. “To keep you safe? To honor you?”
“I do.”
“Then why do you feel you must manipulate and lie to me? Why do you think I don’t have your best interests in mind? Can you try to trust me?”
“How can I?” She shook her head. “You’re a Maryle. All you and your family ever wanted to do was send me away, pretend that I never existed. How can you have my best interest at heart if you don’t know or care who I am?”
“Then tell me who you are.” He tugged at her print of dead Ophelia, trying to remove it from her white-knuckled grip. “I dearly want to know the real Lilith.”
She tightened her hold on the frame before she slowly released it. He carefully set it at their feet and then reached for her broken book. “Just try to refrain from the poetry for a while.” He chuckled softly, a little white flag that he meant no harm.
“They left me.” Her words were a brittle whisper. “They left me, George.” In the briefest moment, he felt her pain all over him, the years and years of rejection and estrangement. Then she turned her head, closing herself off again.
“But I’m here.” He grasped for her hand. “I haven’t left you.”
Tears welled in her eyes again, pooled in her lashes, and ran down her cheeks.
He panicked. “No, Lilith.”
She brushed off his hands and turned, hiding her face as she wept.
His mind contained one thought: Make Lilith stop crying. Make her angry, annoyed, anything but this. He reached to touch her shoulder, but stopped, unsure. He waited in this awkward, impotent place for several painful seconds, his fingers hovering just above her. She swiveled around.
“Be quiet!” she cried.
“I didn’t say anyth—”
She crushed her head into his chest. Her hat poked his chin and the feather tickled his face. For all his dislike of emotional outbursts and wild displays of emotion, he wrapped his arms around her shaking body.
“I’ll make sure everything is well for you,” he whispered in a soothing voice he didn’t know he possessed. Meanwhile, his rational mind was shouting What in the hell are you doing? Was he being a gullible frog again? Was this a trick? And did he care?
“It won’t be.” Her lips brushed the skin above his collar as she spoke, sending a current of wild energy over him. What magic did she possess? It made no sense that the most annoying female in his life felt like the old ragged blanket he had slept with every night as a child until the nursemaid was ordered to toss it in the fire.
She pulled away.
“I want to be alone.” She gazed at her hands, where she rubbed the palm of one hand with the thumb of the other. “I need to wri—I want to be alone.”
“That’s not wise.”
She jerked her head up, her brows down, eyes hot. “What do you mean?”
“It’s not wise to be alone to stew in dark thoughts when you’re upset.”
She stared at him for a beat more. Then a fragile but devilish smile wavered on her lips. “How would you know? Do you have dark thoughts, George? Is there a black stain on your soul that you have never revealed?”
“Of course,” he quipped, easing back against the cushion. “When I’m not fighting with you, I’m excessively moody, brooding, and brimming with dark desire. Keats and those other chaps are mere shades of gray compared to my opaque blackness as I scribble parliamentary bills and orders for estate plumbing repairs.”
“Stop making me chuckle. I’m very upset. I’ve lost my family…again.”
He rested his hand on hers. “I’m your family.”
“No, you’re not.”
He shrugged. “It says so on the trust paperwork. Bloodlines be dammed if the Bank of England says you’re related.”
“Well, I don’t like you.”
“So you see, we are family. True family members detest each other through thick and thin.”
“You jest. You Maryles are a perfect family. You are idle summers of fresh berries and glacé, fluffy cakes, Sunday strolls in the park with a bouncing baby in the perambulator.”
None of George’s memories included such nostalgic memories. In fact, when he thought of his childhood, he remembered standing terrified before his father’s enormous oak desk. He had waited there, chin down, resigned to the harsh punishment that his father would exact for painting a bright yellow and pink parrot on his wall. A good paddling to ensure his son didn’t grow up to be an embarrassing molly of a man.
The memory made him restless. He desired to get away from this room and into the daylight.
“Let us go to the park.” He reached for her elbow. “A little sunshine will bleach out all the dark spots in your heart.”
“Thank you, but there is something I must…I need to do.” She pulled away. “I just want to stay home and sleep.”
“But Lilith,” he said gently, “you can’t stay here alone. This isn’t your home anymore.”
“What?” she cried, visibly surprised by his words. “You told those men to put everything back. This is my home!”
“I had the furniture and art returned because I have no other place to store it at present. I can’t in good conscience allow an unmarried lady of three and twenty to be on her own.”
“You are not my owner!”
He studied her fierce, defiant face and bit back his sharp retort about how she needed one.
“Do you have any notion of proper society, Miss Dahlgren?” The enormous amount of polishing that she would require before he could pop her off to a respectable gentleman sank in. “You don’t, do you? No. You shall come to my home where you shall be under the wise chaperonage of my sister. While there, you shall practice wholesome habits and enjoy proper company. My sister and I will endeavor to teach you the finer points of manners, polite conversation, and the delicacies of better society—graces a gentleman of proper station will require of a wife.”