A Lady Never Surrenders (27 page)

“She was indeed.” His voice grew choked. “Although less so in this portrait. She was already ill by the time this was done.”

Hoping to lighten his mood, she looked at the other portrait, as blond as the first was dark, with merry eyes. “And this is your aunt, I take it?”

A faint smile touched his lips. “Yes. With my uncle opposite.”

She stared at his uncle, a handsome man in his youth. “You look like him.”

“That’s impossible,” he said dryly. “He’s not my uncle by blood, remember? He married my mother’s sister.”

“Oh, right. I forgot.” She gazed closely at the portrait. The man was slighter in build, but … “I still say you look like him.”

Jackson’s gaze narrowed on the portrait. Then he cast her a cold glance. “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no resemblance at all.”

“I grant you, his hair is arranged differently, but see there, where his nose is thin like yours, and his eyes are deeply set? And he has your jaw.”

A strange look crossed his face, before he took the locket and snapped it shut. “He doesn’t look like me. It’s absurd—no one else has ever noticed any such thing.”

As he headed back to the saddlebag with the locket, his back stiff, it dawned on her what he must have thought she was saying. Oh, dear. She hadn’t been implying … She would never hint…

Oh, well. Best to leave that alone now. Any apology she could offer would only make it worse.

And clearly she didn’t want to do that—he was now in quite a temper. Picking up the brush, he went to work on his muddy boots as if his life depended on making them shine.

“Would you like me to do that?” she asked.

“Have you ever cleaned boots before?”

“Well, no, but how hard can it be? I don’t mind helping.”

A shuttered look crossed his face, and his brushing grew positively manic. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve done it every day of my life for the past twenty-five years, and I imagine I’ll be doing it every day for the next thirty or more, God willing.”

Oh, dear, Proud Pinter had shown up with a vengeance this morning. She was surprised he hadn’t called her “my lady” yet.

“Don’t you have servants at all?” she asked.

“Not to help me dress,” he said in a hard tone as he brushed madly at his boots. “Men like me don’t have valets. That probably won’t change if …
when
we marry.”

Had he really said “if”? Had it been a slip of the tongue borne of not being used to the thought? Or something else?

It set her on edge. And made her determined to banish Proud Pinter. “And why should you have a valet when you already know how to clean boots so well?” she quipped. “I do hope you’re as good with lady’s boots. I prefer mine brushed with horse hair, but if you insist on whatever you’re using there, I suppose I can tolerate it.”

He lifted a stern gaze to her, though he kept brushing. “You find this amusing, I take it.”

“No, indeed,” she said lightly. “What I find amusing is the idea of a Bow Street Runner taking a valet on his travels. Any decent valet would bemoan the damage to your hat every time someone took a shot at you. That could get annoying.”

A smile tugged at his lips. “Perhaps a trifle, yes.”

“And just imagine how he would despair over the effect that wind has on your cravat. Not to mention how gunpowder might stain your shirt cuffs.”

He chuckled, then seemed to catch himself and turn pensive again. Setting his boots down, he fixed her with an earnest stare. “All joking aside, I should tell you that my daily life differs little from my traveling life.”

“Oh?” she said, determined to keep the conversation light. “Cheapside must be quite poverty-stricken. You sleep on bug-ridden mattresses and eat poor meals every day, do you?”

He eyed her askance. “What I mean is, I have to fend for myself most of the time, not only when I travel, but at home. No one stokes up the fire before I rise or trims my quills or makes fanciful creatures out of sugar paste to decorate my birthday cakes. My few servants—”

“Ah, so you
do
have servants. I began to wonder how you had time to be a Bow Street Runner when you must always be washing your own clothes, cooking your own food, and possibly even constructing your own cabinets and weaving your own rugs.”

He glowered at her. “This is all a joke to you.”

“Oh, no,” she said, turning as sober as he. “Not in the least. So tell me,
do
you have servants?”

“Yes,” he bit out. “A maid-of-all-work, a cook, and a footboy.”

“And a coachman?”

“I hire one for trips. Why?”

“I was remembering that you used your own equipage to transport Gabe and Minerva to Burton for Gran last spring.”

A muscle worked in his jaw. “I do own a small traveling coach that I keep at a livery,” he said almost defensively. “It was my uncle’s. But in London, I travel by horse or hackney. Or I walk.”

“I’m a grand walker myself,” she said defiantly.

A snort escaped him. “Is that why you rode Lady Bell a mile to go shooting?” He strode over to finish packing up the saddlebags.

She frowned. “I had my lunch and my smock and gun kit and a pair of dueling pistols in my saddlebags, in addition to the rifle stuck in a saddle holster. So no, I didn’t attempt to carry it all a mile.”

“My point is…”

“I know what your point is. That you don’t live as well as my family does. That being your wife will mean giving up some things.” She stared him down. “I don’t care.” There. Let him weasel out of that one.

“You say that now, but you’ve never had to live without a hundred servants, meals prepared by a French cook and served on silver and china, and all of it in the confines of either a very spacious London town house or a three-hundred-and-sixty-five-room mansion.”

“Well, I can hardly deny
that
,” she said, her temper rising. “But it doesn’t mean I’m incapable of doing without it all.”

Taking her chemise from where he’d apparently hooked it by the fire the night before, he walked up to the bed and handed it to her. “You’ve never had to make do with only a couple of shifts and a small assortment of gowns. You’re used to expensive jewelry, to silk and satin, with lace dripping from every delicate thing you own.”

“Your aunt was wearing lace in that portrait,” she pointed out. “And I would guess that her bonnet cost nearly as much as mine.”

“Perhaps, but it’s her Sunday best.” He gestured to Celia’s bonnet with a jerk of his hand. “
That
is what you wore to go
shooting.
You wouldn’t even wear it to ride to town, I daresay.”

The fact that he was right didn’t mitigate her temper any. “What is the point of this lecture, Jackson? Have you changed your mind about marrying me?”

“No!” The vehemence in that one word soothed her hurt a little. He ran his fingers through his hair, then softened his tone. “Of course I want to marry you. I just want to make sure that you know what you’re getting into.”

Leaving the bed, she drew on her chemise, then began to dress. “You seem to forget that once we marry, I’ll inherit a fortune. Granted, it won’t buy a three-hundred-and-sixty-five-room mansion, but it ought to make us tolerably comfortable. And when you become Chief Magistrate—”

“That appointment is by no means certain.” His eyes darkened as she wriggled into her drawers. “As for your fortune, I … um … there’s…”

His voice trailed off as she sat down on the bed and pulled on one stocking, then tied her garter around it. She noticed how his gaze fixed on the bit of thigh she let show above the garter. In a burst of defiance, she donned her other stocking with excruciating slowness. Might as well remind him how they had come to this pass in the first place.

When his breath sharpened and he flexed his hands at his sides as if resisting the urge to grab her and kiss her senseless, she reveled in it.

“Yes? You were saying?” she taunted him. “Something about my fortune?”

His gaze snapped to her face, then turned stormy. “That is by no means certain either.”

“Why not?”

He pulled on his own clothes with jerky movements that betrayed his agitation almost as much as did the bulge in his drawers. “Your grandmother might not approve of the marriage. She might decide not to give you your portion.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Gran would never do such a thing.” She stood to don her corset. “Her rule was that we had to marry, and she made it quite clear that she didn’t care whom we married as long as we did so within the year.”

Walking up behind her, he began to lace her up. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that she changed her mind.” His voice was harsh, labored. “Suppose she decides that she doesn’t approve of me. Suppose she refuses to give you your fortune if you defy her. What then?”

A knot formed in her belly. Did the money matter so much to him? “Then we don’t have her fortune. I told you. I don’t care.”

“That’s what you said.” His tone was flat, tense.

Feeling a growing chill in her belly, she drew on her gown so he could fasten that up, too. “You don’t believe me.”

He was silent for so long as he buttoned her up that it made her chest hurt. “I don’t believe you know what living without all that would mean.”

She whirled on him. She’d had enough of his condescension and his behaving as if he were now going to be stuck with some spoiled wife who couldn’t survive in his world—a perfectly genteel world, from what she could tell. “If you want to get out of marrying me, Jackson—”

“That isn’t what I’m saying.”

“It certainly sounds that way.” She shoved her feet into her half boots, then clapped her bonnet on her head, heedless of the fact that her hair was down and her hair pins were probably scattered to the four winds. “It’s dawn. We’d better go.”

He glanced toward the door, saw the gray light seeping in around the edges, then let out a low curse. “Yes, we’d better.”

As she pulled on her gloves, he poured the remains of the pail of water over the fire, then took his coat from the window and his surtout from the bed and donned them both.

When he came toward her with her cloak and she tried to snatch it from him, he wouldn’t let her. Instead, he laid it about her shoulders and began to tie it just as she had helped him with his surtout the night before.

Seething over his superior manner and his hints about her spoiled life, she refused to look at him.

With a muttered curse, he tipped up her chin and forced her to gaze into his eyes. “I’m merely trying to make sure that you take this seriously. That you know what you’re about to get if you marry me.”

There it was again.
If
you marry me. “Oh, believe me,” she snapped, “I’m beginning to realize exactly what I’m about to get.”

Proud and Proper Pinter all the time. Days of being made to feel guilty about coming from a family of privilege and fortune, punctuated with a few glorious nights of lovemaking.

Tears stung her eyes, and she pulled away from him, not wanting him to notice.

As she started for the door, he caught her by the shoulder. “Let me go first. There’s probably a path to the road that was used by the poachers, but we can’t be sure if anyone’s lying in wait for us along it, so we need to move quickly and quietly. No talking. Stay as close behind me as you can, hold onto my coat, and be prepared to run if I say. Understood?”

“Yes.” She wasn’t so angry at him that she would ignore the danger they might find themselves in.

He opened the door, but before walking out, he turned and took her mouth in a long, heated kiss. When he drew back, his expression was a mix of need and frustration. “I will never let anyone hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”

No one but yourself, you mean,
she nearly said. Instead, she nodded.

“You trust me?”

“Of course.” She trusted him to keep her safe, at least.

He nodded, then headed out the door with her at his heels. True to his competence as a Bow Street Runner, within moments he found a path she would never have noticed and started them down it.

As she followed him in utter silence, she replayed their conversation. Was she wrong to be so upset? He was a practical man, after all. She should add that to the list: Practical, Proper, and Proud Pinter. Everything that she was not.

Well, perhaps she had a
little
of his pride. She’d certainly found plenty when he was making her sound like some lofty lady who couldn’t live without “fanciful creatures of sugar paste” to decorate her birthday cake.

She might not have minded that so much if he’d said he loved her, but love still hadn’t entered the conversation.

You didn’t say you loved him either.

No. Even though she did. Most awfully.

She groaned. When had that happened? When he’d saved her life? Or responded to her embarrassing revelations about Ned by threatening to shoot the man and then calling her a fairy queen? Or had it occurred when he was making love to her with such tenderness that she would never forget the glory of it?

Oh, it didn’t matter when it had happened. She loved him. Despite his pride and his lectures and his determination to make her feel like a worthless aristocrat, she’d fallen in love with the wretched fellow.

But after everything he’d said, she’d be damned if she told him. If he wanted her love, he would have to make that clear. Right now, all he seemed to want was her body. And possibly her hand in marriage, though she wasn’t even sure about
that
at the moment.

Still, last night he’d said he was hers always. If he’d meant it—and she had no reason to believe he didn’t—then surely they could muddle through this together. That was close to a declaration of love, wasn’t it?

It wasn’t as if they’d have a choice anyway. Gran was going to make them marry.

That thought cheered her. Yes, they would have to marry. So he would just have to learn to deal with her fortune and her rank and her lack of ability to do without “silks and satins” and lace on her gowns.

And perhaps in the midst of all that, he could find a way to love her, too.

T
O
J
ACKSON’S RELIEF,
they reached the road without incident. No doubt Celia’s assailant had moved on once they had vanished. But that didn’t mean they were out of danger—just that they were out of danger at the moment.