Tempted by a Lady’s Smile (19 page)

“I do not pity you, Gemma.” There was a gruff quality to his tone so very different than the smooth, modulated ones she’d come to expect in every other gentleman. It marked Richard real in ways none of those other foppish lords had ever been.

She shot her chin up. “Good, because I do not want it.” Gemma sank back on her heels and ran an agonized gaze over his face. “Why did you not—?”

“Why are you here?” His quiet interruption cut into her inquiry.

“What?” she blurted, her diatribe dying a swift death.

“I didn’t expect you to be here.”

Emotion roiled in her chest. Where did he expect she’d be? Giggling and embroidering with the other ladies at the duke’s estate? Surely, even with the short time he’d known her, he’d gathered that she was not like those other women.

Richard shifted, presenting his back to Gemma, and staring out at the smooth, glassy surface of the lake. “I understand congratulations are in order,” he said into the silence.

“Congratulations?” she repeated dumbly. What was he on about?

“I…” he cleared his throat. “Arrived during your meeting with the marquess.”

She opened and closed her mouth several times. “You overheard my meeting?” That revelation escaped her on a breathless exclamation. The gravel crunched under her boots as she took a step closer.

From over the collar of his shirt, color stained Richard’s neck. “It was not my intention to listen to such a personal exchange,” he said huskily.

Yet…he had. He’d stayed long enough so that he could hear her exchange with Robert. Gemma muddled through her thoughts. If he’d listened in on their meeting, he’d know even now that her heart only belonged to him. Her heart slowed
. Mayhap he heard and does not want your love. Mayhap, he is telling you indirectly that you belong with another because you can never belong to him…
“Did you by chance hear the whole of our meeting?” Where did she find the courage to put forth that question?

“I heard enough.”

Her heart stopped. “You heard what I said, then.”
Oh, God.
The bow quivered in her arms and she steadied her hold.

His expression grew shuttered. “I did.” Just two words. Two syllables that made a mockery of the love she carried for him. She bit her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. How coolly unaffected he was. Did he know that with each casually spoken word, he ravaged her sanity? He started for his fishing equipment.

She stared unblinking, feeling much like an outside observer as Richard crouched beside the massive oak and proceeded to gather his belongings. That was all he’d say? With his careless, dismissive movements and silence stretching on, a seething regret and resentment built inside her. That she should love him so and he could carry on fishing and moving about his daily motions as though he’d not upended her world and stolen her heart.

Richard opened his pack and dropped his silver hooks inside.

Oh, she’d had quite enough. Gemma removed an arrow and shouldering her bow, she set an arrow sailing. It hissed in the morning stillness and again lodged in the tree just above his head.

He barked in surprise. Tumbling backwards, Richard landed on the muddied ground. “What in hell?” From where he sat, sprawled on his buttocks, his eyes blazed with shocked fury.

She’d gone and lost her heart to a gentleman so wholly unmoved, and
he
was the furious one?
“You
are angry?” Gemma sent another arrow sailing. Her second missile stuck in the earth just between his legs.

Richard’s eyes flared so wide, his eyebrows reached his hairline. Mouth agape, he alternated his stare between the arrow so very close to his manhood and Gemma. “Are you mad, woman?”

“Yes.” She gave her head a hard nod. “I am furious.”

“I meant insane,” he gritted out. With a growl, he motioned to her well-placed arrow. “Were you trying to unman me or kill me?”

“Neither,” she snapped. “I assure you, I do not miss, Richard Jonas. If I’d wanted to kill or maim, you’d be wearing my arrow.”

At her words, he narrowed his eyes, looking at her through thick, hooded lashes.

Gemma tossed aside her bow. “You’d simply leave without allowing me my meeting?” She detested the hurt tremble to those words. “You cared so little that you’d not allow me to tell you…”
What is in my heart.
She winced, as the echo of some of the earliest words she’d spoken to him, about another, echoed between them.

Richard searched his gaze over her face and in one fluid movement, shoved himself to his feet. “Gemma?”

She’d thought she could hate nothing more than the cool indifference in his previous words. She’d been wrong. This tender concern stuck in her heart. She swallowed hard. “I thought, given…what we’d shared,” She winced. For what they’d shared had clearly meant more to her than him. Unable to meet the piercing intensity of his gray-eyed stare, she glanced down at her forgotten arrow. “I thought you’d at least come to me.” Even as it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t love her, even though one couldn’t help where one loved, as she’d learned at this man’s hands, bitterness blended with regret and hurt, roiling inside in a violent maelstrom of emotion.

“You are right,” he said gruffly and she shot her attention back to his face. The column of his throat worked. “I should have stayed…and congratulated you on your…” A pained grimace contorted his face. “…upcoming nuptials.”

Her upcoming nuptials? What was he…? The world slowed to an infinite stop. She gasped and then the Earth resumed its rapid spinning. Oh, God. He’d not heard the whole of the conversation. He’d heard but a part… Hope stirred in her breast. A gentle breeze rolled through the forest and rustled the branches overhead. She closed the distance between them, stopping at the edge of the shore, and touched a hand to Richard’s arm. “Is that why you did not meet me?” she whispered. “
You
believed I’d professed my love to Lord Westfield.”

He remained silent so long she believed he’d not answer. “Did you not?” he said between tight lips.

“Oh, Richard,” she layered her palms to his chest. His heartbeat pounded under the weight of her palms.

A sound of protest rumbled in his chest. “Gemma.” He pressed his eyes closed, his face contorting as though physically pained. “If we are discovered, you’ll be ruined. Forced to marry me.”

Gemma’s chest tightened as though a vise were being tightened about her. Did he even now see those titled lords as superior? “Would that be the very worst thing?” she put in tentatively.

He gave his head a hard shake and opened his eyes. The emotion from within their fathomless depths seared her. “I’d not have you this way. Not like this. Not trapped and caught when your heart belongs to another. A worthy gentleman I call friend.”

Oh, Richard.
How could he still not see the weight of his worth was far greater than all the dukes, marquesses, and earls combined. “Look at me,” Gemma urged with a firm insistence and he looked down at her. She shifted and the water lapped noisily, dampening the hem of her skirt. “If you had met me last night, you would have known that Lord Westfield offered me marriage.” Pain glinted in his eyes, but he remained motionless. Silent. “You would also know that I declined his offer.”

*

She’d declined Westfield’s offer of marriage?

The tree branches rustled overhead and the leaves danced noisily. Through nature’s soft sounds, Richard tried to sort through her words. He gave his head a shake. “I don’t…”

“I said no,” she repeated softly and claimed his hands.

Richard looked down at their interlocked fingers. “You said no?” he rasped. Why, when she’d longed for Westfield for three years? Faint hope stirred within his chest. A memory trickled in, of his meeting with that other man last evening.

You always deserved a lady who wanted only you and I believe if you but look before you, you’ll find that woman…

The air left him on a hiss. He’d known. Westfield had known.

Gemma nodded. “I did.” Emotion shadowed her eyes. Unrepentant and honest, as she’d been since the day she’d crashed into the billiard’s room, stealing his quiet, his heart, and his every thought.

He struggled to formulate a coherent reply past his thickened throat. “Why?” Silently pleading for it to be him because where Gemma existed, he had no pride. Selfishly, he wanted her in every way at his side.

“You see, I could not accept his offer until I shared what was in my heart—with you.”

“Gemma?” he urged.

With a soft smile, she squeezed his hands. “I would have you know the words I carry in my heart.” Those words eerily similar to ones she’d uttered six days earlier, but yet entirely different for reasons that robbed him of thought, froze his movements and held him suspended. “Richard Jonas, I’ve loved you since you whispered in my ear about horse vomit.” His lips pulled. “I loved you even more when you encouraged me to be no one other than myself and spoke as though I was a woman different than all others—”

“There is no one else like you,” he said hoarsely. And there wasn’t. She possessed a spirit and wit that had beckoned since the first day she’d stepped into his riding path, chattering about fishing and light.

“And a man who looks at me as though I’m beautiful,” she continued.

“Because you are.” Her beauty shone from the inside out and set her aglow with a rich vibrancy that not even Athena herself could rival.

She pressed her fingertips to his lips, stopping his words. “And as I love you, I thought you should know the feelings in my heart, even as I know your heart belongs to your El—”

Richard took her mouth under his in a silencing, questioning kiss. No one else: not Westfield, not Eloise had a place in this moment that belonged entirely to them. A shuddery sigh escaped Gemma’s lips and as her body melted into his, he caught her against his chest to keep her from dissolving. He broke the kiss and touched his lips to her temple. “You forced me to see that what I felt for Eloise was not love.” He paused, thinking of the vicious envy that had nearly destroyed him whenever he imagined Gemma in Westfield’s arms.

Gemma ran a questioning gaze over his face. “It wasn’t?” she asked with a hesitancy that flew in the face of the manner of woman she was.

“I loved the familiarity of her,” he conceded. And he would be forever indebted to that woman for reuniting his once fractured family. But gratitude was not love. “I loved the comfortable presence of a person I’d known for the better part of my life, but I did not truly know her.” He knew that now. Richard palmed her cheek and lashes fluttering, she leaned into his caress. “Gemma Reed, I have loved you since you spoke about a horse’s teeth and gestational period,” he whispered. A watery smile turned her lips. “And I loved you even more when you challenged Society’s strictures and expectations for young ladies.” Richard dropped his brow to hers. “Gemma Reed,
you
are my heart’s greatest yearning and I would ask you to marry me.”

Tears filled her eyes. “Richard Jonas, you used my declaration.”

“That is hardly an answer, love.” His heart tripped an uneasy rhythm and he managed a lopsided grin. “Will you—?”

She leaned up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his. Honeysuckle wafted about his senses, more intoxicating than any spirit he’d consumed. Of their own volition, his hands settled at her waist and he dragged her into the vee between his legs. An agonized groan burst from his lips as she drew back.

“That is a yes, Richard Jonas. That is a yes.”

The End

“To Trust a Rogue”