The Temptation of a Gentleman (6 page)

A plan began to form in her mind as she looked even closer. Yes, he was exactly the kind of man who would take pleasure in the challenge of a virtuous woman like herself. The kind of man who expected to flirt and woo a woman, then discard her. Ruin her.

Noah glanced down the table and was surprised that Marion’s expression had lightened considerably. In fact, she looked positively pleased with herself as she stared at him. His stomach lurched that she would look at him like that. As if she believed he held the key to her welfare.

What could be further from the truth. As much as he wanted to help her, he had to concentrate on Josiah Lucas. Already, Marion was proving to be too much of a distraction to him. Even now he had to force himself to turn away and listen to Lucas.

“
Well, it was a wonderful meal,” Walter Hawthorne said as he set his napkin to the side of his plate with a satisfied sigh. “We’re lucky to be able to partake in such a sumptuous feast, aren’t we, Marion?”

She stiffened at the comment, her brown eyes narrowing slightly. Noah could see contempt in every inch of her.

“
Thank you, Mr. Lucas, for your hospitality. Unfortunately, my head troubles me a bit tonight. I hope you gentlemen will excuse me if I go up to my room and rest my eyes,” she said in a voice devoid of the emotions so clear in her eyes.

Lucas took in a short breath through his teeth, an almost imperceptible noise, but Noah heard it.

“
Of course, Miss Marion,” their host said with a tight smile. “Go with my hope that you’ll feel better in the morning.”

Marion bobbed out a quick curtsey to the group and a hard look at Noah before she slipped from the room. It left him wondering even more what had happened in the span of a few short days that she would so desperately want his help… seemingly
need
his help. And why being needed by Marion Hawthorne was such a pleasant prospect.

***

“
Psst!”

Noah turned on his heel to look around the dark hallway.

“
Lord Woodbury!”

Marion peeked her head around the corner of the doorway a bit further. He nodded when their eyes met and she skittered away from the door so she wouldn’t be seen. The room was dark except for the one candle she’d dared to light. Sheets covered the furniture and the fireplace was long cold and unused. Though the servants didn’t seem to pay much attention to the neglected sitting room, she couldn’t take any chances.

“
I’m glad I found you.” Noah’s voice was low as he shut the door noiselessly behind him. “I’ve been looking for quite some time.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry about that. I tried to hide in a place where I’d see you leaving the library after you shared port with my father and Mr. Lucas, but where I wouldn’t be caught. This room was the only option.”

Noah looked around them. “How long have you been here?”

“
For over an hour,” she confessed, stretching her neck and massaging the tight muscles behind it.

Standing with her head cocked around the doorway was most uncomfortable. To her surprise, Noah mumbled something that sounded like “drive a man mad”, then turned away to walk to the fireplace. The candle that flickered restlessly on the small escritoire by the window barely illuminated his face.

“
My apologies, Marion,” he said. “I tried to break away sooner, but Lucas and your father seem to enjoy the sounds of their own voices immensely. Then I had to sneak back inside after I
finally
managed to say my farewells.”

Despite her worries, Marion giggled at the observation. Noah was very much right. Her father had never known the virtue of a quiet moment, and since she’d arrived at Toppleton Square she had been haunted by the grating tones of Josiah Lucas’s voice.

Noah turned from the window to look at her with a cocked eyebrow. “But I’m sure you didn’t ask me to find you to discuss your father’s talkative ways, did you?”

Her mouth suddenly dry, Marion reached behind her to grip the covered back of a high chair. “No.”

He stepped a bit closer with a curious tilt of his head. “Then why did you ask me to meet you in private?”

Her thoughts raced. What right did she have to drag this man… this near-stranger, into her humiliating problems? Then again, he was her only hope. Part of her desperately wanted to trust Noah Jordan, to believe he could help her out of the situation her father had cast her into.

She glanced down at the carpet with unseeing eyes. “It’s a bit awkward.”

“
We’ve become friends, haven’t we, Marion?” Noah asked, his voice husky in the darkness.

“
As much as two people could be in such a short time.” She didn’t dare to look into his blue eyes for fear he’d see her tremble. “I consider you a friend.”

He cleared his throat as if uncomfortable, then continued, “Then tell me what’s happened as you might tell any friend.”

She finally dared to look up and found him staring at her. He seemed to be closer, though she hadn’t heard him move. His bright eyes shown in the dim candlelight. They held her captive as if he’d woven a spell around her.

Taking a deep breath, she blurted out. “I want you to ruin me.”

Noah nearly choked at her blunt request. He staggered back. “What?”

Marion’s face flamed red as her hand came up to cover her mouth. The very same mouth he’d been contemplating kissing just a few moments before. God’s teeth, now she was offering him the chance to do that and much, much more. His treacherous body grew heavy with just the thought.

“
I’m sorry.” With a little sob, she turned away from him. “I didn’t mean to blurt it out like that. I should explain.”

She took several long breaths before peeking over her shoulder at him. The distress on her face softened his heart.

“
Go ahead,” he encouraged her gently.

“
Not ruin me exactly,” she said. “I only want my father and Josiah Lucas to
believe
you’ve taken my virtue.”

Noah didn’t like where this discussion was going at all. “Why?”

She hesitated and her gaze fluttered downward.

“
You know why.”

He let out a low growl. So, his accusation had been correct. Somehow he’d hoped he was wrong about Walter Hawthorne, that the man wouldn’t go through with such a distasteful arrangement without his daughter’s consent. But Noah’s instincts were almost always correct, they had been honed by years of spying.

Damn her father. What kind of man would submit his own child to the lecherous attentions of an old man?

“
Marion.”

She shook her head, though she didn’t move away from him as he reached for her. Though it was entirely inappropriate, he wanted to comfort her, to feel her warm skin against his own and her pulse beat through her veins.

“
You were right about my father.” Her voice barely squeaked past her throat. “He’s arranging for a marriage between Josiah Lucas and me.”

As she lifted her stinging eyes to Noah’s kind face, Marion briefly considered telling him the whole truth. Including the part about Josiah wanting to ‘taste’ her before they were wed. She took a breath to do so when Noah touched her hand. Electricity seemed to crackle between them.

No, she couldn’t confess the most humiliating part of her father’s scheme. She couldn’t look into Noah’s beautiful eyes and tell him she was to be Josiah Lucas’s whore before she was his wife. If she did, he’d never again look at her as he was at that moment.

“
I can’t marry him, Noah… Lord Woodbury.”

He caught her upper arm with a gentle grip. “I want you to call me Noah.”

With a shiver, Marion looked up at him, her brown eyes soft with unshed tears. He couldn’t tell her how much he longed to hear her say his name again. How he wanted to throw propriety to the wind and have her call it out as he kissed her, touched her… ruined her in reality the way she asked him to ruin her for show.

“
Why don’t you want to marry Josiah Lucas?”

“
How can you ask me that?” she gasped, her voice filled with indignation.

He smiled at her strong response. “Because I need to know you’ve thought this through, Miriam. Once you’ve been ruined, pretended or not, that act cannot be undone.”

She nodded. “I could never marry him. The thought makes me… sick. He’s too old for me. And even if he weren’t, I don’t
like
him.”

“
But he has money.”

“
That’s unimportant to me,” she said, her tone just a touch haughty. He’d obviously hit upon a tender subject for her.

“
People always say that, Marion, until they have none,” he pointed out gently.

He wagered she’d never done without. Her fashionable wardrobe spoke volumes about that subject.

Her eyes narrowed. “So you won’t help me?”

“
I never said that.” He stepped a bit closer. “It’s a significant decision for us both.”

She clenched one hand into a fist at her side. “I’m not a ninny, Noah! I know what I’m asking.”

“
Then tell me,” he said. “Where will you go if I help you? Once you’re ruined and you’ll never be able to make a match, where will you run? Or do you think your father will happily allow you to live with him indefinitely?”

She opened and shut her mouth and her pale face answered his question. Noah shook his head.

“
I won’t leave you to a life on the street. I’ve seen too many good women whose lives and dreams were destroyed by men who took what you’re offering me.”

“
I didn’t think…” She took a step toward him. Now they were only a few feet apart. He could smell the soft peachy scent of her skin even from a distance. “I never thought you would care what happened to me…
after
.”

That comment stung him more than he wanted to admit. “What kind of man do you think I am?”

“
A rake,” she whispered.

Noah winced. She had him there. He was a rake. He’d taken immense pleasure in many women without giving much thought to their future. But he had never, not in England nor on the continent, taken a woman’s innocence. He’d never condemned a woman to a life on the streets or in shame.

“
Perhaps I am,” he said with a sigh of regret. “But I’m not a monster. I’ve seen what kind of consequences your request can bring. So I need to know that you’ll be taken care of if I do as you ask.”

She swallowed hard. “What I’m about to tell you, you must never tell my father.”

He let out a harsh laugh. “As if I’d run to your father with anything that transpires between us!”

“
Of course you wouldn’t,” Marion said, more to herself than to him. “I don’t know why I worried.”

He smiled and motioned to one of the dusty chairs. She nodded as he lifted the drop cloth away, sitting down as if she were weary.

“
My father and mother didn’t suit.” She stared at her hands. “He is… well, you’ve met him, you know what he’s like. Brash, loud, uncouth and often unkind. My mother, on the other hand…”

She paused with a soft smile that made Noah’s chest clench. He wished he could keep that smile on her face always. He hated seeing her filled with fear. “Your mother?”

“
Ingrid was her name,” Marion sighed. “I know that and little else. She died when I was only eight years old. But what I remember of her was gentle, very kind. She feared my father, and he loathed her for all her best qualities. When she died, he didn’t mourn for her.”

“
But you did,” Noah said. “And still do.”

Marion allowed herself a look at him. She hadn’t spoken much about her mother to anyone, the subject was simply too painful. Yet Noah seemed to understand her heart.

“
Very much.” She nodded. “For a long while I was cut off completely from the life she’d lead, from the
person
she’d been. My father forbade her name to be spoken in his house, so I couldn’t even garner any information from the servants. I had all but given up when I found a packet of letters in my father’s office.”

Noah smiled at the thought of Marion, the little girl spy, searching her father’s desk. “Quite the little snoop, were we?”

She laughed despite the pain in her eyes. “Yes. Finding information about her was my obsession and I’d stop at nothing to find out the truth. The letters were a boon to me, the first information I’d found about her in years.”

“
How long had you been looking?”

“
A few years,” she sighed. “I was fourteen when I found the correspondence. The letters were from my mother’s sisters. They were addressed to me mostly, though a few begged my father to allow me contact with them. I stole them from their hiding place and devoured them all in a two-day period, then put them back so he wouldn’t miss them.”