The Lady Forfeits

Circumstances meant that Gabriel himself had not been part of that society for a number of years, but nevertheless he could understand Copeland’s concern for his three no doubt impressionable daughters. ‘He did not fear that keeping you and your sisters shut away in Hampshire might result in the opposite of what he intended? That one or all of you might be tempted into doing exactly as your mother had done and run away to London?’

‘Certainly not!’ Her reply was both quick and indignant. ‘As I have said, Caroline and Elizabeth found life in the country somewhat restricting, but they would never have hurt our father by openly disobeying him.’

‘They obviously did not feel the same reluctance where I am concerned,’ Gabriel pointed out with a rueful grimace. ‘Your presence here would seem to imply that you believe your sisters to have finally come to London now.’

In truth, Diana had no idea where her sisters had gone after they’d left Shoreley Park. But having searched extensively locally, with no joy, London, with all its temptations and excitement, had seemed the next logical choice. Except Diana had not realised until she arrived here quite how large and busy a city London was. Or how difficult it would be to locate two particular young ladies amongst its sprawling population.

‘I believed it to be a possibility I might find at least one of them here. My sisters did not leave together, you see,’ she explained as Gabriel once again raised arrogantly questioning brows. ‘Caroline disappeared first, with Elizabeth following two days later. Caroline has always been the more impulsive of the two.’ She gave an affectionate if exasperated sigh.

Gabriel’s face darkened ominously. ‘They had the good sense to bring their maids with them, I hope?’

Diana winced. ‘I believe they both thought that a maid might try to hinder their departure—’

‘You are telling me that they are both likely somewhere here in London completely unprotected?’ The earl looked scandalised at the prospect.

Diana was no less alarmed now that she had actually arrived in London and become aware of some of the dangers facing a young woman alone here—over-familiarity and robbery being the least of them. ‘I am hoping that is not the case, and that the two of them had made some sort of pact to meet up once they were here.’ Rather a large hope, considering Elizabeth had seemed as surprised as Diana—and resentful—by Caroline’s sudden disappearance. ‘In any case, I am sure they will have come to no harm. That we may even one day all come to laugh about this adventure.’

Gabriel was not fooled for a moment by Diana’s words of optimism and could clearly see the lines of worry creasing her creamy brow. It was a worry he, knowing only too well of the seedy underbelly of London, now shared. ‘I trust you did not also come to London unchaperoned?’

‘Oh, no,’ she assured him hurriedly. ‘My Aunt Humphries and both our maids accompanied me here.’

‘Your Aunt Humphries?’

‘My father’s younger sister. She was married to a naval man, but unfortunately he was killed during the Battle of Trafalgar.’

‘And am I right in thinking that she now resides with you in Hampshire?’

‘Since her husband’s death, yes.’

Good Lord, it seemed he did not have just three young, unruly wards to plague him, but an elderly widow he was also responsible for! ‘And where is your aunt now?’

She looked apologetic. ‘She does not care for London and has stayed in her rooms since our arrival.’

Thereby rendering her of absolutely no use whatsoever as a chaperon to her niece! ‘So,’ Gabriel announced heavily, ‘if I am to understand this correctly, your two sisters having run away, you have now decided to offer yourself up as a marital sacrifice in the hopes that, once they learn of our betrothal, they will be encouraged to return home?’

Diana met his gaze steadily. ‘It is my hope, yes.’

Gabriel gave a hard and humourless smile. ‘Your courage is to be admired, madam.’

She looked startled. ‘My courage?’

‘I am sure, even in the relative safety of Hampshire, that you cannot have remained unaware of the fact that you are considering marriage to a man that society has wanted nothing to do with this past eight years?’

‘I have heard … rumours and innuendo, of course,’ she admitted gravely.

Gabriel would wager that she had! ‘And this does not concern you?’

Of course it concerned her. But if no one could be persuaded to tell her of this past scandal, what was she expected to do about it? ‘Should it have done?’ she asked slowly.

He gave a bored shrug. ‘Only you can know the answer to that.’

Diana frowned slightly. ‘Perhaps if you were to enlighten me as to the nature of the scandal?’

Those sculptured lips twisted bitterly. ‘And why on earth would you suppose I’d ever wish to do that?’

Diana stared up at him in frustration. ‘Surely it would be better for all concerned if you were to inform me of your supposed misdeeds yourself, rather than have me learn of them from a possibly malicious third party?’

‘And if I prefer not to inform you?’ he drawled.

She gave him a frustrated look. ‘Did you kill someone, perhaps?’

He smiled without humour. ‘I have killed too many someones to number.’

‘I meant apart from in battle, of course!’ Those blue eyes sparkled with rebuke for his levity.

‘No, I did not.’

‘Have you taken more than one wife at a time?’

‘Definitely not!’ Gabriel shuddered at the mere suggestion of it; he considered the taking of one wife to be ominous enough—two would be utter madness!

‘Been cruel to a child or animal?’

‘No and no,’ he said drily.

She gave another shrug of those slender shoulders. ‘In that case I do not consider what society does or does not believe about you to be of any relevance to my own decision to accept your offer of marriage.’

‘You consider murder, bigamy and cruelty to children or animals to be the worst of a man’s sins, then?’ he asked with a bleak amusement.

‘I have no other choice when you insist on remaining silent on the subject. But, perhaps, having now made my own acquaintance,’ she suddenly looked less certain of herself, ‘you have decided you would no longer find marriage to me acceptable to you?’

Was that anxiety Gabriel could now see in her expression? Had the young fool who had rejected her, no doubt because of that change in her circumstances, also robbed her of a confidence in her own attraction? If he had, then the man was not only a social-climbing fortune-hunter, but blind with it!

Diana Copeland was without doubt beautiful—certainly not ‘fat and ugly’ as Osbourne had suggested she might be when he’d first learnt of Gabriel’s offer for one of the Copeland sisters without even laying eyes on them! Not only were her looks without peer, but she was obviously intelligent, too—and capable. Gabriel was fully aware he had her to thank for having arrived at a house that was not rodent infested and musty smelling, and with servants who were quietly efficient. She was, in fact, everything that an earl could ever want or desire in his countess.

Also, having now ‘made her acquaintance’, Gabriel had realised another, rather unexpected benefit if he should decide to make her his wife … No doubt that golden-red hair, when released from its pins, would reach down to the slenderness of her waist. Just as those high, full breasts promised to fit snugly into the palms of his hands and the slenderness of her body would benefit from a lengthy exploration with his seeking lips.

Obviously it was an intimacy that Diana’s cool haughtiness did not encourage Gabriel to believe she would welcome between the two of them at present— because she was still in love with the social climbing fortune-hunter, perhaps?—but she would no doubt allow it if she were to become his wife.

Diana felt her nervousness deepening at the earl’s continued silence. Nor could she read anything of his thoughts as he continued to look at her with those hooded midnight-blue eyes.

Was she so unattractive, then? Had her role as mistress of her father’s estate and mother to her two younger sisters this past ten years rendered her too practical in nature and, as a result, plain? Was Gabriel Faulkner even now formulating the words in which to tell her of his lack of interest in her?

‘You realise that any marriage between the two of us would require you to produce the necessary heirs?’

Diana looked up sharply at that softly spoken question and felt that delicate colour once again warming her cheeks as she saw the speculative expression in those dark eyes. She swallowed before speaking. ‘I realise that is one of the reasons for your wishing to take a wife, yes.’

‘Not one of the reasons, but the only reason I would ever contemplate such an alliance,’ Gabriel Faulkner bit out, his arrogantly hewn features now cold and withdrawn.

Diana moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘I am fully aware of a wife’s duties, my lord.’

That ruthless mouth compressed. ‘I find that somewhat surprising, considering your own mother’s complete lack of interest in them.’

Her eyes widened at the harshness of his remark. Her chin rose proudly. ‘Were you acquainted with my mother, sir?’

‘Not personally, no.’ His disdainful expression clearly stated he had not wished to be either.

‘Then you can have no idea as to why she left her husband and children, can you?’

‘Is there any acceptable excuse for such behaviour?’ he countered.

As far as Diana and her sisters were concerned? No, there was not. As for their father … Marcus Copeland had never recovered from his wife leaving him for a younger man and had become a shadow of his former robust and cheerful self, shutting himself away in his study for hours at a time, and more often than not taking his meals there, too, when he bothered to eat at all.

No, there was no acceptable explanation for Harriet Copeland’s desertion of her family. But Diana did not appreciate having Gabriel Faulkner—a man with an acknowledged, if unspoken, scandal in his own past—point that out to her. ‘I am not my mother, sir,’ she said coolly.

‘Perhaps that is as well …’

She frowned her resentment with his continued needling. ‘If, having considered the matter, you have now changed your mind about offering for me, then I wish you would just say so. It is not necessary for you to insult my mother, a woman you admit you did not even know, whilst you are doing so!’

In truth, Gabriel had no interest whatsoever in the marriage of Marcus and Harriet Copeland; he was well aware that marriages amongst the ton were often loveless affairs, with both parties tacitly taking lovers once the necessary heirs had been produced. That Harriet had chosen to leave her family for her young lover, and was later shot and killed by that same lover when he’d found her in the arms of yet another man, was of no real consequence to the present situation.

No, the coolly composed and forthright Diana Copeland, whilst as head-turningly beautiful as the infamous Harriet, was most certainly not the mother!

‘Your mother produced only daughters,’ he drawled drily.

Those blue eyes once again sparkled with temper. ‘And if she had not, then you would not be here now!’

Gabriel gave her an appreciative smile. ‘Touché.’

‘Nor is it possible for anyone to predict what children will be born into which marriage,’ she argued.

‘Also true.’ He inclined his head. ‘I was merely questioning as to whether or not you are prepared for the physical intimacy necessary to produce those children? If we have girls to begin with, we will keep trying until we have a boy.’

Diana drew in a sharp breath. It had taken several days after Malcolm’s defection, accompanied by too many of those pitying looks of neighbours and friends, for her to come around to the idea of seriously considering the offer of marriage from Lord Gabriel Faulkner.

Accepting such an offer would not only salvage some of her own pride, she had assured herself, but would also help to persuade her two sisters to return home now that the possibility of marriage to a man they did not love had been removed.

Both of them were good and practical reasons, she had decided, for her to be the one to accept Gabriel’s offer. Except she did not feel in the least practical now that she was faced with the flesh-and-blood man …

She looked at him now beneath lowered lashes, appreciating the way his perfectly tailored clothing emphasised the width of his shoulders, his muscled chest, the narrowness of waist, and his powerful thighs and long legs, before raising her gaze back to that wickedly handsome face, heat suffusing her cheeks as she saw the look in the dark and taunting eyes that stared unblinkingly back at her. A quiver of … something shivered down the length of her spine as she found herself unable to look away from those mesmerising midnight-blue eyes.

Whether it was a shiver of apprehension or anticipation she could not be sure. Although the tingling sensation she suddenly felt in her breasts would seem to indicate the latter.

Diana found that slightly shocking when he had not so much as touched her. She had only ever known a pleasant warmth when Malcolm kissed her, not this blazing heat at just a look from Gabriel … ‘As I have stated, I believe I know, and am willing to participate in, all the duties expected of me as a wife,’ she said stiffly.

‘Perhaps we should test that theory before making any firm decision?’ he drawled.

Diana did not at all care for the return of that predatory glint to his navy-blue eyes. ‘Test that theory how?’

He raised speculative brows. ‘I suggest we try a simple kiss to begin with.’

She gave a start. ‘To begin with?’

‘Exactly.’

Diana swallowed hard, pride and pride alone preventing her from taking a step back as Gabriel crossed the room with a catlike tread until he stood only inches in front of her. So close, in fact, that she was totally aware of the heat of his body and the clean male smell of him that tantalised and roused the senses, her breath catching in her throat when she finally looked up into his compelling face.

Those midnight-blue eyes were hooded by lids fringed with long, dark lashes, his beautiful high cheekbones as sharp as blades on either side of his aristocratic nose, sculptured lips slightly parted, his jaw square and uncompromising.

In contrast, Diana’s own lips had gone suddenly dry, her breathing non-existent—in fact, she was starting to feel slightly light-headed from a lack of air in her lungs! She knew instinctively that any kiss she received from this man would be nothing like that chaste meeting of the lips she had infrequently shared with Malcolm Castle.

Diana could feel her pulse start to race and a welling of excitement rising up within her breast as those powerful arms moved firmly about her waist before she was pulled up against the hardness of Gabriel’s chest and his head began to lower towards hers.

She was perfectly correct. Being kissed by Gabriel Faulkner was absolutely nothing like being kissed by Malcolm …

His arms about her waist crushed her breasts against that hard chest even as he took masterful possession of her lips with his own. His mouth moved over hers in a slow, lingering exploration before the sweep of his tongue parted her lips and he kissed her more intimately still, that skilful tongue seeking entrance in gentle, flickering movements.

Diana’s pulse continued to race, to thunder; she felt both hot and shaky as their kiss continued, her hands moving up to Gabriel’s chest with the intention of pushing him away, but instead clinging to the width of his shoulders, able to feel the flexing of muscles beneath his jacket as she did so. No doubt he could feel her own trembling, as his hands moved caressingly down the length of her spine before cupping her bottom to pull her thighs up against his muscular ones.

Nothing that had gone before—not Malcolm’s kisses, or the talk Aunt Humphries had given concerning the marriage bed on Diana’s sixteenth birthday; a talk Diana had dutifully passed on to her two sisters once she’d considered them both old enough to understand—had prepared her for the heat of Gabriel’s kisses, or her complete awareness of that hardness that throbbed between his thighs.

Gabriel began to draw the kiss to a close as he sensed Diana’s rising panic at the intimacy, knowing by the shyness of her responses that the fool who had passed her over had never even bothered to so much as kiss her properly, let alone introduce her to physical pleasure.

He looked down at her beneath hooded lids, having firmly assured himself of his own willingness to introduce her to every physical pleasure imaginable, before allowing his arms to drop from about the slenderness of her waist. He stepped away from her, his expression deliberately unreadable. ‘Perhaps now would be the appropriate time to tell you that you did not ask me the correct question a few minutes ago when you were asking me for details of that past scandal.’

She blinked up at her, her cheeks still flushed. ‘No?’

Gabriel’s expression was grim. ‘No.’

She shook her head as if to clear it. ‘Then what should I have asked you?’

‘Whether I have ever been accused of taking a young girl’s innocence and then refusing to marry her when she found herself with child?’

Diana’s throat moved convulsively as she swallowed, knowing that her cheeks were no longer flushed, but deathly pale. ‘And have you been accused of that?’

‘Oh, yes.’ His teeth showed in a humourless smile.

She knew a brief moment’s panic, the blood pounding in her veins, the palms of her hands suddenly damp inside her gloves, her legs feeling slightly shaky. There was no possibility of her, or of any decent woman, marrying a man so unfeeling, so without honour—No, wait one moment, she told herself sternly. Gabriel had said he’d been accused of such a heinous crime; he had not admitted to being guilty of it …

She looked up at him searchingly. His was a hard and implacable face, the face of a man who would not suffer fools gladly. Those midnight-blue eyes were equally as cold and unyielding. But it was not a sly or malicious face—more one that defied anyone to ever question him or his actions. As he was now daring her to do?

She drew in a shaky breath. ‘You said you were accused of it, not that you were guilty.’

Those dark eyes narrowed. ‘I did say that, yes,’ he allowed softly.

‘And so are you indeed innocent of that crime?’

Gabriel gave a small, appreciative smile. Not a single member of his family had bothered to ask him that question eight years ago, choosing instead to believe Jennifer Lindsay’s version of events.

His friends Osbourne and Blackstone had not bothered to ask it either, but that was because they both knew him too well to believe he could ever behave in so ungentlemanly a fashion if he were indeed truly guilty of taking a young woman’s innocence.

That Diana Copeland, a young woman he had only just met—moreover, a young woman Gabriel had deliberately kissed with passion rather than with any consideration for her own innocence—should have asked that question was beyond belief.

Gabriel looked her straight in the eye. ‘I am.’ His gaze narrowed to steely slits as she continued to frown. ‘Having asked and been answered, you are now doubting my word on the subject?’

‘Not at all.’ She shook her head. ‘I just—What could this young girl, any young girl, possibly hope to gain by telling such a monstrous lie?’

‘As an only child I was heir to my father’s fortune and lands,’ Gabriel explained.

‘Was …?’

His mouth firmed. ‘That fortune and lands were instead left completely in my mother’s care on my father’s death six years ago. Fortunately I was not left destitute as my grandfather’s estate had been left in trust and could not be taken away from me.’

‘And this young girl’s lies are the reason your family and society treated you so harshly all those years ago?’ she pressed.

‘Yes,’ he grated.

She gave him a sympathetic look. ‘Then I can only imagine it must have been a doubly bitter pill to swallow when you knew yourself to be innocent of the crime.’

‘You only have my word for that,’ he pointed out grimly.

‘And is your word to be doubted?’ she asked delicately, eyeing him quizzically.

Gabriel frowned. ‘My dear Diana, if I truly were the man almost everyone believes me to be, then I could simply be lying again when I say, no, it is not.’

She smiled gently. ‘I do not believe so. You are a man, I think, who would tell the truth and—excuse me—to the devil with what anyone else chooses to believe!’

Yes, he was. He had always been so, and this past eight years had only deepened that resolve. But, again, it was surprising that this woman already knew him well enough to have realised and accepted that …

‘And the—the young girl,’ she spoke hesitantly. ‘What became of her?’

His mouth tightened. ‘My father paid another man to marry her.’

‘And the babe?’

That nerve pulsed once again in Gabriel’s tightly clenched jaw. ‘Lost before it was even born.’

Diana’s expression was pained. ‘How very sad.’

‘Knowing all of this, are you still of the opinion you wish to become my countess?’ he asked her directly.

Her cheeks were pale, her hair in slight disarray from their kisses, but there was still that familiar light of resolve in those sky-blue eyes. ‘You are no more responsible for what people may wrongly choose to believe of you than I can be held accountable for my mother having left her husband and three daughters.’

Gabriel’s mouth quirked. ‘The announcement of a betrothal between the two of us would certainly give society much to talk about!’

She smiled a little sadly. ‘No doubt. Perhaps, if you hope to become reconciled to society you should not, after all, contemplate taking one of Harriet Copeland’s daughters as your countess?’

Gabriel’s expression hardened. ‘I have absolutely no interest in becoming reconciled to society, or in having society be reconciled to me. Nor do I care what any of them may choose to think of me or the woman I take as my countess.’

‘Then we are in agreement?’ Diana held her breath as she waited for his answer.

‘I will have the announcement of our betrothal appear in the newspapers as soon as is possible.’ He gave a sharp inclination of his arrogant head.

This was what Diana had wanted, what she knew was necessary to salvage her own pride after Malcolm’s defection, and to encourage her sisters to return home. Yet the reality of being betrothed to the hard and unyielding Lord Gabriel Faulkner, a man beset with a past scandal that rivalled even that of Diana’s mother—worse, a man who had kissed her with such passion only minutes ago—caused her to inwardly tremble.

Whether that trembling was caused by apprehension or anticipation she was as yet unsure …

Chapter Three

‘I am seriously starting to doubt that your Aunt Humphries exists,’ Gabriel commented drily the following morning as he and Diana sat together in the small dining room, eating their breakfast attended by the quietly efficient Soames.

The previous afternoon had been taken up with various visits to the newspaper offices, the Westbourne lawyer, William Johnston, and to an old comrade in connection with Dominic Vaughn’s disappearance into the country. But Gabriel had returned home in time to change for dinner before joining Diana downstairs. Only Diana. Mrs Humphries had sent her apologies. Those same apologies had been sent down again in regard to breakfast this morning.

Diana smiled. ‘I assure you she does exist, but suffers dreadfully with her nerves. In fact, she did not wish to come to London at all and only did so because I insisted on coming here,’ she added affectionately.