Page 33 of Lady Frederica and the Scot Who Would Not
Frederica bounded away from him like a cat thrown in water and yanked up her gown. “It’s my mother!”
What had he done? He couldn’t believe it. He knew better. Frederica was an innocent, and he was so far from it he might as well be reaching to Heaven from Hell.
She fell to her knees by his feet. “My unmentionables! Where are they?”
Good God. Was this what a woman you were truly drawn to could do to you? Steal every ounce of sense you possessed? He’d touched her in a way he should never have let himself do. He’d touched her in a way that bound him to her now for life. He couldn’t let anyone else touch her like that. He’d trapped them both.
Clenching his teeth, he bent and scooped up her unmentionables from where he’d dropped them, his pulse ticking even faster. “Here.” He extended the garment toward her, and just as he did so, light flooded the dark passage.
She lunged toward the garment, snatched it from his hand, and dropped it, crying out and reaching for it just as he did. Their heads nearly collided, and she tipped backward, but he grasped her, tugging her toward him, their chests smashing together as footsteps stopped behind him and light illuminated them, as well as her unmentionables sitting beside them.
A pregnant pause came for one breath, and Gabe drank Frederica in. She looked well sated and beautiful. It made him want to ruck up her skirts again. It was not the moment for the thought, but it was there in his head, stirring his desire once more.
“Papa,” she breathed out, and the single word locked in Gabe’s fate.
Behind him, a voice, deep and angry, said, “Either you will wed my daughter, or I’ll meet you on the field of honor tomorrow and one of us won’t live to leave that field.”
“Papa!” Frederica gasped, scrambling to her feet, clutching the very material Gabe had pulled off her supple body. “Papa, no! It’s not what you think.”
Her father’s face twisted with fury, an emotion the man had every right to feel. Frederica scuttled backward, and Gabe stepped forward, grabbed her by the waist, and pulled her behind him, shielding her.
“You do not need to protect my own daughter from me.” The earl’s voice vibrated with anger. “You, on the other hand, I’ve a mind to kill.”
“Papa!” Frederica tried to come out from behind Gabe, but he stuck out his arm and blocked her, his instinct to protect her still too strong to deny.
“You’ve every right to be enraged with me,” Gabe said. “But your daughter—”
“Is an innocent whom you have clearly compromised,” the earl said, spitting each word out as Frederica’s mother began to wail. “You will wed her, or we will duel. I’ll accept nothing less.”
“Papa!” Frederica yelped. She’d wanted to set things right for Vivian, but she certainly had not wanted to trap Gabriel into wedding her. She’d hoped he’d come to the decision of his own accord. “You cannot force the man to wed me!”
“You are certainly right, but if he doesn’t, I will ruin him as you will be ruined.”
“She could wed Lord Brooke,” Guinevere, who had just appeared with Carrington behind her father, said in an odd, almost cheerful tone.
“Yes!” her mother agreed, her wailing pausing mercifully. “Yes, yes! If this scoundrel won’t have her, I’m sure Lord Brooke will do what is right so that Vivian and Asterly can still wed.”
“Indeed,” Guinevere said in that same inappropriate and overly cheerful tone. “Lord Brooke is in a great deal of debt, I hear.” Was it Freddy’s imagination or was Guinevere spearing Gabriel with a challenging look? “I’m certain,” Guinevere continued as she stared at Gabriel, her eyebrows arching, “that once he discovers Frederica’s great dowry, he’ll snatch her up like the prize she is.”
Freddy felt her jaw slip open. What the devil was Guinevere doing? She knew that Brooke was a horrid man. Why was she suggesting Freddy wed him?
“I will kill Brooke before I let him wed your sister,” Gabriel snarled.
Freddy’s lips pulled into a smile, which she just managed to cover. It was horribly unfitting to smile at a time like this, but, well, Gabrieldidsound as if he didn’t want Brooke to wed her because he himself wanted to possess her. That was something. Something good, she thought. It wasn’t love. Of course not. They hardly knew each other. But they wanted each other, enough that they’d been unthinking fools. Enough that he didn’t want another man to have her.
Couldn’t love spring from that?
She blinked in shock at the errant thought. Did she want it to? Hadn’t she decided after her disastrous entry into the marriage mart that she didn’t care about love, didn’t need or want it? Hadn’t she lain awake in her bed after being labeled Frightful Frederica and cried hot tears, vowing she would gain her freedom from life in thetonand live where people would accept her as she was? Marriage had not been part of her plan, and yet, here she was. She would be the biggest fool to want a marriage of convenience with a stranger rather than a partner, indifference rather than caring, coldness rather than warmth. Could Gabriel accept her as she was? Did she care, truly?
Before she could ponder it more, her father shoved his finger so close to Gabriel’s nose, he almost touched it. “Either you will wed my daughter or Lord Brooke will. You and I both know what a man deep in debt will do.”
“I’ll wed her,” Gabriel said, and with those three words, her fate—and Gabriel’s—was sealed.
Chapter Thirteen
“Frederica, stop it!” Freddy’s mother grabbed Freddy’s hands just as she was about to rub her sweaty palms against her silk wedding dress once more.
“I’m so nervous, though,” Freddy grumbled, tugging her hands away from her mother’s grip. Freddy eyed the closed door of the drawing room. Gabriel was in there with Freddy’s family and his sister, waiting for Freddy to enter and wed him. Was he as nervous as she was? She didn’t know because she hadn’t seen him since the scene in the garden three days prior. Her father had forbidden them from doing so until the wedding, and he had positioned her brother to sleep outside her bedchamber door while her father assigned the footmen outside to guard the house at night. It was the height of humiliation, though no less than she knew she deserved.
