Quill decided to rise. Given that he obviously wasn’t going to be able to sleep, he decided to do some research. Gabby was a romantic, and Gabby liked to attend plays. Fine. He would memorize a few bits of theatrical nonsense and use them to convince her that he was in love. Because as dawn coldly lit the far corner of the garden wall, Quill was painfully aware that Gabby was unlikely to find his admission of hopeless love convincing. Damn it, he’d never been in love, and he saw no possibility for the future. Peter was right. He simply wasn’t the type. He hadn’t the faintest notion how to act besotted.
Quill threw off the covers and pulled the bell cord. When a bewildered early-rising footman appeared, Quill requested bathwater and then collected some research materials from the library. Luckily for him, there were reams of poems that discussed the effects of love. He had always found in transactions of business that research gave him a satisfactory edge over his opponent.
And his research was eminently satisfactory. By an hour later, Quill was bathed and seated by a roaring fire, surrounded by books marked with slips of paper. It was fortunate that he had an excellent memory. The only question was whether to borrow from Shakespeare—there was a possibility that Gabby might recognize the words—or from a more obscure playwright.
Shakespeare was an enticing possibility. I burn, I pine, I perish. Quill liked the sound of that. Of course, it was all nonsense, except perhaps the burning part. He was burning, all right. The question was: How much of this nonsense did he have to spout in order to make his point?
There was another good bit in the same play: With her breath she did perfume the air. Sacred and sweet was all I saw in her.
Under his breath, Quill tried it out. “With your breath you did perfume—no.” He tried again. “When I first saw you on the dock, she—you—your breath perfumed the air. And everything I saw was sacred and sweet.”
That was along the right lines. What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty, As those two eyes become that heavenly face?
Quill muttered it a few times. He couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud. What if his valet walked into the room? It was rubbish. He had thought Shakespeare didn’t write such twaddle.
Gabby’s eyes weren’t like stars. They were amber brown, except the very rims, which were black, dark black. And they didn’t shine or sparkle or spangle—whatever spangling was. They were kind of a brandy-golden brown. They spoke. To meet Gabby’s eyes was to be invited into her tumbled world of laughter and words, hasty emotion, and lush desire. He was quite certain he had seen her eyes grow hazy with desire. They grew more brandy-colored whenever he kissed her.
Quill rose. The time had come to put the question to the point. He silently rehearsed his little scraps of twiddle-twaddle.
It was seven o’clock in the morning.
The perfect time for a theatrical performance.
WHEN MARGARET BUSTLED into the room early in the morning and announced that Mr. Erskine had requested to see Gabby immediately, she groaned. She hadn’t slept well at all. Half the time was lost in the throes of humiliation, as she relived the moment when her dress fell off, and the other half was spent reliving the way she’d acted in the carriage.
She was a wanton hussy, no two ways about it. Her father would have tossed her out of the house if he had any idea what she was really like. Perhaps Quill was summoning her for that very purpose. She stared blurrily at the mirror as Margaret brushed out her hair. She’d thrown herself at him the night before. What had come over her?
Margaret stopped brushing for a moment. “You mustn’t take it so hard, miss,” she said earnestly.
Gabby met Margaret’s eyes in the mirror with a profound sense of shock. How did Margaret know? Could the coachman have gotten an idea, or could the footmen who stood behind the carriage have seen something?
“The worst that will happen is that gossip columns will take note.”
Gabby shivered. What an appalling idea. Perhaps returning to India wasn’t such a terrible prospect.
“I’ll send someone out to buy the papers,” Margaret said, starting to brush Gabby’s hair again. “My mum always said that you’re better off facing up to the worst. After all, it must have happened to other ladies before you. Everyone knows those French bodices are just asking to fall off. Perhaps the papers won’t mention what happened. It’s a delicate subject, after all.”
“Hmmm,” Gabby replied. While she was relieved to find that Margaret was talking not about her scandalous behavior in the coach, but about her scandalous behavior at the ball, she had little hope that delicacy would stop a gossip column from elaborating on the collapse of her bodice. She had seen no avoidance of delicate subjects in The Morning Post. Perhaps Quill already had one of those gossip columns, and that’s why he wished to speak to her.
She walked down the stairs as if she were a Frenchwoman going to execution. In fact, before she noticed it, she had woven a little story in which she was a marquise, keeping her head high as she made her way tearlessly to the guillotine.
“Oh, for goodness sake!” Gabby whispered to herself. The last thing she should be doing was making up foolish tales. That was what got her in trouble last night.
Quill must have been listening for her, because he spoke before she entered. “Come in, Gabby.” His deep voice sent butterflies into her stomach. Why did her brother-in-law—well, her future brother-in-law—have this effect on her?
Gabby walked into the room feeling rather defiant. It wasn’t her fault that Madame Carême’s bodices were badly designed. In fact, that all of her gowns were ill-constructed. It was Peter’s fault. He had chosen the modiste who created the gown.
Quill was standing with his back to the fireplace, hands clasped behind him. He had his utterly impenetrable look on, Gabby thought to herself. He looked like a piece of granite.
Now that she thought about it, it wasn’t Peter’s fault—the whole thing was Quill’s fault. She scowled at him rather than say good morning.
Quill opened his mouth and then saw that Gabby had left the door open. He’d be damned if he was going to voice any bibble-babble when a footman might hear him. He walked past her and shut the door firmly. After a second’s thought, he turned the key as well.
Then he turned around. “Gabby,” he announced, “I have something to say.” This was a preface that worked to great effect in business meetings. Invariably, a whole circle of men would fall into a hushed silence and wait with bated breath for his pronouncement.
It didn’t seem quite so successful this time. “So do I,” Gabby responded. She scowled at him again.
Quill pressed his lips together. Better to get the difficult matter out of the way first. “I’m pining to marry you,” he said.
The scowl disappeared from Gabby’s face, replaced by a look of utter astonishment.
“I’m burning and pining to marry you,” Quill said. Then he remembered the whole line. “Burning, pining, and perishing,” he added.
“Perishing?” Gabby repeated blankly.
“Precisely.”
There was a moment of silence while Quill prepared his next lines. This wasn’t as hard as he had anticipated.
“When I saw you on the dock, your breath perfumed the hair.”
Gabby looked perplexed.
“Sorry,” Quill corrected himself. “Air! Air. When I first saw you on the dock, your breath perfumed the air. And then I discovered that your eyes were like spangled stars.” He was taking a few liberties with Shakespeare, but he liked his version better.
Gabby still hadn’t said anything, so Quill walked over and stood just before her. He looked down at her downcast head. “Everything I see about you is sacred and sweet.”
He took Gabby’s chin in his hand and forced her head up. It was evident in a second that his plan had gone awry. Gabby was shaking all over like a blancmange. It didn’t take a lummox to realize that she was nearly killing herself trying to restrain her laughter.
“Forgive me,” Gabby said in
a choked tone. “I—I—” She gave up, breaking into a gloriously husky shout of laughter.
Heat rushed up Quill’s legs and into his chest. He had the impulse to violently shake the woman before him. It was all her fault that he had behaved like a nodcock. Ice replaced the embarrassment, and he stepped back. He began turning over cool, mocking phrases, shaping a comment that would make it absolutely clear that he, Erskine Dewland, had never in his life compared a woman’s eyes to stars.
But then he remembered. He had promised Peter that he would marry Gabby. He couldn’t snub her.
Besides, this was all gibberish, nothing more than a silly fable to make a romantic woman marry him. He needn’t feel embarrassed. It was all lies, after all.
Not for nothing had Quill attended Drury Lane when the great actor, John Philip Kemble, was performing. If Kemble could do it, so could he. Gabby was still giggling to herself. Quill reached out and dragged the minx into his arms.
She fit there as if she were designed to melt against him, as if every one of her curves was matched by a hollow in him.
She stopped giggling, but her voice was still husky with laughter. “Quill?”
“Gabby.” He swooped, bending her over his arm with Kemble’s own dramatic flair.
She tasted like laughter. She tasted like Gabby.
His lips were everything his words had not been: carnal and dangerous, sure in their approach, commanding her attention.
Gabby twisted in his hands, trying to pull away from the undertow of desire. She didn’t want this again. Not the drugging feeling that turned her stomach into liquid fire, sent her up against Quill’s body, trembling and making pleading noises. It was morning. It was indecent to feel this way even at night. Especially—
But he wouldn’t let her go. His large hands held her against his muscled thighs. He pressed her indignant eyes shut with his lips and then kissed his way back to her mouth.
Despite herself, Gabby stopped pulling away and shuddered closer, her arms coming up around his neck, her mouth opening to his demands.
And there it was again: the burning, the loss of breath in her chest, the sweet fire in her chest, lower, in her stomach, lower…Gabby’s tongue met Quill’s, her heart speeding to a beat that sent a rhythm through her entire body.
“I burn,” Quill said, tearing his mouth away from hers. He was unable to keep his hands steady—or to keep them in gentlemanly bounds. He ran his fingers down her neck and then ruthlessly pulled down the delicate muslin of her morning gown.
Gabby gasped but didn’t protest. Her little cap sleeve slid without resistance to her elbow, and her chemise followed.
Quill’s voice was a low rumble, dark with passionate need. “I burn, Gabby. I pine, I perish.” He kissed the sweet cream of her shoulder, his hands tracing a bold demand. His lips drifted to her neck, breathed the words against her skin. “I am burning, Gabby.”
She sighed as his palm rounded her breast, sending a wave of tiny shivers down her body.
“You must…You must.” His voice died against her skin and was replaced by silence.
Quill raised his head to find Gabby speechless, perhaps for the first time in her life. He kissed her lips gently, a butterfly kiss, and then took her face in his large hands, holding its perfect oval. His fingers trailed a caress over her curved eyebrows, down the sweep of her high cheekbones. With his hands, he marveled. With his fingers, he sang a poem, trailing over her lips. Gabby’s eyes were a brandy-golden color that a star would weep to call its own. “What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty,” Quill said quietly, “As those two eyes become that heavenly face? “
Gabby’s hands came up to cover his. She met his eyes. “That’s not fair,” she whispered. “Bianca hasn’t a decent line in the whole play”
“Sod the play.” Quill pulled her into his arms again and spoke against her mouth. “I want you, Gabby.” His hand was on the sweet curve of her bottom, pulling her against his hard body. “Oh, God, I can’t live without you. I am perishing.”
Gabby heard the rough plea in his voice and gave a little sob, twisting up to put her mouth against his lips. “Kiss me, Quill. Kiss me again.”
And he did, of course.
They fell, together, in a whirlwind of desire. In the heat of it, Gabby swayed backward, and Quill followed, his body finding its rest naturally, his weight sinking onto Gabby’s sweet lushness, hard close to soft.
His mind woke to find his body lit from head to toes with white-hot lust. Pure, shaking, shuddering lust. And he found himself poised on the brink of pulling Gabby’s dress up, or down—it hardly mattered. On the brink of thrusting himself into relief, into the silky heat that he knew would mimic the welcome of her mouth. Hard shivers shook her body as he rubbed his thumb over her nipple, and she strained against him, murmuring unintelligibly.
But alas, Quill’s rational mind had fallen back into place. He waited until Gabby opened her eyes.
She lay back against the Persian carpet, her hair loosed from its pins and spread around her head in waves. A smile trembled on her lips. “I burn,” she whispered. “I pine, I perish.” Her hands reached up and cupped his hard face.
“Will you kiss me again? Will you …” But she couldn’t bring herself to the question she really wanted to ask. Of course it was Quill she wished to marry. Of course it was Quill she wished to bed.
His eyes met hers with perfect understanding. “I will kiss you every time you ask,” he said. “And I will marry you, Gabby, if you’ll have me.”
Gabby blinked. “Do you love me?”
“I fell in love with you the moment I saw you on the dock,” Quill answered. It was almost too prompt, his answer.
Gabby sat up. “I am not sure of my feelings,” she said hesitantly. “I am not sure that I love you yet, Quill. But I think it will not be difficult.”
A smile twitched at the corner of Quill’s mouth. Thank goodness he was free of the twiddle-twaddle associated with romantic love! It was so clearly self-delusion. Gabby, who had considered Peter her true love a mere five hours before, was well on her way to being in love with him.
“That would be nice,” he said gravely, picking up her hand and kissing the palm.
Gabby began fussing with her bodice. Her hair swung forward over her shoulders.
Quill couldn’t stop himself from touching it. It was such a lovely bronze-brown color, streaked and shadowed like the pelt of a wild animal. Gabby’s curls had no similarity to the pale, confined ringlets that were exhibited by most young English ladies.
“Oh, blazes!” Gabby said impatiently, hauling at her sleeve. “Madame Carême’s dresses are naught but a few bits of cloth, barely sewn together. I shall have to find someone else to make my clothing if I don’t want to be half dressed most of the time!” She was chattering in an effort to ignore the prickly feeling in her stomach, the embarrassing warmth between her thighs.
Quill grinned. “I like Madame’s gowns,” he remarked.
Gabby managed to wrench the sleeve of her morning dress back into place.
“They are well-designed,” he continued. “You see, Gabby? Having been tussled to your elbow, the bodice jumps up to cover your magnificent bosom, looking none the worse for wear.”
Gabby met Quill’s teasing eyes a bit shyly. What on earth had she been doing, lying about on the carpet? “I hope you are not going to make a habit of this,” she said rather stuffily.
Quill helped her to her feet. Then he bent over and whispered into her ear. “Wait until we are married, Gabby.”
She felt pink rising up her neck. “What do you mean?”
Quill’s dark green eyes were devilish. He reached out his hand and trailed one finger down her neck.
Gabby jerked away, embarrassed by her reaction to his simple caress. “I had better return upstairs,” she said, raising her hands to the waves of hair at her neck. “Lord knows what Margaret will think of my appearance.”
Quill shrugged. “Who cares?”
??
?How like a man to say so! I care. Otherwise, why would I say it?”
To Quill’s mind, females regularly said all sorts of things they didn’t mean. But the important thing was that Gabby had agreed to marry him—and she did seem to mean that.
“I will send a messenger to Bath and inform my parents of our plans.”
“Oh.” Gabby thought of the viscountess and her invalid husband. “Will your parents be angry?”
“Not at all,” Quill replied. “They initially thought you would marry me, after all.”
“Well, then, why didn’t they send your picture over to India?”
The back of Quill’s neck crawled. The last thing he wanted to do was explain postcoital headaches to his newly betrothed. No doubt she would rethink the engagement if she knew the whole truth. So he shrugged.
His family was well-aware that Quill rarely answered questions and could never be counted upon to keep up his side of a conversation. But to his irritation, Gabby obviously did not understand his personality yet.
“Quill? Why didn’t your father send your picture to India instead of your brother’s? And why does my father think I am marrying a future viscount, given that you are the eldest son?”
“He—” Inspiration struck. “My father is afraid that Peter will not be able to make a match on his own. You see, he’s rather shy.”
“Peter? Rather shy?”
“Oh, yes,” Quill said, more confident now that he was well-embarked on his tale. “Do you remember last night, when you tried to kiss him? How is Peter going to make a marriage when he cares for etiquette above kisses?”
Gabby’s brows drew together. “That is not necessarily the case. Peter is remarkably easy in conversation, and he is a leader of the ton. Madame Carême herself told me so. Certainly he could find a bride if he wished, and he wouldn’t need to break any proprieties to do so.”