Chapter 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

GIDEON

G ideon studied the table for a long moment, pondering his options.

"I'll trade you a truth for a truth."

Cora's eyebrow cocked. She rested one hand on her hip with the other arm outstretched like a statue of Athena, holding her cue like a sword rested on the floor. "Agreed."

Gideon shot a ball into the pocket. "Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young woman."

"I didn't ask for a fairy tale."

"I'm just getting started." He set up his next shot. "This beautiful young woman had the strangest mix of good fortune and ill. She was born to a wealthy father who loved her enough to want her to be accepted, despite the fact that he could not marry her mother."

"Her mother wouldn't likely have accepted that duke's proposition anyway," Cora said wryly.

Gideon sank a ball. "I took one look at this lady and decided she was mine. I could not offer for her at the moment, but there was someone who could. Her sparkling beauty had attracted many admirers, but there was one man who concerned me."

Cora's tiny snort of derision caused Gideon to miss his next hit. She truly didn't believe him when he told her she was the most gorgeous woman he had ever beheld. Maddening. She had mirrors and two functioning eyes. How could she not see herself the way he did? He stepped back and watched her line up her next strike.

"The man I was most worried about also happened to be someone whose good graces I could not afford to offend. He was the kind of man who outwardly looked like an ideal husband for the lady in question. He was extremely wealthy and very handsome."

"Handsomer than you?" she teased.

Gideon choked. He liked her teasing; it was far better than the cool mockery she had shown him early on. Borderline affectionate. Heat unspooled in his middle. Once he recovered his composure, he continued. "The other man had no intention of marrying her. He might have looked like a fairy-tale prince, but he was a predator. He was cruel, and he was determined to ruin this young woman simply because he could get away with doing so."

Cora's expression contained bafflement, confusion, and astonishment all at once.

He closed the distance between them, teetering on the edge between hope that she would understand why he'd done what he did, and fear that she wouldn't forgive him even then. That frantic evening, he'd reached for the one thing he could think of that was easily to hand. Music. And in doing so, he'd ruined it for her so completely that she had abandoned it. That aspect had been absolutely accidental.

"This other man knew that while her father was influential, the fact that she had been born out of wedlock limited the ways he could protect his daughter. Even a duke couldn't force Society to accept her. He could only hope to bribe a path into their good graces, and that her charm and wit would secure her a permanent position amongst the ton ."

He brought his hand to her cheek. Her skin was warm, her eyes wide and liquid, the dark centers huge. When he spoke again his voice was rough in his own ears.

"Her vulnerability wasn't her fault."

Her thick lashes fluttered and when she opened them again, they were as clear as sea glass. Tears glistened, but her voice was steady. "Go on."

"On the night of her greatest triumph I overheard this man talking about how he planned to lure her—you—into the garden. She would be willing, he claimed, if he lied and promised marriage. If she wasn't willing, he would force her. She would never risk telling anyone. Her place in Society was too precarious. But whispers would follow her. People would know. It would be a painful and slow demise. Perhaps she might save herself through a hasty marriage to fortune-hunter. But she was prideful. I couldn't imagine her doing that. And since I could not offer for her on the spot, I did the only other thing I could. I ruined her for any other man."

She sucked in a harsh breath.

"Why not offer for me? I would have said yes."

He was silent.

"Your mother."

Gideon bent to shoot. From his hunched position, he growled, "Don't let my father off the hook so easily. Or me. They had a match in mind for me. Courting you publicly would have embarrassed them. Besides, my father was ill. I couldn't risk killing my own father just because I desired a woman. I could have been courageous. He might have survived the shock. But the bank would have taken a hit to its reputation of being steady, solid, secure. I was the bank. I still am."

She absorbed his graceless explanation better than any woman should.

"You, Gideon, are not a bank. You are a man." Cora gave him no chance to respond. She smacked her ball too hard. "What happened to this scion of Society who wanted to rape me in a garden?"

"He is still unmarried and shows no sign of desiring to settle down."

"And what became of the lady Martha wanted you to marry?"

The way she smacked that ball and missed the pocket entirely was definitely envy. Gideon's heart soared. He liked his wife a little envious. A little bit possessive. Cora was so easygoing in every other respect.

"She eventually grew tired of waiting for me to offer for her and married elsewhere."

" Then what stopped you from pursuing me?"

The fact that you justly despised me. "By then, there was a broken nose and a history of fisticuffs with your brothers. I couldn't get near you."

"Not through them, no." She slanted him a skeptical glance. "You were twenty-seven when you ruined my Season, Gideon. Old enough to decide for yourself."

There was the crux of the matter. All these years he had told himself that he had acted out of kindness, in a roundabout fashion. Sometimes he even believed it.

But his wife saw right through him. She saw the ugliness of his actions for what they were: self-serving and cowardly.

She had married him anyway. Granted, he had nearly destroyed her family to manipulate her into doing it.

"I still had obligations, Cora." He took her shoulders. "You are right. I should have put you first. I should have raised you up on a pedestal?—"

She cut him off with a stern, "Gideon, I do not want to be on a pedestal of any kind. I am not a statue."

"No. You aren't. You are a woman. Warm. Loving. I see the way the world asks you to stop loving the people you care most about, and the way it demands you care about people whom you find detestable. I cannot change that. But I can tell you that my mother's devotion to Wentworth's is a reflection of her devotion to her family, and she is very threatened by anyone who would make an equal claim to either one. Especially me."

A watery grin broke through. He cupped her jaw and stroked her lower lip with the pad of his thumb.

"I couldn't claim you then, but I have never wanted anything more than to see you shine."

Tears glistened. Water on emeralds.

"It nearly killed me to play such a cruel trick on you. I only did it because I promised myself that one day, I would marry you and make things right. You might not believe me, Cora, but it's true. Every word." He pressed a soft kiss to her lips. Gentle. Felt her slight tremble as she swallowed her tears. "You have never been invisible to me."

"Yet you have avoided me all the weeks we have been married."

"I didn't want to fight with you." He'd been busy cleaning up the mess he'd made of her brother's bank, but he could hardly tell her that.

"It helps to know that you didn't ruin me out of spite."

"Never." He smoothed a strand of hair away from her face. "Are you going to be frank with me about how you met other men?"

"You had no claim to me then," she reminded him. "I am not asking about your past. I don't want to know."

"I'm curious, is all."

"I met them through newspaper advertisements. I never told them my true name or where I lived. We always met in public. There weren't very many who warranted a second letter, much less a second meeting, but I did meet someone. It's been over for years," she said in a rush of breath. "I didn't know what else to do. It wasn't as though I had great options elsewhere."

"I'm not criticizing you, Cora. If anything, I'm angry with myself. I could have lost you to another man. That would have been unacceptable."

"I didn't exactly advertise that I was a duke's daughter," she said, and the sadness in her voice nearly undid him. She had tried so hard to find a place to belong, and only a handful of people had offered her friendship when she most needed it. Now his mother had all but demanded she abandon Honey Caldwell. All for a bank that would never love any of them back.

"You wouldn't have had more than a decade to test the waters and decide that what you truly wanted was me, either," she countered.

"What makes you think I tested the waters?"

She shrugged, unconvincingly indifferent.

"I did, but not seriously. None of those women were you." He slid his arm around her waist and tugged her closer. Cora leaned into him, her solid warmth and delicious curves working their usual magic. "You were all I wanted."

He bent his head and kissed her, unhurried, soaking in how right she felt. He had spent years plotting this marriage and it had been worth every heartache and setback, every ruthless action it had taken to get here.

"I'd have ruined you a hundred times over if that's what it took to make you my wife."

She pulled back, laughing.

"You could have asked me, you know."

He pulled them fractionally closer, pressed together from shoulder to hip, and kissed her deeply. Daringly, he slipped one button free at the base of her neck. Then another. Cora arched into him, her generous breasts flattened and maddeningly caged behind layers of silk and cotton. He wanted—needed—to feel her skin on his. Weeks of torment, having her so near and so distant at once.

A second button slipped free. A third. Slowly, Cora withdrew, running her hands down his arms. Gideon's stomach dropped.

He had miscalculated. Again.

But Cora simply took his hands and squeezed.

"As much fun as we had together the last time we played billiards, I did not find the table to be a very comfortable place for kissing. I suggest we relocate to your room?"

Gideon thought he might pass out from sheer joy of her leading him upstairs to their private quarters. He couldn't resist pressing her against the railing on the way up. Cora giggled.

"I haven't heard you laugh like that since your debut."

Cora froze, and for a split second, Gideon thought he'd ruined the moment.

"I didn't think it was possible for me to be happy like that again." She bent her head and nipped his jaw. Pressed a soft kiss to his throat. Places where he wanted to taste her, too. His cock thickened in response. His throat worked when she said, "The day we married, I thought I would never be happy again. I was cold to you, Gideon."

"You aren't cold now."

He slipped another button free. Her dress gaped open from the back of her neck to her waist. She held his eye.

"No. If anything, I am rather warm."

Cora slipped out of his grasp and continued up the stairs. The narrow V of her exposed spine between the deep red edges of her gown sent a rush of blood southward so quickly he nearly saw stars. He had seen her wearing less, yet this glimpse of her sent heat shooting through his veins.

He hastened after her.