“Your mother.”Hal sighed, the side of his thumb absently tracing her jaw.“Your father didn’t leave her anything to live on, and the new duke won’t take care of her.So you must.”
Gemma nodded.“And Lucy—she’s eighteen.She should have come out this year, if the family weren’t in mourning.So next year…but a London Season costs more than money.The dragon ladies of Almack’s, the matrons who decide the fate of every young girl who appears before them for approval…let’s just say they are unlikely to give the nod to a girl whose parents made the most scandalous match of the decade.Much less one who has been cast out by her half-brother, the current duke.”
Hal studied her.“Gemma.You made your debut, with those same parents and their match, only fresher in the minds of the society gossips.”
A ghostly memory of her own debut gripped Gemma, giving her a sudden desire to pull the baronet’s sheets over her head.“Yes.That’s how I know they won’t accept Lucy as she is.Because it happened to me.I was a scandal before I ever walked into my first ballroom, merely because my father had the bad taste to fall in love with a servant girl.”
“Ah,” Hal said, as though some things were coming clear in his mind.
“Well,” Gemma amended roughly, grief swelling up to mingle with the remembered confusion and shame, “the falling in love part would’ve been accepted, I suppose—it was the bit where he married her that upset the Ton.And then they had the audacity to be blissfully, ostentatiously happy in that marriage.”
“Your father was a duke.And a wealthy one, at that.You cannot tell me he was entirely shunned by polite society, no matter who he married.”
“Oh, no.He was invited everywhere—but my mother was not.And Father refused to enter any home where Mama was not welcomed.”
“He forced Society to bend to his will, and they held a grudge.Which they took out on you.”
Gemma smiled faintly.“You understand a lot about how the Ton works, for a laborer from a country village.”
Hal looked angry, his muscles very tense and solid against her.“Why didn’t your father protect you?”
“How?By giving up my mother and marrying someone suitable instead?”Gemma pressed her lips together to stop them trembling.“Father did the best he could for me.He taught me to be myself and find my own happiness, as he did.It’s not his fault that I wasn’t terribly good at it.”
“What happened when you debuted, Gemma?”Hal’s voice was deep and compelling.
Words lodged in her throat, a tight knot of unhappiness she wanted to expel but had to swallow instead.“It was a long time ago.I’ve all but forgotten it.”
“Gemma.”
“They hated me,” she burst out, surprising herself.“Before they even met me, they had already decided who I was.Who I must be.Ill-bred, bad blood, no better than she should be.Tainted.Tarnished.Not good enough to dance with, certainly not good enough to marry, only good enough for?—”
She broke off, turning her head to the side and squeezing her eyes closed to shut out the memories.But Hal cupped her cheek and gently forced her to look at him.“Good enough for what?”
Humiliated heat prickled her scalp, flushing all the way down to her chest, but Gemma met his gaze defiantly.If there was moisture beading at the corners of her eyes, she ignored it.“For a laugh.A joke.A prank.I got lots of those from the titled young men of ‘good’ families.I wasn’t overlooked or ignored—I was a laughingstock.I told you about the satirists’ obsession with my family?Well, they certainly had a wonderful time when I came along.”
Hal growled deep in his chest, the sound spurring her on.
“Do you know what else I got?”she said, a little wildly.“Propositions.Leers.Winks.Gropes.They all assumed that with a lowborn mother, I must be a girl of low morals, ready and available for a romp.And this blasted figure didn’t help—no matter what I wore, no matter how virginal and demure the gown, no one ever saw me as innocent.It didn’t take too many suggestive comments or insinuating whispers or cruel jests before I wasn’t that innocent girl anymore.They wanted me to be bad.So I was bad.I took their low expectations, and I made a mockery of them by outdoing the worst anyone had ever said of me.I was the one laughing, then.”
To her horror, her voice broke at the last.Hal dropped his forehead to rest against hers.The closeness unraveled Gemma’s tightly held composure, and she took a shuddering breath.
His deep voice vibrated through her chest where they were pressed together, making her feel enveloped by him, warm and safe and cocooned against the world.
“Beautiful Gemma.You aren’t tarnished.Not by anything you’ve done, or anything that was done to you.I don’t believe anything could take away your shine.I see it every time I look at you.”
She clutched Hal by the shoulders, her fingers digging into the rough cloth of his shirt and clutching it in fistfuls.They stayed that way for a long, trembling moment, sharing each other’s breath and absorbing the heat of each other’s bodies.
The sound of a door slamming downstairs brought Gemma to her senses.“Let me up!”she whispered, squirming out from under Hal’s bulk and trying to restore some sort of order to her gown and coiffure.
Hal rolled to his side and propped his head up on one hand to watch her.“No one is coming.You should lie back down here with me.To rest.You must be weary after the morning’s…trials.”
All of Gemma’s annoyance and pique came rushing back.
“As if you even care how I feel,” she sniffed, poking a curl back into place with a harried jab.“One little disagreement, and you disappear for days?I had to learn how to pull a pint!”
“Perhaps I’m being dense—it’s probably my lack of title and breeding,” Hal said, turning onto his back and crossing his arms behind his head, “but I don’t think I understand what you want.First I’m to promise to leave you alone; now, you seem to be saying that when I did leave you alone, you resented it.Well, which is it?Should I stay, or should I go?”
“You should listen more attentively,” Gemma said with chilly emphasis.“I have yet to hear you promise not to interfere again.Well, Hal?Will you give me your promise?”
