They were darker than usual in the moonlight, the green muted, but they still held that quiet intensity that made her stomach flutter.
“You weren’t meant to hear that,” he said at last.
“I gathered. I can only imagine what Lord Weedham said first.”
They stood in silence for a moment, the sound of laughter and music drifting faintly through the doors behind them, mingling with the rustle of the breeze.
Jason shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Georgie walked toward him slowly, resting her hands lightly on his abdomen. His muscles jumped. “You defended me,” she said softly.
His gaze burned into her. “Of course I did,” he murmured. “You’re my wife.”
She sucked in her breath. The words shouldn’t have meant so much. But they did.
“You didn’t have to,” she said after a beat, dropping her gaze to his broad chest.
“I didn’t have to marry you either,” he said evenly.
A startled gasp flew from her lips and her eyes darted back to his. “What did you say?”
His gaze was already on her, steady and unflinching. “You heard me,” he murmured.
Instead she asked the question that had been gnawing at her since that first morning. “Why did you?”
He blinked at that, then straightened slightly, his fingers covering hers.
For a long moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer. But then he said quietly, “At first I told myself it was because I couldn’t stand to watch you be dragged back into that church. Not to him.”
“At first?” she echoed, her brow furrowing slightly.
“Then I realized I couldn’t stand to think of you in Bath. Or wherever you were planning to go afterward.”
Her breath caught. “You still haven’t answered the question.”
That faint crease deepened between his brows. “You didn’t deserve a life in exile, Georgie. And you certainly didn’t deserve being married to Henderville. Someone should have stopped it long ago.”
The rawness in his voice startled her as much as the words. But she pulled her hands away from his and took a step back. “So you wanted to be the hero? Is that it?” For the first time, she wondered if there was something he wasn’t saying, something deeper, older, behind that compulsion to protect her.
One corner of his mouth curved faintly. “No,” he said. “Not at all. I married you because I wanted to.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The air inside the ballroom felt warmer than it had before, or perhaps it was simply that Georgie’s blood was still humming from what Jason had said.
She followed him back through the doorway, the familiar strains of a waltz rising up to greet them, and for the first time all evening she was acutely aware of how close he walked at her side.
She could still hear his words echoing in her mind. I married you because I wanted to.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have mattered, and yet it did. It mattered far more than she cared to admit. Not to mention the fact that he’d called her Georgie. It felt perfect the moment the name left his lips.
She kept her chin high as they moved through the crowd. The hum of gossip still surrounded them like gnats, fans fluttering, voices dropping to conspiratorial whispers, heads turning wherever she passed.
And yet now, instead of feeling suffocated by it, she found herself standing just a little taller.
Because at her side was the man who’d told another gentleman tonight—in no uncertain terms—that anyone who spoke ill of her would answer to pistols at dawn.
That was…something. He may not have fallen to his knees and declared his love for her. She hadn’t expected that. But it meant something that he’d stood up for her.
