Nora snorted and sat down abruptly. “Nonsense. Who does she think I can find to marry me?” She looked up into his face, and what she saw there brought a lump to her throat.
“Me,” he said sadly. “She thinks you need to marry me.”
“Doesn’t she understand?” Nora asked.
“That we are strangers? That you are my employer? I think she does.” He looked pained.
He doesn’t wish to marry me—of course he doesn’t. She would do anything to get Isabella, even marry a stranger, but she couldn’t burden Major Bently with her problem.Isabella is not his family, and I mean nothing to him.
Nora felt Mother Margarita take her arm and pull her to her feet. The nun gently but firmly walked with her to the door and urged her out into the garden.
Isabella looked up from her seat on an ornate bench and smiled at her; Nora could not resist. She opened her arms.
The door closed behind them. The major and Mother Superior were inside. Alone.
Jamie blinkedat the sunlight and the tableau in front of him.The dull little bird I met disappears when she holds Isabella, and a creature of grace and light emerges.The sight of the two of them drew him like a bee to honey.
Cold fingers of shame crept down his neck and gripped his heart. He slouched back into the shadows of the cloister, trying to order his roiling thoughts. He failed.
“Did you manage to convince Mother Margarita that I am perfectly capable of managing for myself?” Nora asked.
The idiotic woman has no idea what she would be taking on alone whether she went to Turin or not.
“No. She is a stubborn woman.”And a shrewd one. The nun had played him like a fish, tapping every weakness: poverty, honor, even his attraction to Nora.No, not honor. Honor demands that I tell them the truth.
“But, Major, surely you convinced her.”
With a sigh and exaggerated effort, he went down on one knee in front of her. He let raw need—to protect, to have a few more weeks of Nora Haley’s life—push honor, honesty, and sense to the ground. He reached for the book in her hands.
Nora pulled back, wary. He took the book from her and put it on the ground and wiggled his eyebrows at Isabella who giggled in her aunt’s lap.
“Mrs. Haley, I am aware what a poor specimen of a man I am. However, for Isabella’s sake”—he said the last three words with exaggerated care—“would you accept my hand in marriage?” He thought that if she had any sense she would run all the way back to Dorset.
“You can’t wish to marry me.” She looked like she had been slapped.
“Can I not?”I need to do this for her,he thought, refusing to examine his own desires.
“We hardly know each other,” she said.
“I quite agree that in the normal course of things you wouldn’t even notice me.”
“It isn’t that.” If she knew the truth, she denied it. “We don’t know, that is, I’m not—” She fluttered to a stop, eyes wide.
“Listen to me, Nora. Listen carefully,” said Jamie. He noticed she didn’t object to the use of her name. “You would be in danger in more ways than you can imagine in that world. You could be retained.”
Her eyes grew wide.
“You could—youwould—be forced into some sort of subservient role in the count’s household. If Isabella became a pawn, you could not save her.”
Nora paled even further at the mention of the girl. Isabella was the lever he needed. He took it.
“Isabella is what matters,” he went on calmly. “Your brother feared her fate enough to draw you here from England. Marriage could keep you in Rome where Isabella is safer.”
He held his breath. The need to do one good thing clawed in him; he had no doubt that protecting Nora Haley would be very good indeed. Despair almost choked him when she didn’t respond.
“Agree to marry me,” he went on, caressing Isabella’s head where it tipped onto his shoulder, “and we can see to her welfare, whatever that may be.” He had come to love the little imp. Whatever else happened, he would make sure her aunt could protect her.
Nora continued to frown. She raised her hands in a helpless gesture.
