Page 34 of The Bridal Quest

"What else should I feel?" he challenged. "They claim that blood is so important to them. But I see no indication of it. They have no joy in recovering a member of their family, blood of their blood. What is important to them is that I am the heir. The succession is what drives them. As to feelings for me, they have none. Their only worry is that my deficient upbringing will embarrass them, so they want me to marry in order to reduce their embarrassment."

Irene had to drop her eyes before his steady gaze. It was rather hard to argue against his assumptions.

"I grew up in the East End," he went on in a voice almost devoid of emotion. "I believed myself an orphan. I had no memory of this place or my parents, except perhaps for one vague feeling of a woman holding me. I remember nothing of how she looked, only of softness and a smell of lilacs. My earliest real memory is of hunger. I was always hungry. I belonged to a man who ran the lot of us as pickpockets and thieves. I was useful for wriggling into tight spaces and then opening a window or door for my accomplices. I was skillful at picking pockets and I was fast. So I had value to him. If I had not, he would have thrown me out into the cold. But as it was, he gave me food to eat—though it never seemed to be enough—and he gave me a place to stay. I had no schooling—I taught myself numbers and reading."

Irene's heart was touched with pity. "I am sorry."

He cast a sideways glance at her and said roughly, "I don't ask for your pity. I am merely telling you that that was my life. That was my world. And then, one day, Rochford walked into my life and informed me that I was Lord Radbourne and my family wanted me back. What am I supposed to feel for them? They are strangers to me. Strangers whose only interest in me is how to keep me from ruining the family name. They are noblemen, the kind of arrogant, useless, unfeeling people whom I have always despised. Members of the ton."

Irene felt the pain that lay beneath his words, and surprising herself a little, she took a step toward him, laying her hand on his arm. "But you are a member of that same class of people yourself," she reminded him softly.

He looked at her. "Not in my heart."

His hand came up to cover hers where it lay on his arm, and something shimmered between them—fragile, warm and light as gossamer—connecting them. It was a strange feeling, one she had never experienced, different from the desire that had melted her when they were together before, yet somehow joined to it.

She turned her face upward, looking into Gideon's eyes, and he bent his head closer to her, his eyes growing suddenly intent. His gaze drifted down her face, coming to rest on her lips. Irene could not speak, could not even move, caught for the moment in the web of something she did not recognize.

As she looked at him, her heart stirring in her chest, heat rising in her loins, Irene heard a woman's voice. It was too far away to be distinguishable, but it reminded her that they were standing in one of the main hallways of the house, where anyone might happen upon them at any time. She knew how they must look to anyone else, standing this way, their heads close together, her hand on his arm, with no one else around. It was a scene that would convey intimacy to any viewer—exactly the sort of assumption that she would not wish anyone to make. Worse, she suspected that if they stayed there any longer, the scene they presented would become decidedly more shocking.

She stepped back hastily, blushing. What was it about this man that made her respond in such an abnormal way? It had never before been a problem for her to keep her distance from a man.

She turned slightly away from him, and more to cover her own awkwardness than anything else, she said to him, "Even though you have learned to dislike the nobility, still, they are your family."

He, too, stepped back, and whatever warmth had been in his eyes for an instant was now completely gone. "A family who never tried to bring a child of their blood home?" he countered. "My mother, I suppose, cannot be blamed, as she was presumably killed at the time I was taken. But what of the others? What about my father?"

"But surely you cannot blame him for not rescuing you," Irene protested. "Your family did not know where you were or what was happening to you. You had been kidnapped. They had no idea who had taken you, or where you were. They believed you must be dead."

He gave her a long, level look. "Even if a father believed one dead, don't you think that he would still search for his child?"

"But he did search, did he not?" Irene asked.

Gideon shrugged. "So I am told."

"Why do you doubt it? Do you count your father wicked simply because he belonged to a class of people whom you dislike?"

"When Rochford set out to find me, it was only a matter of months before he was able to track me down." Gideon paused, giving her time to let that thought sink in. "And, remember, that was more than twenty-five years after the kidnapping. If it was possible then, when the trail was so cold, why was it not possible to find me right after the kidnapping took place?"

Irene simply stared at him, struck dumb by his statement.

Gideon offered her his arm, and she took it, her brain humming busily as they strolled back down the gallery to the antechamber where everyone was gathering for supper.

When they reached the small drawing room, they found Lady Odelia and her sister Pansy seated against the far wall, engaging in a conversation in which Odelia's side could be heard all over the room and well out into the hall, and Pansy's contributions were impossible to make out. It made for a disjointed conversation that was difficult to follow but impossible to ignore, meaning that everyone else in the room could do little but stand about and awkwardly attempt to make chitchat of their own.

They were not a large number for the evening meal. Besides her mother and the members of the family whom Irene had already met, there was also a vicar, identifiable by his clerical collar, a plump, motherly sort of woman whom Irene took to be his wife, and an older man, tall and dark-haired, who stood alone by the window.

Lady Odelia paused in her conversation long enough to introduce Irene to the new guests. Irene had been correct in her identification of the vicar and his wife, who were named Longley. The other gentleman, she learned, was Pansy's younger son, Lord Jasper.

Gideon's uncle, Irene thought, assessing him as he bowed over her hand. She could see the family resemblance. Jasper had the same thick black hair, though touched with silver at the temples, and the lines of his face were similar. He was leaner and less muscular than Gideon, and there was about him an air of refinement that was missing in Gideon, an indefinable something that stamped him as a product of Eton and Oxford, a member of the elite.

His manner was somewhat aloof, and though he went through the usual polite chitchat with Irene—was her room comfortable? Had she enjoyed the trip up from London? Had she ever visited this area before?—it seemed clear to Irene that he had no interest in her answers. He looked at Gideon a time or two, but said little to him. She wondered how he felt about Gideon and his return to the family. Until Gideon reappeared, this man would have been next in line after the countess's son, and in the usual way of things, as the boy's nearest male relative, would probably have been the guardian of his assets until he came of age. Gideon's arrival would have relegated Jasper to a much less important role. While Jasper showed none of the animosity toward Gideon that she had noticed in Teresa, Irene could not help but think that Gideon must, just as he had said, have received a cool reception indeed when he returned home.

It was really no wonder that he felt spurned by his family. His uncle seemed at best awkward around him; his father's widow obviously disliked him; and clearly they all viewed him as something of an embarrassment that could somehow be covered up by marriage.

Though she did not want to, Irene could not help but feel for the man. Even though she had her share of problems with Maura, and before that had frequently clashed with her father, at least she had always been sure of her mother's and brother's love. What must it be like not to have known your parents? To be unceremoniously deposited in the midst of an unloving family?

Her thoughts were interrupted by Francesca's arrival. Lady Haughston was, unsurprisingly, the last to join the group, and soon after she entered the room, they went in to supper.

The atmosphere at the meal was rather stiff, and words did not flow freely. Lady Odelia, usually the sort to dominate the conversation, seemed more interested in eating than in talking. Pansy seemed unable to say anything without looking to Odelia or Teresa first, and neither Lord Radbourne nor his uncle contributed much to the conversation. Even Francesca's ample social skills were not enough to keep the talk flowing smoothly around the table, though she, aided by Lady Claire, strove valiantly to maintain polite small talk.