Free Lady Disguised (Tenacious Trents Novella) (Tenacous Trents) by Jane Charles Page A

was wealthy and had been told he was handsome. One day he would
be an earl and she could be his countess. What was so bloody wrong with
marrying him?
    “Hélène, I don’t think you
understand,” Jordan began.
    She stood and wheeled on him,
pain sliced through her features. Perhaps he should insist Hélène sit before
she injured herself further. Stanwick was beginning to realize that nobody made
Hélène do anything, and if they tried, she would do the exact opposite.
    “No, you don’t understand,” she
bit out. “Ever since you discovered my sisters and me, you have done everything
in your power to control our lives.” She turned toward Bentley. “I survived
twenty-two years without brothers or a man telling me what I could and could
not do. I am not about to allow it now.”
    The vehemence of her tone and the
anger in her stance took Stanwick aback. He admired Hélène more in that moment than
any since first meeting her. This was a woman of strength and beauty. She knew
what she wanted and he suspected that she could very well take care of
herself.  She wouldn’t withdraw into nothingness if life became too difficult
as his mother had. Nor did he suspect she would harm her husband if he took a
lover. Hélène would more than likely ban him from the house, and most certainly
from her bed, and carry on as she wished.
    Maybe she wasn’t mad, as he once
assumed. 
    He studied her from her mahogany
hair to the lavender slippers on her dainty feet and envied the actors in Milan
who’d gotten to see her in a shift and pantaloons. If he were married to
Hélène, he would have the right to see everything that was hidden by the
fashionable morning gown.
    “I don’t need to be protected,
and I certainly don’t need a man to take care of me,” Hélène informed them.
    She was passionate as well. Would
that passion carry into the bedchamber? As much as Stanwick had not wanted to
marry an hour ago, he very much wanted to know what life with Hélène as his
wife would be like.
    He turned to Bentley. “Might I
have a word alone with Hélène?”
    Bentley studied him and then blew
out a breath. “Very well.”
    Elizabeth rose and was escorted
from the room by Bentley and Trent. Stanwick waited until he could hear them no
more before approaching Hélène. “I will not force you to marry me if that is
not your wish.”
    She looked up at him, her blue
eyes studying him. Those blasted eyes. He could look into them for hours, and
they only made him want to kiss her again.
    “I don’t wish to be married,” she
said simply. At least it wasn’t him she objected to, but marriage as a whole.
In that they were alike, or…had been until he decided that he just might want
her as a wife.
    “You still desire to return to
Milan?”
    She nodded. “It is the only place
I can live as I choose.”
    He understood her passion. She
was an actress first, a lady second. He owned a gaming hell first, being the
heir was second and of less importance. 
    Yet, he couldn’t let her simply
walk out of his life. Not when he was uncertain that he now wanted her for his
own. No lady had ever made him question his decision to remain a bachelor. Yet
Hélène, card sharper, actress and fencer, was making him question what he
really wanted.
    Perhaps her answer was no because
she hadn’t been asked. She had been told. He needed to do this right. “Hélène,
would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
    She bit her bottom lip and placed
a hand against his cheek. “I thank you for the offer, and appreciate being asked
instead of told, but my answer is no.”
    “Why?”
    “I cannot give up the theatre,
and no husband would allow his wife to be an actress.” She sighed and turned
from him before settling onto the settee. “I am at the theatre until late in
the evening. As a result, I sleep late. A wife must be available to her husband
and take care of a home. I cannot do that.”
    He nodded. Was this why so many
actresses did not marry but