Surrender the Heart by MaryLu Tyndall Read Free Book Online Page B

with him would be unbearable.
     
    “Your silence confirms my suspicions.” She pressed a hand over her throat and sank into one of his high-backed chairs. “Let us be honest with each other, Noah.” She sighed. “You have no intention of marrying me, do you?”
     

     
    Marianne awaited his answer, but instead he smiled. “You always were rather forthright, Miss Denton.”
     
    “While you were never so.” She glanced across the cabin again, a much larger room than she would have expected. Yet everything within it—from the three high-backed Chippendale chairs circling a mahogany desk, to the oversized chest with a heavy iron lock, to the fitted racks that held volumes of books and brass trinkets, and finally to the two swords, a pistol, an hourglass, a map, and various instruments that lined his desk—everything was masculine, and well ordered, just like its master.
     
    Her stomach knotted. He had not answered her question. Yet, how could she force this man to marry her when the very thought of it made her own skin crawl?
     
    “I have every intention of following through with my obligation, miss.” He folded his arms across his chest and shifted his blue eyes to the massive trunk perched by an archway that led to his sleeping chamber. A breeze blew in from the open door, feathering the hair that touched his collar. The muscles in his jaw twitched, but he would not look at her.
     
    He was lying. She knew it. “Is that what I am, an obligation? How romantic.”
     
    He chuckled. “If you want romance, I suggest you search for itsomewhere else—in one of those tawdry novels coming out of London, perhaps?” He quirked a dark eyebrow so at odds with his light brown hair. Then grew serious. “While we are being honest, Miss Denton, you know as well as I that it is your dowry that has drawn us together.”
     
    Of course she knew that. Then why did his admission cause her heart to ache? Perhaps because it crushed her childhood dreams of someday finding love and romance in the arms of an admirable man. A man nothing like the one standing before her. But then again, why would she expect anything extraordinary to happen to someone ordinary like her? She folded her hands in her lap. “Have no care, Captain. I do not flatter myself to think otherwise. But your desperation must be exceedingly great to force your agreement to such an undesirable match.”
     
    Noah adjusted the cuffs of his white shirt then cocked his head toward her. “What has me quite vexed, Miss Denton, is what benefit this match is for you. It is obvious you loathe me.”
     
    “Loathe is a strong word.” She batted the air, trying to avoid the question. The smell of wine and leather and aged wood filled her nose. She couldn’t very well tell Noah that she and her mother were nearly destitute, that without this marriage, they could not touch the inheritance her father left her and purchase the much-needed medicines to keep her mother alive. She wasn’t lying to him. He would receive the seven thousand dollars of her dowry the moment they married. But what he didn’t know was that he would receive nothing else, no jewelry, or silverware, satin sheets, china, Persian rugs, or any of the luxuries her mother had been forced to sell this past year. Instead he would acquire only Marianne, her sister, and a sick mother-in-law. So, Marianne simply responded, “Our fathers wished it.”
     
    He eyed her curiously. “Your father would not wish you unhappy, miss. I assure you I will not make you a good husband.”
     
    Marianne gripped the arm of the chair. Her throat went dry. “Why are you trying to dissuade me when you have admitted that you need my money?”
     
    He shrugged and stared out the open door down the corridor. “Isee how my presence upsets you. It would no doubt be pure torture for you should we marry.”
     
    “What upsets me is your behavior.”
     
    “Unfortunately the two cannot be separated.”
     
    “That is not true.