Page 81 of When the Scoundrel Sins

Belle slid him a suspicious glance as she carefully untied the gold cord, opened the cinched pouch—

She gasped. Her eyes grew wide as she slowly withdrew the four-foot-long rope of white Persian pearls, long enough to loop around her neck and down her front thrice. His great-grandmother’s pearls.

His mother gave them to him when he said good-bye to her a month ago at Chestnut Hill, wanting him to have this heirloom to remind him of who he was and the importance of family, even when he was half a world away. He’d sent all his other belongings ahead to Liverpool in a wagonload of trunks, but these he’d kept with him. At the time, he’d done it only to keep them from being stolen. But now he knew. As if Fate had been guiding him.

They belonged with Belle.

“Oh, Quinton,” she breathed, awestruck. “This is…this is…”

He grinned at her. Even when stunned, she was beautiful. “Do you like them?”

Struck speechless, she only nodded as she draped the rope of pearls across her palm and down her forearm, luminescent white lying luxuriously against her pale skin. Her bright eyes glistened as she stared at them, her lashes wet with tears.

His chest pinched. Good Lord, he hadn’t expected her tocry.

“Mother always said that a lady should be given pearls,” he explained softly.

She arched a dubious brow but couldn’t drag her gaze away from the strand as she let it spill through her fingers and across her palms. She whispered hoarsely, “To the lady who refuses to marry you?”

“Mother wasn’t specific,” he replied, deadpan, despite the sharp pang in his gut.

She might have refused before, but he planned on changing that. Starting now. He sat up and kissed her, so delicately and tenderly that he drew a soft sigh from her lips.

“You deserve them, Annabelle,” he whispered between gentle nips to her bottom lip. “And many, many more gifts just like them to come.”

Her shoulders sagging, she shook her head and shifted back, breaking the kiss. A sad expression darkened her face. “They’re too much,” she whispered. “I cannot accept them.”

“Of course you can.” He sat up and took the rope from her hands to loop it over her neck, then again to double it down her front. He wanted there to be no mistake that the pearls now belonged to her. And she belonged with him. “And you will.”

“No, Quinton.” She blinked hard with a determined shake of her head and choked out, “Truly, I cannot accept them—I won’t. You need the money for America.”

“Then youcanaccept them, because I didn’t buy them,” he explained quietly. They were beautiful around her neck, seeming to glow as they rested against her bare skin. “They’re a family heirloom.”

Remorse darkened her face. “Then even more reason to—”

“And they’re staying right in the Carlisle family.” She caught her breath at that firm declaration of his intention to marry her, staring at him with wide eyes glistening with tears. Dear God, he hoped those were tears of happiness. “They’re yours for now, Annabelle,” he pressed on quietly with full resolve. “But someday, you’ll pass them along to our son to give to the woman he marries.”

Our son.He wasn’t prepared for the electric jolt that pierced him when he uttered the words, but he meant every one. Theirs would be a proper marriage.

“You’re going to America,” she breathed out, not moving except for the trembling of her lips.

“I’m staying right here,” he told her, and meant it. Dear God, how could he even contemplate leaving her now? “My future is right here in the borderlands. With you.”

Tonight had opened his eyes. He could make his success here, where proving himself would be difficult and complicated, and become a better man for it. The borderlands certainly weren’t the soil-rich lands that he had wanted as the foundation for his future, yet the offer he’d made tonight to Bartleby for Kinnybroch would put him well on the way. And make for equal partners in his marriage with Annabelle. The new combined estate would betheirs, a grand property to oversee together, where they would launch their lives and raise their family. Where he could prove himself away from Trent’s shadow and make his father proud of him, just as he’d wanted. And where he was needed.

“I don’t want you to give up your dream for America,” she protested breathlessly. “I know how important that is to you, and I would never ask that of you.”

“You didn’t. I came to that decision on my own,” he assured her. “With a little help from Robert. You need me, Annabelle.” He leaned over her and lowered her down onto her back on the mattress with a deep and hungry kiss. “Haven’t you realized that yet?”

“Quinton.” His name was a heartbreaking ache for mercy, but he had no intention of giving her quarter. Not until she stood next to him in a church and pledged her life to him.

“I’m staying with you.” He sucked gently at her bottom lip, then groaned at how sweet she tasted, that delicious flavor of the northern wilds, of heather and mountains and sky…“And I want you to have these pearls, something as special and precious as you are. Besides,” he murmured, placing a kiss on the side of her neck where the two strands crossed, “they’re beautiful on you.”

Exquisite, in fact. The first loop of pearls draped down across her bare breasts, flirting tantalizingly at her dusky nipples, while the second fell down farther to graze her belly. Warm arousal stirred inside him at the erotic sight.

“You will keep them,” he insisted as his lips went to her throat to suck at the pearls resting on her delicate skin. “And you will wear them on the day we’re married. Understand?”

She shook her head. “I can’t—”