Leslie Lafoy (9 page)

God, it had been only hours and already he was tired of trying to keep it reined in. And more than a little put out by the necessity of having to do so. Failing at the effort—even just a little and for a fraction of a moment—provided rewards that were infinitely more enjoyable than any self-control had ever given him.

The whisper in her ear in the foyer, for instance. He’d acted on the impulse before reason could intervene. And good God Almighty, the woman had practically purred and fallen into his arms. And what had he done with that sweet opportunity? He’d backed away from the luscious temptation and turned to speak with the footman at the door. He’d exercised self-discipline and decency. He’d been a goddamn gentleman and chosen being honorable over satisfying his instincts.

It wasn’t as though she were the first woman who’d ever set his senses on fire. And she wasn’t the only woman he’d ever met who could make even the softest smile look positively carnal. But she was the first woman he couldn’t allow himself to seduce.

The only reasonable, workable solution to the dilemma, he decided, emptying the contents of his wine glass, was to keep as much distance as possible between them. And to find someone within the next month or so who wanted to marry her.

As he reached for the bottle to refill his glass, she stepped into the doorway. Distance wasn’t going to be possible, he realized as he took in the bare shoulders and arms, the royal blue satin barely covering her breasts. No, there were only two ways he was going to be able to keep his hands off her. One was to see her married and on her way to the farthest corner of the empire before the week was out. The other option was to put a bullet in his brain.

  Five  

HE LOOKED AS IF SOMEONE—OR SOMETHING—HAD JUST
kicked him in the stomach. Caroline was about to ask him if he needed assistance of some sort or another when he took a deep breath and asked, “Where are the Spawn of Satan and the Faerie Child?”

Well, “You look ravishing” had been a rather high expectation. She laughed and advanced into the private room, saying, “They attacked the food like little wolves and with their stomachs full and their bodies clean and warmed from their baths . . . They both fell sound asleep while I was taking mine and I’m afraid that I lacked the mental fortitude to wake them.”

He swallowed down another just-kicked look to say tautly, “It has been a rather long and eventful day.”

“It’s been grueling,” she allowed, wondering what on earth was wrong with him.

Picking up a glass and the wine bottle, he poured, his attention keenly focused on the task as he said, “A good glass of spirits might help smooth the rougher edges from it.”

“Thank you,” she replied softly, taking it from him and growing even more puzzled when he refused to meet her gaze.

“I’ve been quite impressed with your maternal instincts,” he told the far wall as the gloved and liveried wait staff entered the room carrying silver-domed plates. He cleared his throat, instructed that two of the meals be returned to the kitchen, and announced that they wouldn’t need attending during the meal.

As the staff cleared away the extra place settings and removed the domes over the two remaining plates, Caroline sipped her wine and studied her dinner companion—the dinner companion who seemed determined to look at everything in the room except her.

“Thank you, again,” she said, resuming their conversation as the staff left them. She lifted her glass to him. “May I say that you’ve acquitted yourself admirably as a responsible, respectable male.”

He offered her a smile so tight that she wondered if he’d been sucking lemons before she got there. “And now that we’ve each expressed the appropriate compliments,” he said, gesturing to the table and their cooling meal, “would you care to be seated?”

“Yes, please.” She put her wine glass on the linen-covered table as she admitted, “I’m well beyond famished.”

“The wolves didn’t share?”

“I was afraid that if I reached between them for a scrap,” she confessed, smiling and smoothing her skirts to settle onto the chair he held for her, “they’d take off my hand. Not intentionally, of course.” He moved her and the chair closer to table with admirable skill and she looked up over her shoulder at him. “Thank you, your grace.”

His hands on the back of the chair, he finally met her gaze. The tension didn’t seem to so much ebb as it . . . well, settled. He slowly cocked a brow. “Drayton,” he said
softly. “I thought we’d covered this point in the foyer earlier this evening.”

Heat flooded across her cheeks at the memory. Is that what they’d been doing? She watched him move around the table and take his own seat. They’d been covering a point of what to call each other? It had felt as though he’d been branding her. Very gently, but very deeply and thoroughly. How badly she’d misinterpreted that moment. Thank goodness she hadn’t outwardly responded; she’d be even more embarrassed now than she already was. Quietly clearing the lump from her throat, she laid her serviette across her lap and picked up her knife and fork.

“Do you have a problem with addressing me by my name?”

“Is it proper that I do so?”

“When it’s just the two of us, do we care what’s proper?”

Her heart jolted and her blood warmed. Her mind chattered frantically. “We should,” she replied, her voice sounding—thank goodness—far more composed than she felt.

“Why?”

Oh, dear. She took a bite of the roast beef just to give herself time to marshal her wits, to remind herself that, as in the foyer, this was an innocent conversation and that she shouldn’t imagine there was more to it than there really was.

“My mother always maintained that crossing the line of propriety was like drilling a small hole in the bottom of a boat. The water that comes in at first is of little concern, but it eventually makes the hole larger and the problem far more dangerous.”

He nodded and ate a bite of his own meal before observing, “A very wise woman, your mother. How on earth did she become involved with your father?”

“She was a dressmaker’s assistant and my father’s wife was a favorite client. He began stopping by the shop to purchase gifts for his wife and requested that my mother assist him in selecting them.”

“And one small impropriety led to another.”

“And another. And eventually to me. Her wisdom concerning men was hard-won from disappointing experience.”

“And your experiences with men . . . ” He picked up his wine glass and looked at the fire through it. “Have they been more fortunate and rewarding?”

Her heart jolted again, but this time her blood went cold with the realization that the conversation was far more purposeful than she’d assumed. “Why is it that you ask?” she asked warily.

“I am your guardian and responsible for arranging your introduction into society,” he said to the glass in his hand. “If there are incidents in your past that might create embarrassment, I need to be aware of them so they can be addressed beforehand.”

It was a perfectly logical, perfectly impersonal explanation. But she sensed that there was more to it than that. “I have some difficulty with thinking of you as a guardian,” she said, unsure of her instincts anymore and trying to sidestep the issue. “We’re much too close to the same age for me to be . . . well, comfortable with the notion of being under your control.”

“I’m a good twelve years your senior.”

She made the calculations in her head. “You don’t look thirty-five.”

“Thank you,” he said with a smile, setting his glass aside. “The result of wholesome living and gentle pastimes.” He picked up his silverware again, adding, “But we’ve digressed from the original topic of conversation. Are there relationships in your past of which I should be aware?”

She knew how the conversation was going to end and the assumptions he would make as a result. She was also keenly aware of how unfair they were in a larger social sense. Irritated, determined to make her point while she could, she smiled and replied, “I’m sure that my relationships are no more numerous or significant than those in your own past.”

His gaze came up from his plate with an almost audible snap. “My past doesn’t matter overly much in the marriage market.”

She arched a brow. “Becoming a duke tends to erase the memories of indiscretions?”

“Not erase,” he said, easing back in his chair and considering her a bit warily. “Outweigh.”

“Doesn’t becoming the acknowledged daughter of a duke accomplish the same thing?” she asked, pressing toward her point.

“For some,” he allowed with a slight shrug. “But not for those who have the finest pedigrees at stake.”

“Those who care about pedigrees aren’t likely to consider me acceptable, acknowledged or not,” she pointed out. “And those who care about marrying a title and a dowry aren’t going to care one whit about anything except that. So the specific details of my past experiences with men are rather irrelevant, aren’t they?”

Drayton met the defiant, steel-blue gaze and knew that she was absolutely right. And that he was finally feeling
the effects of all the wine. The stuff might have been slow, but it was stunningly potent. In another few moments strategic thinking was going to be a largely hit-and-miss affair. Subtlety was already a lost hope. “Are there going to be men peddling paintings or daguerreotypes of you in compromising circumstances?”

“Of course not,” she said, somehow sounding both amused and offended by the suggestion.

“Are there likely to be men describing birthmarks to tawdry publishers?”

She arched a brow. “I don’t have any birthmarks.”

“That wasn’t the point of the question.”

“I’m well aware of that.”

Christ on a crutch. Of all the times for his brain to skip off on holiday . . . She really was far too intelligent and far too beautiful. For a man who’d had too much to drink, it was a dangerous combination that left him with two choices; he could either retire from the field and salvage what little pride was left after doing so, or risk every shred of it, engage her boldly, and hope for an incredible stroke of luck.

“Let’s be honest,” she said, stripping the decision away from him. “The real point of this entire conversation is whether or not I am a virgin. The answer is no, I am not.”

There is a God
.

“As to the question of whether that will become public knowledge . . . The answer is that it will only if you choose to make it so. The young man to whom I was engaged is dead. And since he was an honorable and decent man, he took my heart and my secret with him to the grave.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.
But not overly and deeply so.

“As am I. I loved Peter very much.”

“And your devotion to his memory is what makes the
thought of marriage to someone else unacceptable to you,” he guessed, feeling for the first time in months that life might actually go his way for a change. “People often marry for reasons other than love, you know.”

“Quite frankly, I think love has very little to do with most marriages,” she offered, casually returning to her meal. “At least those that I’ve seen. Typically, what begins as a glorious bloom of intense physical attraction fades into a purely practical arrangement.”

“Fairly quickly,” he offered to keep her talking. She was a fascinating creature. So many unexpected facets.

“Seemingly,” she agreed. “And then it’s a mere matter of service exchanges that don’t particularly delight either party, but are acceptable because they’re relieved that they don’t have to negotiate with strangers for them on a daily basis.”

“I never would have guessed that you are such a cynic.”

“Hiding it is a necessary professional skill. I make at least a dozen bridal trousseaus every year. Brides don’t want to have their breathless illusions of happily-ever-after dashed with reality. If you can’t pretend to their satisfaction, they’ll take their business to someone who can.”

“Amazing,” he said, shoving his plate aside, his interest in eating entirely gone. Drinking, though . . . He picked up his wine glass and settled back in his chair, content to just look at her. God, she didn’t need a drop pendant necklace to draw a man’s eyes to her bodice. How the hell had he ever thought that he could resist her?