“In negotiations, Lady Catherine, it doesn’t serve one well to insult the one from whom you require a favor.”
“Yes, so you explained the other night. My apologies if I gave insult. She will not marry you and that has caused you to summon me because…”
“She fears our world. She doesn’t feel that she’ll fit in with the nobility.”
A commoner? He was going to marry a commoner? On the other hand, what choice
remained to him? She could think of no woman who would welcome his attentions, no father who would seriously consider allowing Claybourne to pursue his daughter’s hand in matrimony.
“I’d not noticed you particularly trying to fit in.”
“Quite honestly, Lady Catherine, until recently I’d not given a damn if I fit in or not. But Frannie and I will no doubt have children, and I don’t want them whispered about as I am.”
Frannie. He’d wrapped a wealth of warmth around the name as he’d spoken it. Who’d have thought he’d be capable of so grand an emotion as love?
“You are not whispered about, my lord. People do not speak of the devil.”
“Now, Catherine, I know that to be untrue. Otherwise, how would you have known to come to my door?”
He purred her name with an intimacy that caused honeyed heat to pool in her belly. How quickly he gained the upper hand. How desperately she needed to reacquire it.
She angled her head and met his smile with one of her own. “Point made. So you want to ensure your children are accepted among the aristocracy.” She could hardly imagine him as a father, much less a husband.
“Indeed. But before I jump forward to that problem, I must give Frannie the confidence to honor me with her hand in marriage. And that is where you come in.”
“Me?”
“Yes. I need you to teach her all she needs to know to walk confidently among us. Once you’ve accomplished that task, I’ll dispense with the person of your choosing.”
“I no longer have confidence in your ability to carry out my request, my lord. You said you’d not killed.”
“No, I said I’d not killed my uncle.”
She studied him and the familiar features that had haunted her dreams for so long. “Dear Lord! You don’t believe you’re truly the Earl of Claybourne.”
“What I believe or do not believe is of no consequence. The old gent believed and the Crown believed.” He held out his hands. “And so here I am.”
“You have an odd sort of honesty about you.”
“So have we a bargain?”
“You said that you’d see to your end once I’d seen to mine. But my task could take months. How do I know when I’m finished, that you’ll carry out yours?”
“You have my word on it.”
“As a gentleman?”
“As a scoundrel. Have you not heard that there is honor among thieves?”
Oh, dear Lord, she feared she was playing a very dangerous game here.
“Still, you are asking a good deal more of me than I’m asking of—”
With his gloved hand, he gripped her chin and leaned near. She could see the muscles in his jaw tightening. “You are asking me to surrender the last of my soul. Once it’s done, it can’t be undone. All I’m asking of you is that you teach someone how to properly host an afternoon tea.”
Swallowing hard, she nodded, speaking through clenched teeth. “You’re quite right.
Now if you’ll be so kind as to unhand me.”
