She nodded.
“Then how did you get out of the eels?” A shadow darkened the blue of Hortense’s eyes. Before she could speak, he had the answer. “You picked Nick’s pocket.”
“And spoke French.”
A possibility occurred to Jamie, one that had him clenching his hands into fists. “Did Nick threaten you with arrest if you didn’t go with him?”
Her eyes went bright with alarm. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Then why did you agree?”
“Because he offered me—”
Jamie found himself hanging on her every word.
She cleared her throat. “Fair monetary recompense,” she finished, her voice gone hard and unyielding.
He would have sworn she’d been on the verge of saying something else. “Just like you and me.”
She winced. He wasn’t trying to wound her. But that wince told him something. Fair monetary recompense was the truth, but not all of it.
“In name only?” she asked without segue. They’d circled back to the original topic.
“You have my word.”
“I can’t imagine we suit.”
“We can lead separate lives.”
The instant the words were out of his mouth, he wanted them back.
She stared through him with those keen blue eyes of hers, head canted. “That’s the way your kind do it, isn’t it?”
He didn’t like this turn in the conversation, and it didn’t help that he’d precipitated it. “It was how my parents did it.”
“I know nothing about being a marchioness.”
“If my mother could be one, you certainly can. You’re a sight more clever than she.”
“The bar is set that high?”
He shifted forward, on pins and needles. “Will you? Or won’t you?”
“You were dead bored when we met.” A beat. “Am I an exotic adventure for you?”
Fair question.
“You are a person,” Jamie said.And I’ve grown surprisingly fond of you, he didn’t say. “I feel it’sright. To save Rafe, to save—”
“Me?” A fiery spark lit within her eyes. “I don’t need saving.”
“Myself,” he finished.
“Oh.” Her countenance settled.
“Using the marquessate to marry you and free my son is the best use I’ve ever had—or ever will have—for it.”
She went stone still. Weighing her options, he suspected. He felt balanced on the tip of a needle. If she said no…
