Her skills weren’t the only thing about her that had improved, but he doubted very much if voicing that observation would be wise at the present moment. He offered a gentlemanly bow instead. “You and I shall be partners, my lady, associates combining forces for the greater good.”
She appeared to relax—at least somewhat. But leeriness still shouted from her. The lovely swan did not trust him as far as she could throw him. She remained silent, watching him like a cornered animal.
He blew out a heavy sigh. “I swear to never dishonor you. Nor will I ever cause you any additional misery than I already have. Whether or not you believe it, you may trust me. After all, yours is not the only freedom that was curtailed this day.”
Her dark eyes flared wider. “Maybe so, but you gained a title you did nothing to deserve, while I lost everything I worked to protect my entire life. I daresay the borders of yourfreedom, as you call it, will only widen with your advancement to the peerage. After all, you always were one of those men who possessed a very loose definition of fidelity. I feel sure that hasn’t changed.”
“When I give you my word, Lady Sophie, it is sacred and kept no matter what.” Her insult thrummed through him, heating his blood to boiling. “You obviously know little about me.”
Her smile chilled him to the bone. “I believe Lady Margaret Shireton would disagree, sir. Did she not find you with Lady Withrington a mere night after you had promised her your love for eternity and beyond? Or was it that once your word served its purpose and unlocked her bedchamber door, it was no longer valid?” The coy tilt of her head both angered and fascinated him. “Does your word spoil after a while, sir? Like a piece of overripe fruit?”
“You—” He cut himself off. The lady had him dead to rights, and he would not insult her intelligence by denying it. He threw up his hands in surrender. “What would you have me say, Lady Sophie? What might I do, other than drop dead at your feet, to make this untenable situation more bearable for you?”
She glared at him. Her irritated pout made him resolve to steal that kiss the next time the opportunity arose. After all, she already hated him.
“Lady Sophie?” he prodded. He would not leave this oppressiveness hanging between them.
“Do not make promises you have no intention of keeping.” She jutted her chin upward and took a step closer. “And when you feel the need to wander, as I am sure you will, at least do me the courtesy of being discreet.”
“Anything else?” He chose not to tell her that wandering would not be necessary if she would allow him to show her how much they could enjoy each other in bed.
“Pick a house.”
“Pick a house?”
“Yes. Wherever you choose to live, I shall live elsewhere, on a different Rydleshire property.”
He allowed himself a haughty snort. “I will not agree to that stipulation, my lady. Wherever I live, there you shall also be. I am sure Her Majesty would back me on that requirement in our marriage.”
Sophie narrowed her eyes. “You would not dare tell her.”
“Oh, I would, my lovely swan. So quickly that it would make that pretty little head of yours spin.”
“You are the scaliest cove I have ever had the misery of knowing.”
He pulled her into his arms, buried his fingers in her tumble of curls, and tilted her face up to his. “I am also about to be your husband, my lady. Whether or not you like it—and I intend to do my damnedest to make you like it.”
He took her mouth and poured his fury into the kiss, reveling in the soft sweetness of her lips. His heart lurched when she responded in kind, clutching him tightly and kissing him back as though starved for his attentions. She molded her lush curvesagainst him, driving him to the point of madness. A groan escaped him before he could stop it. He slid his hands down her back and squeezed her bottom with both hands.
Then she shifted with a quickness that caught him off guard and buried the sharpness of her knee into his groin with a hard thrust that doubled him over and dropped him to the floor.
“Damn it, Sophie!” He rocked on his knees while cupping his tortured man parts. The pain threatened to make him cast up his accounts all over her workroom floor. He coughed and swallowed hard to keep from shitting through his teeth. “What the blazes did you do that for?”
“To remind you that I also far surpassed you in self-defense training, and to underscore that you will never so much as touch a hair on my head without my permission first. Is that understood, Sir Nash Bromley?”
“Understood without a doubt, my lady,” he answered with a strained groan.
Chapter Three
Sophie stormed outof her workroom, leaving Nash balled up on the floor. It served him right, taking such liberties with her as if she had no choice in the matter. She headed upstairs toward the main entry hall. She had to escape this madness and speak with someone who wouldn’t look at her with pity and tell her nothing could be done.
One of her dearest friends, her sister by choice, Frannie, the Duchess of Lionwraith, was not available. She was still in her confinement at Lionwraith Estate in the Lake District after giving birth to twins. But Celia, the Duchess of Hasterton, Sophie’s other trusted sister by choice, lived across the way, within easy walking distance of Rydleshire House. Celia would not only provide sound advice but also sympathy. After all, she understood the direness of the situation, since she had been the first daughter of the Sisterhood of Independent Ladies to survive the same sort of troubled waters.
Sophie growled and increased her pace at the thought of their common enemy:heirs male to the body primogeniture. For all three of them, only firstborn sons could inherit their fathers’ titles, entailments, and wealth. As firstborn daughters, the laws felt they deserved nothing unless their parents’ marriage contract provided some negligible income to help them survive until they married well and became the responsibility of their husbands. To overcome the outrageous unfairness of it all, theirmothers had not only created the Sisterhood of Independent Ladies as a support system but also fabricated imaginary sons to hold on to everything that should have been rightfully bequeathed to their daughters if only the law allowed.
Rather than depend on the kindness and generosity of others or cast aside their widowhood and capture a husband willing to accept the financial burden of another man’s daughter, their mothers built their own empires behind the façades of their imaginary sons. And Sophie’s empire had just been snatched away and given to the beastly man who had not only broken her heart all those years ago but had also been too pigheaded at the time to realize it.
“May I be of some assistance, Lady Sophie?” Thornton called out as she barreled past him.
