He frowned. “Of course not.”
She didn’t believe him. “The duke has cut you off.”
“Lower your voice, my girl. You’ll have all the miscreants belowstairs prattling about us.”
“I amnotyour girl.” Her outrage heightened at his blasé tone. “The only miscreant in this house is you, Pembroke. Now leave me to my slumber and find your own chamber. For that matter, go back to London. Surely there are any number of women awaiting you. I don’t want you here.”
“I daresay you’ll change your mind. Let’s not make a row of it.”
She gritted her teeth and reached for the Dickens volume, holding it aloft in threatening promise. “If you don’t get out at once, I’ll give your nose another good, hard thwack withGreat Expectations.”
Pembroke rose to a sitting position, raking a hand through his already-disheveled hair. “You wouldn’t.”
Perhaps she ought to blacken his eye while she was at it. “I most certainly would. Now get out.”
ell good Christ, this was provingan utter disaster. There was a very real possibility of bodily harm at the hands of his countess, who currently wielded a book of Dickens as though it were a sword with which she could run him through. Not only that, but she presumed to order him about, demanding that he leave this chamber which, by rights, was truly his, along with everything in it.
Along withher.
Jesus, the fire-spitting creature before him was not the woman he’d left behind the day after they’d wed. His plan suddenly seemed far more difficult than he’d supposed, for it all had gone straight to Hades the moment he’d stepped into her dark chamber. The quiet young lady he’d known had turned into a book-wielding virago. Perhaps she was even a trifle unhinged. His nose still smarted with the sting of her unexpected blow, and he found it nearly impossible to believe that she’d actually bitten him as though she were a feral dog.
Of course, perhaps he wasn’t so unlike a feral dog himself, for her nip had made him harder than he’d already been. Although she had made every effort to push him away, he didn’t mistake her body’s reaction to him. Nor did he mistake his to hers.
Tonight, he saw her in a way he hadn’t before. He’d caught a glimpse of vulnerability in her unguarded expression before she’d chased it away with scorn. But it had been there, and that fleeting impression hit him square in the gut as he considered her now. She was just a woman, trapped as surely as he, more than a mere pawn in his war against his father.
The realization shook him in a way nothing else had in his admittedly misbegotten thirty years of life. She raised the book higher, as though to somehow menace him, and the action disbanded the spell that had settled over him. He should have gotten good and soused before coming to her. Perhaps he was growing as addled as the duke.
“Bloody hell, woman, put the book down,” he ordered. “I’ll overlook the first blow and even the bite, but if you attempt to maim me again, I’m afraid my patience for spoiled American girls will be at an end.”
But his words only served to rankle her even more. Roses bloomed in her cheeks, her full lips tightening into a grim line. The oddest urge to kiss them back into their natural, pliable shape hit him.Ridiculous.He didn’t want this woman, this stranger with a gleaming cascade of golden hair falling over her shoulders, with her flat New York accent and freckled,retroussénose. He never had.
In the time he’d been away, his mind had not often flitted to her. It was true what she’d said.Petite souris, he’d thought when he’d first seen her in a crushed ballroom, little mouse. His to play with and then abandon at will. It had been dreadfully easy to ply her with charm. Easier still to leave her behind and all but forget her existence as he buried himself in all manner of vices in London.
“Indeed, my lord?” Her voice was frigid as Wenham Lake ice. “How very amusing, for I find that my patience for spoiled English earls who’ve never known an inkling of responsibility in their misspent lives is at an end as well. That means you really ought to go.”
She had cheek, and the perverse streak that had always run through him admired her gumption. But her words had also touched a far more sensitive vein inside him, the one he’d fought for years to dull with hedonistic distraction.Responsibility. Duty.They were words he loathed, words that in his youth meant accepting whatever abuse his father had chosen to inflict upon him.It is your duty as the heir. You have a responsibility.For a moment, as the past threatened to intrude upon his sanity, he swore he could feel the brutal lash of the last caning he’d received, hear the sick crack of bone. Broken ribs were the devil of a thing.
“Careful, darling,” he warned.
She watched him, seemingly weighing her options. The Dickens volume remained aloft, her battle colors flying. “What should I be careful of? What will you do, sir? Will you bed me and then leave? Will you abandon me to rot here for a year? Ten years?”
She had no notion of who he was, of just how low and depraved he could be. And she was foolishly brave to mock him, to tempt the beast within to roar to life. “I’m much larger than you.” Keeping his tone even was a struggle. Suddenly, he wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. This should have been easy. Quick. Instead, he’d spent the last half hour attempting to bed her and being routed at every turn. “I could very easily bend you to my whims, my dear. I could take the book from you. I could takeyou, if I chose.”
Her nostrils flared, the only indication that his words affected her. “Ah, at last the charm has fled. No more pretty words and roaming hands? If you would force me, my lord, I have no choice.” She dropped the book to the floor, and it was one of the heaviest sounds he’d ever heard. Then she settled into a supine position, arms tight to her sides, still as a corpse, staring at the ceiling. “Here you are, my lord. If it pleases you to take what I’m not willing to give, then take it. It’s yours, after all. Everything I’ve ever had is yours now.”
Damn it. Damn her, for being the heiress the duke had chosen to replenish the dwindling family coffers, for being yet another unwanted duty foisted upon him, for being outspoken and bold, for taking him to task and making him feel lower than the worst sort of East End criminal. Damn her for making him see her. For making him want her. For making him see the man he’d become.
He grabbed the bedclothes and yanked them to her chin, disgusted with himself. “I’d never force you.”
She met his gaze, unflinching. “I’m not spoiled. Nor am I a girl.”
No, she wasn’t a girl. She was very much a woman. Her body was lush and full in all the proper places. High, heavy breasts. Rounded thighs, trim ankles. She smelled of orris root, and her hair was a revelation. Freed from the dreadful, pastel gowns she’d worn during her Season, she was all woman. All lovely. Perhaps she had been before, and he’d been so blinded by his resentment that he’d failed to notice. He hadn’t been her only suitor, after all. But he’d been the heir to a duchy, and he had won her hand.
Yes, he’d won her, and then he’d left her. Little wonder she thought he would ravage her. Jesus, what a bastard he was. It had been easy to blame her when she’d been an afterthought rather than a woman staring at him with haunted eyes.
“My apologies,” he blurted, because he didn’t know what else to say and because everything he’d imagined—all the meaningless praise and sweet flattery he’d intended to ply her with—had been vanquished by the sight of her lying still on the bed, waiting for him to abuse her.
She stared at him. “Why have you returned?”
