The duke’s eyes settled on her mouth. “Have you kissed him?”
The notion filled her with unease. An awkward, unintentional laugh escaped, proof of how discomfited the duke rendered her. “That is hardly any business of yours.”
Bainbridge’s mouth tightened. “As your future husband, I would disagree.”
Future husband.
The words seemed to suspend between them.
Something foreign and warm slid through her, straight to her core where it pulsed like an ache. Only it wasn’t an ache, not precisely. Rather, it was a strange feeling. Overwhelming.
She exhaled slowly, rallying her wayward thoughts back into battle formation. “I have yet to agree to marry you, Your Grace.”
One of his hands left her waist to slide into the hair at her nape as though finding its home. “Answer the bloody question.”
She’d wrung a curse from his perfect lips, and that small victory left her gratified. “No. I have not kissed Lord Harry.”
Her answer made him roll his lips together for a moment before he sighed and tilted his head, considering her in that manner of his that was simultaneously thrilling and terrifying. She couldn’t tell if he liked what he saw or if he inventoried her like a chemist taking stock of his wares, finding her lacking.
“He fancies himself in love with you,” Bainbridge said with cool, calm precision.
As though his tall, lean body wasn’t crowding against her. As if his mouth weren’t near enough to kiss. As though they discussed a banality such as the new electrical marvels in London rather than their combined futures.
She swallowed. “I am sorry if he feels an emotion which I cannot return. You may think what you like of me, Your Grace, but my sole intention in coming here to Boswell Manor was to win a champion for my cause. Your brother is progressive enough in his views, and his desire to ally himself politically with Thornton seemed the perfect foil.”
He stiffened. “You used your wiles upon him, then, intending to manipulate him into doing as you saw fit?”
This was a different sort oftête-à-tête. She wasn’t certain if he was angry, irate, jealous, or protective. Perhaps all of them at once? Bo blinked. “I daresay no one has ever before accused me of using wiles. It sounds inherently nefarious, almost as if I am some sort of villainess who beguiled your poor brother into spending time in my company. Tell me, is my conversation that boring, my mind so banal, that I could only cozen a man into speaking to me by usingwilesupon him?”
“Damn you, is there nothing you take seriously?” he snapped, his fingers tunneling deeper into her hair, caressing over her skull with a gentleness that belied his tone and demeanor both.
“I take marriage seriously,” she said then, sobering. His warm breath teased over her lips in the precursor to a kiss that her body wanted more than her mind did. She forced herself to focus, to remain impervious. “What manner of husband will you be, Duke?”
He had already been a husband once, and the knowledge settled between them like a boulder, unwanted and hard. Dangerous, even. She didn’t like to think of his past, of whatever had happened between him and his dead wife. Had he been responsible? Were the gossips and his mother both right? Another emotion—sharp and stinging—cut into her when she thought of how her predecessor had seemed to break him.
She could recognize it for what it was: jealousy.
How foolish. How selfish. She resented a ghost.
A mocking smile flitted over his sensual mouth before disappearing. Lines grooved the skin bracketing his lips as they firmed into a forbidding frown. “I’m no bloody good at being a husband, Lady Boadicea. Just as I suspect you will be no bloody good at being a wife. All I ask is that you not embarrass me. I’ll not be made a cuckold.”
Her cheeks heated. Of course he would think her fast, given her freedom of speech and her propensity toward the improper, not to mention his cavalier treatment of her and her shameless inability to resist him. She would not be made to feel ashamed of who she was, however. The Lady Lydia Trulles and Duchess of Cartwrights of the world could still go hang for all she cared. But she rather found herself wishing that the Duke of Bainbridge hadn’t judged her. He was too intelligent, she was certain, not to realize that not everyone needed to endorse the same mores.
That different wasn’t necessarily a threat. That the act of judging others did not render one better than those being judged, but rather the opposite instead.
“I thank you for your confidence in my ability,” she said airily to veil her wounded pride. “If you are to be believed, we can both rest comfortably tonight in the knowledge that neither of us will make a decent helpmate to the other and that we will rue the day we married. I am certain we shall be gloriously happy in our shared misery. Tell me, Your Grace, have you a mistress?”
“That is none of your concern.”
“It is if you wish me to marry you.” On this, she would draw her battle lines. Lady Boadicea Harrington did not accept hypocrisy in any of its varied forms.
“No,” he bit out.
“That would explain a great deal,” she muttered, hoping that his reaction to her was not solely borne of his lack of bed chamber romping. After all, she had read a great deal of her brother’s naughty books. She liked to think she knew at least a bit about the complicated dealings between man and woman.
“Jesus Christ.” He closed his eyes for a moment before opening them once more. “Are you always this way?”
But as he asked the question, his voice so patently irritated, those adroit fingers of his teased her with long, slow strokes through her coif.
