“Why the devil not?” His voice, like his question, was indignant.
Of course he would be indignant and disbelieving. He was the handsome heir to a dukedom with more rakish wiles—to borrow Christabella’s words—than any one man ought to possess.
“Because I do not want to marry you,” she forced herself to say. Another lie. “And because you do not want to marry me.”
The last, much to her regret, was the ugly truth.
He was dallying with her.
And she had allowed it. Had reveled in it, even. But her heart could no more survive Viscount Aylesford than the pomegranates and the hibiscus could thrive in the snowy world beyond the leaden panes of glass in the orangery. Her heart, like this sumptuous vegetation, would wither. Shrivel to nothing more than a husk.
“Marrying was never part of our agreement from the first, Grace,” he said. “What has changed? Is it because of what happened last night?”
“No,” she hastened to say. “What happened was…I will never forget it. Nor will I forget any of the time I have spent with you. Whenever I make a sketch in the book you gave me, I will remember you with great fondness.”
“Fondness.” His lip curled, as if the very notion appalled him.
She could have said love, but she had no wish to reveal that much of herself to him. He had already seen her body. To expose her heart…she did not dare take such a foolish risk. For this man was a rake. He did not love. He wooed. He seduced.
“Fondness,” she repeated. “And gratitude. I will not forget you, Lord Aylesford.”
She extricated herself from his embrace at last, because she dared not linger there, absorbing his heat, relishing the strength of his lean body. His hands fell to his sides. She stepped back. And they stared at each other in stony silence. Overhead, the gray sky opened. Instead of snowflakes, it unleashed a torrent of ice. The sound of the tiny ice balls bouncing off the domed glass were like a thousand pins dropping, all at once.
“You truly mean to end our agreement, Grace?” He raked his fingers through his dark, wavy locks.
She swallowed. “I must.”
And then, before she said something she would forever regret, or before she lost her strength, she turned and fled. Grasping her skirts in both hands, she lifted her hem and ran. Ran from the orangery, from its promise of the forbidden.
From the man who had stolen his way into her heart.
No footsteps followed her. And she did not need to look over her shoulder to discover he had not even bothered to chase her. He was letting her go.
Chapter Eleven
Rand had nointention of letting Grace Winter go.
But he had reached an important realization as he watched her fleeing him in the orangery. He had spent so many years seducing women for a night of pleasure, that he had no notion of how to woo the woman whose heart he intended to claim as his own. Winning a woman for the night—even for a few weeks or months—was easily done. Winning a woman for a lifetime, however, was not so quickly achieved.
And a lifetime with Grace was precisely what he was after. Even if the word made his heart skip a beat and his chest ache. Even if it filled him with a breath-stealing mixture of awe and fear.
He needed reinforcements. Which was why he had enlisted the aid of his good friend the Earl of Hertford and the Winter sisters. Hertford had assembled them for him in the writing room where he had come upon Grace withThe Tale of Lovethat fateful day not so long ago.
It was fitting then, that he held the book in his hands now.
“Lord Aylesford,” said Prudence, the eldest of the sisters. “You wished an audience.”
She was Lord Ashley’s long Meg, as it were, even if Lord Ashley was apparently securing her hand for his brother. What a deuced tangled web that was. Rand was happy to stay out of it.
He bowed formally to the sisters, aware he must win all four ladies to his side. He needed all the help he could buy, beg, or steal.
Begging seemed the option of the day.
He felt as if he were facing the Spanish Inquisition.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me here,” he said.
“You are fortunate indeed Hertford vouches for you and that he is standing guard at the door,” Prudence told him, her tone chilly. “I can only suppose this sudden meeting has something to do with Grace.”
