He had meant to rehearse. Had intended to seduce her, to make her spend, and then offer her his proposition while the sated glow still infected her mind and she could not manage to form her lips into anowhen he asked her to be his wife.
“You want to marry me,” she repeated, her tone dazed.
This, too, was a mistake, he thought. Not the proposal itself, but the manner in which he had made it.
He grimaced. “Yes, though I was hoping to do better with my proposal than that.”
“You no longer want me to marry the duke,” she said slowly, “because you wish to marry me yourself.”
“Yes.” Although when she said it thus, it truly sounded horrid. “Yes, of course. You cannot imagine I would be cad enough to touch you and then see you wed to my brother.”
What an arse he was. It had all seemed so simple earlier on his ride. Even on his walk here. He had arrived with purpose, with determination, a bloody battle plan. And then he had taken one look at her and had turned into a ravening beast. He wanted to plant himself a facer.
“Thank you, but no,” she said calmly.
And then she extricated herself from his embrace before spinning about and presenting him with her back. She shimmied, righting her stays and chemise, pulling them back into their proper places. He stared at the buttons he had plucked from their moorings, at the tantalizing swath of creamy skin he had unveiled with his efforts. Her shoulders were elegant and beautiful, and from this angle, her neck was perfection. Made for his lips.
He stood there, dumbfounded.
Utterly astounded.
Realization crept over him, slowly at first, and then like a pail of water fetched from the icy waters of the serpentine lake here at Abingdon Hall. She had refused him twice over. First, his advances. And then, his proposal of marriage.
Impossible. No woman had ever turned him down. Not when it came to lovemaking, that was. He had certainly never asked another to marry him.
“No?” he repeated. It seemed to be all he could say, a foolish echo of her denial.
Her refusal. Her outright rejection.
“No,” she said agreeably, casting a look at him over her shoulder. “Would you mind repairing the damage you have done, my lord? I fear I cannot reach all the buttons on my own.”
She was so nonchalant. So composed. And he was…
Not. Decidedly not.
But he did as she asked, slipping the buttons into their homes one by one.
“Why?” he asked when he was halfway through with his task. It seemed the obvious answer. “Why not? What is so damned bad about the notion of being my wife?”
“I have already told you, I have no wish to marry,” she said. “If you had been honest with me from the first, I could have spared you this merry chase. But instead, you chose to mislead me and pretend you were attempting to win me over for your brother, when all along you were merely trying to seduce me into marrying you.”
She had that all wrong.
He slid the last button home. “Pru, that is not what happened. Everything I told you was true.”
She whirled around to face him, anger flashing in her eyes. “Do you dare to expect me to believe that? What a tidy way of solving your financial woes. Do not think for a moment I am not aware Coventry needs to marry a wealthy woman. Why would you, the second son, be any different? But the two of you colluded to land yourselves brides, did you not? You settled upon me, and he upon Christabella. I should have seen it before now. Indeed I credited myself with possessing more intelligence than this.”
“That is not the way of it,” he said, attempting to explain himself—if he could.
What a muck he had made of things. This cozy interlude in the ruins was meant to have led to pleasure and her acquiescence. Not her outrage.
“Do not,” she snapped, “say another word more, Lord Ashley. I have heard more than enough lies from you. Enough to last me a lifetime.”
She spun away from him, hurrying away to where her pelisse, hat and muff had been carefully hung by the door. He watched helplessly as she donned her outerwear, her face an icy mask, and then stormed from the room.
“Damnation,” he muttered to himself, wondering how he had gone so dreadfully wrong.
It had all been going so well…
