But he didn’t say that aloud. He had no wish for Miss Brett to run screaming into the hall.
Her eyes narrowed, almost as if she had heard the wicked, unspoken addition. “Nonetheless, I am certain you should be resting and eating what the doctor has ordered for you. You are a dreadful patient, Your Royal Highness.”
“I truly am dreadful, Eleanora. You’re not mistaken. However, I’m famished. Starving. My appetite requires sating.”
Yes, he was villain enough to be speaking of two different appetites at once. But he was also cunning enough to know that she could find no fault in the information he had just imparted.
The color on her cheeks deepened, but the rigidness from her posture didn’t relent. “How kind, then, of Mr. Dimitrius to fetch you sustenance. I’m pleased to see you are healing well, Your Royal Highness. I bid you good evening.”
Did she truly think he would allow her to leave him so quickly? Nando would have been amused had he not been so determined to keep her precisely where she was.
He strode nearer, reaching her in time to lay a flattened palm on the door above her head using his uninjured arm. “Don’t go with such haste.”
She spun about, eyes wide and startled, her back pressed to the door. “Your Royal Highness!”
He had shocked her. He didn’t care.
“I’d like to make you an offer,” Nando said smoothly, disregarding her surprise.
He was determined to implement the notion that had seized him in its relentless grip.
Her golden lashes fluttered over her icy eyes for a moment, the sole indication that his words had an effect on her sangfroid.
“I won’t be your mistress, Your Royal Highness,” she said coolly.
Ah, yes. For all the games she played with him, his Eleanora knew what he wanted from her. It was elemental. Something deeper and larger than the both of them. Inevitable, too.
But Nando smiled, ignoring the searing pain in his wounded arm, which paled in comparison to the thwarted lust boiling in his blood. “Eleanora, you wound me. I have a proper circumstance in mind for you. Not something scandalous.”
He couldn’t be certain if it was their proximity—his body almost aligned to hers—or that he had been on his feet for longer than he had since being shot that was dizzying him. But he decided he didn’t give a damn.
“What manner of circumstance could you possibly have to offer me, Your Royal Highness?” she asked, her tone skeptical.
“You can teach me how to dance and be proper.”
A blatant lie. No doubt they both knew it. But Nando was hoping she might fool herself into accepting the temptation he offered.
Her chin tipped up. “You already know how to dance quite elegantly, and as for the latter, I harbor a strong suspicion that it is an unattainable feat.”
She wasn’t wrong. Nando had no intention of being proper. Especially not in her presence.
He removed his palm from the door and waved his hand. “Something else, then. What is Tierney paying you? I’ll offer you triple the sum.”
“Your Royal Highness, even if I were inclined to accept your offer, which I most assuredly am not, leaving my current employer in the midst of my duties would reflect poorly upon me. My charges require my further aid, and I would never abandon them to take on a dubious role in your household.”
Well, that was rather a bruising and crushing refusal. But Nando didn’t expect anything less from her. A renewed determination to make her his roared forth within him. He would simply have to find the means of flouting her stern opposition to himself.
“I never said that you needed to abandon your present post,” he told her mildly. “You may complete your duties first. I have it on good authority that Tierney is a gentleman one shouldn’t cross, and having already been shot once, I have no desire to suffer a second such wounding.”
This was only partially true, and he promptly banished the minuscule shards of conscience that attempted to ruin his plans.
“I hardly think Mr. Tierney would do you violence, Your Royal Highness. But while I thank you for the generous proposal, my answer must be a firm and resounding no.”
Damn her resolve.
He wanted to kiss it right out of her. But he was no neophyte to seduction. He knew that he had to proceed at her pace. Which was to say with excruciating torpor.
“Why must it be?” he asked. “I’m a wealthy man. Hideously so. You might find yourself set up comfortably for the rest of your life after accepting my offer.”
