“You’re my best hope of keeping this mess from the scandal sheets. My apologies if I appear fastidious.”
“I won’t leave. I assure you I have nowhere to go. I need the one thousand for—we have expenses.”
“I will have my man send the money at once.”
As he said the words, his mouth gave a small twist that had looked suspiciously like pity and perhaps a dash of repulsion. She wondered if he had seen the duns at the door. She worked to keep a blush from rising to her cheeks and felt herself failing. She shouldn’t care what he thought of her. Yet she loathed appearing weak before him.
To cover her own confusion, she stood. He did as well.
Then he took a step closer to her. The green of his eyes bored into her. She found that she could not break eye contact. For a moment, she had the wild thought that he was going to kiss her.
The moment seemed to expand infinitely, holding them both in its thrall.
He broke eye contact, but they were still close. He leaned towards her. Her pulse pounded in her ears.
“Pack a trunk,” he said, his mouth low and nearly at her ear. “You won’t come back here until we have found her. We leave for Dorset tomorrow.”
And then, for the second time in her life, John Breminster, the Marquess of Forster, now the Duke of Edington, strode away from her without looking back.
Chapter Five
When the Dukeof Edington reached his town house in Mayfair, he immediately sent a message to his solicitor—the infuriating, unsackable Mr. Lawson—directing him to expedite one thousand pounds to Catherine Forster.
That errand transacted, he sat in his study and thought of the woman in question. How her refined pink mouth had dropped its radiant smile when he had appeared in her drawing room. How she had looked almost ill when Lady Wethersby had left her alone with him. How her blue-black eyes had flashed in anger at his insulting speech, a speech that, as a gentleman, he should have never made and didn’t even believe.
John swore aloud at the memory of his own conduct. Around her, he lost control. He should be used to taunts and disdain, especially about the scandal and certainly about the purported rakishness of his own conduct. Hewasused to them. What he had almost told her was true. His Eton years would have been pure hell if he had not had his three best friends to defend him. He had endured all manner of rude comments. He had even grown indifferent to them, learning to laugh in the face of derision and wear notoriety as a badge of honor. And yet her censure cut through him like a knife. As if the scandal had only happened yesterday and he were a knock-kneed boy of eleven facing scorn and infamy for the first time.
Her fingertips today had been as ink-stained as on that night seven years ago. What had she been writing?Whohad she been writing to? Did she have a lover? Someone who came and visited her at Halston Place at night? A tight net of jealousy constricted his lungs.
John put his hands over his face as he had wanted to all afternoon. It had been a confusing mixture of pleasure and pain to be in her presence. He had wanted to take the pins from her hair and spill her silvery-blond locks onto her shoulders. He had wanted to press her to him on that shabby divan. He had wanted to open her dress, to reveal the breasts that he already knew were nothing short of the divine, and lavish each with attention, to give her so much pleasure that she forgot who he was, who she was, why their coming together would always be a bad idea. It was a pestilence, it was a disease, these feelings.
Traveling with her—in close quarters no less—would be nothing short of torture.
Her words had scorched him.Like father, like son.Her intimation that the scandal had been the fault of his family, that Mary Forster had not been the primary agent of destruction, had enraged him.
And yet he had commanded her away from him, commanded her to sit, out of lust as well as anger. He had felt the temptation of continuing the argument, of letting the verbal attacks become even more personal. And he had felt, equally, the temptation of her nearness, how it threatened his sanity, how easily he could see himself pulling her into him and revealing his weakness. When color had risen in her cheeks, when she had spoken to him with such heat, he had recoiled at her words, at her condemnation of himself and the family from which he came. It had taken everything in him not to silence her—with a searing, mind-addling kiss.
Even as she enraged him, he could also see her vulnerability. He knew she didn’t deserve the condition in which she lived. He didn’t pity her, exactly. He supposed, if he was honest, it was something closer to begrudging admiration. He had faced gossip and sneers but never penury. What would he have become in her position? He sensed that he would have fared far worse.
With her beauty, intelligence, and pedigree, Catherine Forster should be married to a wealthy, titled gentleman, who could give her lots of fine children.
The thought of Catherine married to some faceless, upstanding aristocrat made him feel sick.
He tried to ignore the sensation.
He shouldn’t care.
It shouldn’t matter to him.
And yet the thought made him desperate.
Shemade him desperate.
Right before he had left Halston Place, he had nearly kissed her. If he had stayed a moment longer, his restraint would have broken. He had wanted to coax open her lips with his own, savoring her taste. For a brief second, he had even thought she had expected it. That shewantedhim to kiss her. Her intake of breath when he had stepped closer—had he imagined it?
Such an intuition could only be delusion. She had made very clear that she hated him. She was plainly disgusted by him, his father, his title, everything about him. He was probably the last man in the world that she would desire in that way. His own traitorous attraction to her was a doomed instinct, a mistake of nature.
Tomorrow he would have to steel himself against her. For the sake of finding Mary Forster, for saving his sister, he needed to treat Catherine with cool politeness.
