“You have already helped me enough with Knight,” she said, keeping the emotion from her voice. “I need no more assistance.”
“Don’t be so stubborn, Louisa.” His voice was low and he caught her cheek as she emerged from her chemise, turning her face to his. “And don’t run from me. We should discuss this.”
“There’s nothing to discuss.”
He flinched. “You’re just going to walk out of here with the letters?”
“Yes,” she said, donning her stays next and keeping her face averted. “While, admittedly, there is more twocando in bed, I—”
“You know that’s not what I meant.” He spun her around so she was looking at him again, in all his naked glory.
“Put on a shirt,” she said.
“Marry me,” he said.
“I—” Mouth open, she gazed at him as though waiting for a sign this was all a joke in very bad taste. “That was what this was about?”
“This?”
“You allowed me to seduce you so I would feel obligated to marry you afterwards.” She took a step back from him, too confused to articulate herself properly. “I thought I made myself perfectly plain before this ever begun. I have no intention of marrying.”
“That was before,” he started, but she held up a hand.
“Did you truly think that it changes anything? Have you forgotten what I am?”
His gaze held hers steadily, but there was a flare of hurt there, too, as though he had genuinely imagined that this would have changed things for her. That all ills would have been resolved by a little bedsport. No doubt he believed he could pleasure her into forgiveness.
The hurt was blinding, crushing her lungs. That she could have been so deceived in him; that he had not taken her word at face value.
“My fortune,” she said, understanding coming to her in a lightning bolt. “Is this what this is about?”
His hand moved to the curve of her jaw again, fingers tight and possessive, his thumb on her chin, holding her in place. “I care for you,” he said.
“You cared for me before, if you recall.” She jerked free of his hand. “Tell me something, Henry. If I were poor, if I were as poor as the day I asked you to marry me, would you be asking this now?”
His jaw snapped shut, nostrils flaring. The silence before his next words told her all she needed to know, and she shook her head. As always, his duty towards his family was his primary concern. No doubt his ‘affection’ for her was a mere bonus in addition to her fortune, which was her primary appeal.
As it had been since the day Bolton died.
With every other gentleman who had pursued her for her fortune, it had made no difference. With Henry, it made every difference.
“I told you I have no intention of marrying you,” she said, her voice thick, taking another step away from him. “I am not some innocent you can seduce into marriage, and if you hoped that my guilt over inducing you to break your vow would lead me to matrimony, then you are very much mistaken.” She glanced down at where he was standing beside her discarded dress. “My dress, if you please.”
For the longest time, his gaze held hers, probing, as though he was trying to find the truth behind her words. As though he could not quite believe what he was hearing.
“If I were merely looking for a fortune, I would not have played this game with you,” he said, so low she could barely hear him.
“No? Miss Winton’s dowry is considerable, but it hardly compares. I have forty thousand a year. What do you say tothat? Are you more tempted by me than ever?” She made a dismissive gesture. “My dress, Henry. I would like to leave.”
Eyes still on her, he bent and picked up her dress and came closer, one step at a time. “I chose to be with you because I wanted to,” he told her, fingers brushing hers as he came closer. She snatched the dress from him and stepped in it, drawing it up her body, her hands shaking. “Not because of any ulterior motive.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“And now this proposal—if one can call it that. It has nothing to do with my fortune? Nothing to do with your foolish hope that the intimacy might propel me into your arms? Or perhaps you hoped I would fear talk from our absence all afternoon?” She shook her head and turned her back to him so he could do up her dress. “I am not ruined, Henry. Not by you.”
He gathered her loose hair and moved it over her shoulder. Seconds later, she felt the press of his lips against her neck, and she closed her eyes. “I thought,” he said, the pain in his voice more evident now, “that it might have meant something to you, as it did to me.”
