“You are insufferable,” she said through clenched teeth.
He tapped a gloved finger against his chin.“You say that as though it were not one of my more celebrated qualities.”
Her lips twitched, as if fighting the urge to retort, but her eyes sparked with something far sharper than amusement—warning, perhaps, or reluctant intrigue.
Clara made a strangled sound, something between a scoff and a growl.Her cheeks were flushed, whether from fury or embarrassment he could not be certain, but it suited her.In fact, most things suited Lady Clara, righteous indignation especially.
“What could possibly possess you to go along with that madness?”she demanded.
Crispin pushed off the wall with leisurely grace and took a step closer.He enjoyed seeing her flustered, especially after years of her carefully composed disdain.But he was not here merely to trade barbs.
“Let us say,” he murmured, lowering his voice, “that I find the idea amusing.”
She stared at him.“You agreed to an engagement, in front of everyone we know, because you were...bored?”Her voice rose with disbelief, and her hand balled into a fist at her side.She imagined hurling her champagne in his face, desperate to shake the smugness from his features, anything that might make him feel as unmoored as she did.
“Partly,” he conceded.“But also because it solves several problems rather elegantly.”
“Problems?”
“My mother, for one.She has been hounding me to settle down.You, my dear, have just offered me a reprieve.”He took another step.
Her eyes narrowed.“You cannot be serious.”
“I am always serious when it benefits me.”He smiled, slow and wolfish.“And then there is you.”
“Me?”She took a step back.
“You announced the engagement to salvage your own reputation.Fair enough.But if you believe I will allow myself to be used without exacting a little entertainment in return, then you have sorely underestimated me.”
She bristled, fury tightening her posture.“So this is a lesson?A punishment?”
“Think of it as an arrangement.You get your protection from scandal, I get a season of amusement and my mother off my back.Perhaps we both win.”
A flicker passed across her face, jaw tight, brows knit, as though she were weighing the sting of his words against the necessity of swallowing them whole.Then, with remarkable composure, she said, “You truly are a devil.”
He grinned.“That is the rumor.”
“You should not have kissed me.”
“Yet I did,” Crispin replied.He leaned closer, letting the space between them speak for itself.“It seems you have a habit of telling me what I should and should not do, Lady Clara.A habit you may need to break, now that we are so dreadfully… attached.”
“Do not presume you have gained any influence over me,” she said, voice sharp enough to cut glass.
“Influence?”He braced a hand against the wall beside her head, caging her with the span of his arms.“No, I would not dare, for it would ruin the fun.”
She glared at him, lashes quivering with indignation.“If you dare to ruin me a second time?—”
“Ruin you?”He leaned closer, his voice a murmur between them.“You seem perfectly capable of managing that yourself.I had nothing to do with this little engagement, unless you count the sin of being an irresistible kisser.”
The slap came quick, but not quickly enough to surprise him.He caught her wrist mid-air, his fingers encircling the delicate bones.Not tight, but immovable.
“I loathe you,” she hissed, voice trembling with rage.
“Excellent.”He drew her closer until her perfume—citrus and rose—was all he could smell.“Hatred is vastly preferable to indifference.”
The words struck Clara like a stone skipped across water—brief, cutting, and hard to ignore.She said nothing, but her jaw tightened, the only sign that the barb had landed.
She tried to step back, but he matched her movement, his body pressing her against the cool marble.
