He sat on the stone bench that stood to one side of the path. “Are we playing tit for tat now? Sit.”
Hesitantly she joined him on the bench. Heat radiated from him, and she couldn’t help edging a little closer to his dark, solid form. “If you’re just being kind, I really have no need to unburden myself to you.”
“You think I’m being kind? How unusual for both of us.”
She glanced up at him. In the near darkness his gray eyes twinkled, like distant starlight. “You drove my cousin away. That was exceedingly kind.”
“That reminds me of another question I have for you. Your tongue is as sharp edged as mine; I’ve felt its effects. Why didn’t you flay Virgil Retting with it? He made a damned easy target.”
Alexandra stood and paced a circle around him. “These aremytroubles. I’ve dealt with them on my own to this point, and I am perfectly capable of continuing to do so.”
The dark form on the bench remained immobile. “I didn’t say I meant to do anything about them; I just want to know what they are.”
Growling with frustration and knowing he wouldn’t let up until she surrendered. Alexandra planted herself directly in front of him. “You first, then.”
“Impertinent chit. You know once you begin bargaining with me, you will lose.”
She shivered again as a tingling warmth ran down her spine. “I’m not saying anything until you do so.”
For a long moment he kept silent, the clouding of his breath the only sign that he wasn’t some dark garden sculpture. “I don’t want to marry,” he finally said, his voice low and subdued.
“What a surprise,” she said dryly, shivering again.
He opened his coat, exposing his cravat and lighter jacket beneath. “Sit down before you freeze standing there.”
She was becoming frightfully chilled, but she wasn’t a fool. Alexandra sat on the bench again, as far from him as she could, then gasped as he reached across her thighs, scooped a hand under her bottom, and dragged her close up against him. With a warm rustle, his arm and one side of his greatcoat enfolded her.
“Do you know anything about my father?” he asked, tucking her up against his broad, solid shoulder.
“Only that he had…several mistresses, and that he died nearly fifteen years ago.”
“My father had more than several mistresses. Lecherous behavior and gambling were his favorite pastimes, I believe. He and my mother lived under the same roof for three months, until I was conceived. He then retired her to Lowdham, a small Balfour estate in Nottingham. There she gave birth to me, and then spent the next eleven years complaining about how much she missed London and her friends and her life, though she made no noticeable attempt to reclaim any of them. I saw my father a total of six times, including the viewing at his funeral services.”
“Oh, my,” Alexandra said softly.
“I’ve been informed on numerous occasions, usually by commitment-minded females, that the combination of viewing my mother’s abject helplessness and misery and the state of my parents’ marriage left me with a distaste for the whole bloody procedure. I’m inclined to agree.”
“But now you do intend to marry, despite your distaste.”
He paused again. “I’d drawn up papers to have my cousin James and his offspring inherit the Balfour lands and titles. He died in Belgium last year when a wagon carrying gunpowder exploded in the middle of his encampment. I’m not actually certain it was his body I buried. There wasn’t much of him left.”
He spoke calmly, but Alexandra felt the tension in the muscles of his arm and thigh. Almost without thinking, she laid her head against his shoulder, and he relaxed a little. “You miss him,” she said.
“I miss him. Anyway, dear Uncle Oscar became the only other living male in my family tree. He went next, which means—”
“Which means if you produce no heirs, Rose’s children will inherit your fortune and your title.”
“And she’s nearly of age, so here we are, in our own little pit of hell and horror.”
“You might let her family inherit.”
Lucien snorted. “I don’t dislike my ancestors that much. Besides, it would deny me the opportunity to turn out like my father. I seem to have followed him in nearly every other aspect of my life.”
“I doubt that.” Though she’d heard wild, scandalous stories, she couldn’t imagine him being intentionally cruel—not to someone who didn’t somehow deserve it.
“Any other commentary?” he asked, shifting on the cold stone. “You’ve read my book, then. Now open yours for me, Alexandra.”
She’d hoped he had forgotten her side of the bargain. “Compared with yours, it’s fairly simple.”
