She pursed her lips as if this proclamation left a bad taste in her mouth, but she didn’t take the words back. God help him, but she was impertinent. And that plump little mouth of hers—too bloody expressive for her own good. He ought to wipe thatsmugness right off her face. It would be as easy as taking her face between his hands—hands that were far too rough for the likes of her—and kiss her until she?—
No.No, he wasnotthinking that. Absolutely, positively,notthinking that.
“What,” he repeated, determined to banish any inappropriate thoughts from his mind, “are you doing here?”
She sighed and dropped her head back against the back of the settee. It was a very casual pose, and, again, Hector was furious with himself for being shocked at how casual she was acting. A few weeks prior, and a few hundred miles further north, he wouldn’t have spared such an action a second thought.
Today, though, and here, he found himself looking at the long curve of her throat like it was the most fascinating thing in the world.
“I am here,” she told his ceiling, “because my brother is being irksomely recalcitrant. He keeps insisting that he will ‘get you to see sense.’” She tilted her head to give him a suspicious look. “But you do not strike me as a sensible kind of man.”
Despite himself, a chuckle bubbled up in his throat. He quickly swallowed it.
“I’ll admit that I’ve heard that before,” he allowed.
She smiled, but it was weak.
“Well, then,” she said, turning back to stare at the ceiling. “This is not good.”
Again, some completely absurd part of Hector decided to take control. Because he could have simply sent her on her way. It would have been very easy.
But instead, he asked, “Are you certain that people will talk?”
The next look was sardonic.
“In a word: Yes. It’s London Society. If people stopped talking, the whole system would collapse.” She sighed. “But in more detail, people arealreadytalking. Phoebe, my brother’s wife, has already heard fromhersister that someone said something to her husband’s mother.”
Hector quickly gave up trying to chase down that trail of pronouns and people who had nothing better to do than gossip.
“So, people are talking.”
Clio sounded defeated, and Hector found that he very much did not like it. “People are talking.”
“And nothing short of marriage will quiet them?”
He hadn’t wanted to raise the issue of marriage, but that seemed like a pointless avoidance. Besides, he told himself, it got Lady Clio to haul herself to her feet, which was the first step to leaving his house.
Which he wanted. Definitely.
“Marriage, or fleeing the country,” she said wearily. “And I won’t be passed off to some man old enough to be my grandfather just because he is willing to take a soiled dove to wife. So, I suppose I should begin packing my valise.”
Hector had taken a step forward before he had decided to do so. Because a very, very bad idea was starting to take form in his mind.
Because Lady Clio needed a husband, and Hector needed a wife.
She paused, regarding him warily … but not with anunpleasantsort of wariness. It almost seemed like …
Anticipation.
He took a step forward. She took a step back, but a smaller one.
“Do you want to know what I think?” he asked, looking her over. She really was frustratingly pretty.
She gave him a similar up-and-down look. He found that he liked the way she looked, wary of him. Not afraid, but not entirely comfortable. Like his damaged leg didn’t stop her from seeing him as a man.
“I came here to ask precisely that, but now that it’s on offer, I’m not sure that I do,” she said carefully.
He moved forward, and again, she moved back; the space between them grew smaller.
