It wasn’t a declaration of any affection, Clio knew. It wasn’t as though he would have chosen to marry her if he didn’t already need to marry. She was a known quantity. She understood that.
But still. It wasn’t nothing.
But she wasn’t about to let herself beaffected. That would be letting him win.
“You do realize that you could probably have your pick of the lot,” she reminded him, as breezily as she could manage. “You know, if you show them amodicumof politeness.”
He snorted. “I’m not going to put on some false front just so that I can trap a poor woman into thinking she’s marrying a different man than the one she’s truly getting. You and I understand one another.”
“That is … true.” She hated to admit it.
And, because Hector was no sort of gentleman at all, he didn’t let her slip go.
“That might be the first time we’ve ever found ourselves in agreement, Clio.” There was something frustratingly sensual about the way his accent wrapped around the vowels of her name.
She searched frantically for lightheartedness. Anything to hide the fact that she had to suppress a shiver.
“We agreed on punching Gwanton,” she said weakly.
He laughed, a pure sound of genuine, startled humor. It was a lovely sound, and it brightened his face considerably enough that she, too, laughed at the pure joy in his expression.
“See?” he said. “Surely there are worse starts to a marriage than hating the same blackguard.”
She pursed her lips. This was getting away from her.
“I could be your ally,” she said, but her tone had the desperation of someone who knew this was their last trick. “I could help you sort through your guests, help you find the kind of woman who would suit you. And you could help me convince my brother to let me return to the Continent.”
He paused and pressed a hand to her cheek. It was a soft gesture, not quite proper, of course, but as close as he’d ever gotten.
“Aye, but that would not aid me at all. As I already know what woman would suit me. And I have no intention of letting her escape to the Continent.”
Clio could feel the place where his smallest finger touched the thrumming pulse in her neck. She’d never been so aware of the movement of her blood through her body.
“You said I could choose,” she said weakly.
He smiled, and that smile was deadly. It could be used to prevent wars, she was sure. All he had to do was direct it appropriately.
And then, it grew wicked enough that she realized it couldstartwars, too.
“You can,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to fight fair.”
And then he turned and left to prepare for dinner, leaving Clio wondering how, exactly, this whole thing had spiraled so desperately out of her control.
CHAPTER 12
One of the virtues of being associated with the powerful Lightholder clan, no matter how tangentially, was that Clio had always enjoyed a certain cache in Society. She’d never been a wallflower; even though her Seasons had been considered failures by virtue of her continued unmarried state, she’d been reasonably popular, if only by people who wanted to ingratiate themselves with her brother or cousins.
Not tonight, though.
Tonight, she might as well have been invisible, for all the attention she was getting.
She pretended she didn’t notice—like hell was she going to give these vultures the satisfaction of seeing that, despite everything, this did wound her somewhat—but it was much, much harder to pretend she didn’t notice that Hector had the opposite problem.
He wasn’t a good dancer, not by Society standards. He made errors now and again. Heglowered.
And yet the women of the room seemed drawn to him like moths to a flame, and, frankly, Clio couldn’t blame them.
“You’re making a fool of yourself, you know.”
