CHAPTERTHREE
As the banquet continued, Conor’s expression encompassed rock-hard resolve and smoldering sensuality with a particular brand of Irish humor thrown in.For a woman brought up in isolation, this was unsettling.
“You should relax and chat, Karolina,” Conor warned at one point during an awkward silence between them.
How did you chat lightly with a man you were soon to share a bed with?A man who made her long for things she’d never had.Things like fun, sex, and yes, maybe the two mixed up together.Her cheeks burned at the thought, so her reply came out sharper than intended.“I’m not here to exchange pleasantries, but to convince my father that I’ve snared you for him.”
“Snared me for him?”
Those words rolling around Conor’s mouth while his eyes were dancing with laughter held her gaze transfixed.He laughed.“Is that what you think you’re doing?”
“What else can I think?”she demanded, shaking herself out of the momentary trance.“I can’t believe you’d marry me willingly.There has to be more to your decision than that.”
“A deal is a deal,” he said with a shrug.
“You don’t want to add caveats to that deal?”
Conor frowned.“What do you suggest?”
“That we marry but live apart, for instance?”
“Would you like that?”
His stare was long and amused, and carried a lot more than business in it.There was sex…the promise of sex, so that by the time she looked away, her pulse points were throbbing.
“You can still refuse,” he pointed out with a careless shrug.
“Refuse my father?Have you met the ambassador?”
“I’ve met him.Do women still do that these days?”
“What?Obey their fathers?”The look she gave Conor left him in no doubt that that conventional daughterly obedience was not what she was talking about.However brave she might think herself, she knew he’d read fear in her eyes, if not for herself, then for all those other women.
Conor didn’t comment, and she really wished he would.To know his opinion of the ambassador might give her some insight into Conor’s true intention and whether or not he was in league with her father.
Why must she always want more than survival?Life wasn’t made up of fairy tales and happy-ever-after endings, as Karolina was best placed to know.She was nothing more than a bargaining chip, but marriage to Conor was the only escape route that had come her way.“I’ll obey him in this marriage to you,” she said to get the conversation flowing again.“If you’re happy to marry the ambassador’s daughter, a woman you’ve only just met, why shouldn’t I leap at the chance to marry a notorious heartbreaker?”
“Your sarcasm cuts me,” Conor mocked, smiling as he spoke in a dangerously seductive tone.
“I’ll be striking a blow for women everywhere if I manage to tame you.”
“Now there’s a fascinating idea,” he observed with an ironic twist of his mouth.“I challenge you to try.”
“Challenge accepted.”She had to believe she could handle him and that things would get better, so if step one toward that goal meant becoming the wife of this impossible man, she’d risk it.
“I get that my father receives a gift of ponies when we marry, but what do you get out of this so-called debriefing?”
“That’s for me to know and you to wonder about.”
With a huff of frustration, she swung around to talk to the woman on her other side, but she couldn’t concentrate, and the conversation soon faltered.The thought of her challenge to Conor was exciting, but not if he turned out to be cut from the same cloth as her father when it came to profiting from human suffering.If that were the case, she’d find some way to destroy him too.
There were women in this building right now who depended on Karolina for their slim thread of hope.Could she trust Conor enough to tell him that?If she made trouble for her father, they would suffer, and suffer more if Conor Murphy turned out to be a slaver.
“You look very beautiful tonight.”
“What?”Her thoughts were so dark that Conor’s surprisingly mellow tone had taken her by surprise.
“Thank you is all that’s required,” he said with that same wry look that sent heat flooding through her.
