Was she constitutionally incapable of not arguing with every single damned thing he said? “Tonight, you will help her at Lady Devensham ball. And you will wear a gown I bought you.”
The thought of it swamped him with a dark, illicit thrill of possession. She would wear something he chose, something he provided. It would mark her as his…
“I won’t!”
The reins of his temper snapped.
“You will!” he roared, standing up from his chair to brace both hands on the desk. “Because I wish it. And you will accept those clothes for the same reason you gave me as to why I should open my home to Lucy. Because the way you are perceived by the world reflects upon me. I will not have you accompany Lucy to Almack’s or a private ball at Lady Devensham’s home, or a reception at St. James’s Palace, in a drab, outmoded, ill-fitting gown that makes you look like nothing more than a poor relation!”
His words echoed in the large chamber, only drowned out by the way his heartbeat pounded in his ears. He could not believe he had raised his voice.
She looked down at her ugly gray dress as though seeing it for the first time, and Nathaniel cursed himself with silent viciousness.
“I...meant no insult,” he said, gruff and halting, like the brutish clod he was.
But to his surprise, she looked back up and met his stare with a rueful laugh.
“A poor relation! But that is essentially what I am. Why should I not look the part?”
When she laughed the whole room—Nathaniel’s whole life—lit up for a brief, warm moment as precious as a candle in the dark.
He wanted to tell her that her beauty outshone the unlovely gown. He wanted to tell her she deserved a dress as graceful as she was.
That she deserved everything.
The words crowded in his throat, scratching and clawing to get out, but he couldn’t let them loose.
She wasn't for him. No pretty words or foolish gifts could make it so.
He’d wasted his time, and hers, with this stupidity. Nathaniel sat back down, taking up the letter he'd chosen and staring at it.
“Wear the gowns or don’t,” he said. “It makes no difference to me.”
She made an inarticulate sound of displeasure, a sort of sigh crossed with a huff that veered into a groan. For some bloody humiliating reason, Nathaniel felt himself grow hard.
That sound was just so terrifically unladylike—not because it was rude, exactly, but more that it felt so…real. Intimate, almost, a glimpse beneath the serene mask she showed most of the time.
A sudden vision crowded into his mind, of himself rounding the wide desk and seizing her to take that full, pouting bottom lip into his mouth and bite it. He would push his fingers into the smooth coils of her hair, pulling out pins and letting it tumble about her shoulders, which he’d bare by yanking that damned lace kerchief out of her bodice and pulling her dress apart.
He’d have her against the desk, her bare back on the smooth polished wood and dear God, he had to stop this, stop thinking about this.
He was losing his mind. She needed to leave.
He fought the urge to adjust himself in his trousers. “I will take that strange utterance as a yes. The carriage will be brought round at eight o’clock sharp. Good day, madame.”
“This is what Lucy needs,” she muttered, almost as if she was speaking to herself. “We must do this. And I suppose he’s right about the clothes, so, fine. We will be ready at eight. Attired appropriately.”
It struck him like a blow as she turned to leave, the sheer magnitude of what this woman was willing to put herself through on behalf of his female relations.
She clearly dreaded the thought of this ball tonight and would rather have stayed home and not felt herself beholden to Nathaniel in any way for the dresses he’d foolishly thought she would like.
“You hate this. All of it.” The words escaped him before he could think better of them, but he had to know. “So why do you stay? Why did you agree to leave your home and your life behind in the first place?”
She stopped at the door and looked over her shoulder at him. The smooth curve of her cheek, the purity of her profile, made him ache. “Lucy needs my help,” she replied, as if it was just that simple.
For once, Nathaniel didn’t know what his face was doing, but it made her turn fully back to him. She leaned against the study door and regarded him gravely.
“When I was sixteen, a fever swept the village where I lived,” she said, the words slow and painful. “It carried off the old and the young, rich and poor alike. And it took most of my family. After that?—”
