Her mouth tightened as she studied the picture, irritation in the stiff set of her shoulder. But the distant, echoing sadness had gone for now.
“I’ve offended you,” he said, smiling.
“No! Every woman longs to be told she looks a fright. Especially by a veritable stranger.”
He chuckled softly. “Not a fright. But you’re certainly doing neither yourself nor your cause any favours.”
“And here I was concentrating on communicating my message! On research and facts and expert testimony! Really, I should have been studying fashion plates. I must suggest this to Mr Wilberforce. Perhaps a new way of tying his cravat would give him greater success than ever.”
Her sarcasm made him smile. “You think you’re joking, but you’re quite correct. The problem with your methods so far—
“Oh, do enlighten me, please!”
His smile widened as she turned to him in mock rapture, hands pressed together as in prayer.
“Your problem, Mrs Ardingly, is that you think people truly care about anything other than themselves.” He gestured towards his chest. “I am here for purely selfish reasons. And all your future subscribers and supporters will have reasons equally selfish.”
“Like what?”
“Any number of things. Like hoping their charity in this world will secure them better treatment in the next. Or they have a guilt they wish to ease themselves of. Or they wish to believe themselves better than their friends. Or demonstrate through the largesse of their donations how wealthy they are.”
“And the thought of a small child with his back flayed to ribbons moves them not at all?”
“No more than they care about abolition, or poor relief, or crippled soldiers, penniless widows, starving orphans, fallen women, climbing boys, or carriage horses falling dead of exhaustion. A great many of them might think your beaten children of less concern than any of those—a child being beaten normally has a parent or teacher who cares enough about it to correct it.”
“Cares?Cares?Is that what you call it?”
“All children need an authority figure to look up to and direct them.”
She let out an exasperated breath. “Which is a very different thing to beating them! My parents raised seven children and never raised a hand against any of us!”
“A rare exception doesn’t make a rule.”
She stared at him, chest rising with the force of her anger, a flush on her pretty cheekbones.
“Wereyoubeaten, Lord Cotereigh?”
“Soundly.”
“Then I think that entirely proves my point.”
She stood up, as though unable to bear his proximity, and walked briskly towards the window.
She folded her arms mannishly across her chest and stared up at the sky. It was probably blue and fluffy and all those sorts of things, and she looked at it like a caged bird looks for home.
His gaze tracked down her stiff neck and tense shoulders, a crescent of skin revealed at the base of her neck, between her shoulder blades. Her dress was the sullen grey of a spoiling morning, when rain relentlessly drizzles on your plans for cricket.
He had to admit it. He found her extremely attractive.
If he’d thought she’d ever permit it, he’d take this widow as mistress. Remove that dress. Lay her down flushed and bare and pink. They’d both remember they were alive.
“Mrs Ardingly,” he said, very patient, very calm. She stayed looking at the sky. “You can distrust my motives—despise them, even, as I’m sure you already do. But right now, our goals are aligned.”
She glanced back at him.
“Trust my methods,” he said. “We may have different reasons, but we want the same things. And I always get what I want.”
Six
