Willow shrugged. “She is riding. How do you take your tea?”
“Cream,” he said. He was surprised by how cavalier she was about her mother. His own mother presided over his sisters’ daily lives with a loving but watchful eye. Never would they regard her with a shrug.
“I must apologize for my maid,” Lady Willow said, smiling over the trolley, deftly preparing his tea.Her face opens up when she smiles, he thought.
She positioned a delicate cup on a saucer. Her movements were swift and efficient but not careless. Cup and saucer made only the slightestclink. She stooped for a spoon. Her hair fell across her face, and she shook it away. Cassin had the unhelpful thought that he had never seen anyone like her, not ever.
In five minutes, I will go, he thought.
“Perry is far cleverer than she seems,” she went on, bringing him the steaming cup.
He rose to accept it but studied her at close range instead. He could see her eyelashes, auburn like her hair but shades darker. He saw a faint smattering of freckles at the top of each check. He saw—
“My lord?” She nodded to the cup.
He mumbled an apology. Their hands brushed beneath the saucer, and Cassin went very, very still.
“I was not prepared for you to call in person, as I’ve said,” she continued, “and Perry was the only chaperone I could muster on short notice.”
He choked on the first sip. “I am surprised that a woman who seeks to arrange her own marriage is burdened with chaperones.”
Only five minutes more, he repeated in his brain.
“Propriety is the very thing that prevents me from moving to London of my own accord,” she said. “I’ve no choice but to adhere to it. My plan may be . . . unconventional in general terms, but I see no reason why, bit by bit, the preliminaries should not follow proper custom.”
“Yes, if it wereproper customfor a woman to dangle money as bait and then buy a husband.”
“ ‘Dangle money’? ‘Bait’? You sensationalize. The offer is outrageous enough without exaggerating.”
“At least we agree on the outrage.” He watched her make her own cup and decide between the desk or the empty chair beside him. He held his breath.
“I have seen the face of outrage before, Lord Cassin, and you do not have it.”
And now he wondered what she saw in his face. Weariness? Worry? The yoke of responsibility? Fascination?
Desire?
The thick, hot pull of it had been flickering at the periphery of his consciousness, but now that she was close, longing surged. His ears had latched on to the low, husky rasp of her voice. He could just detect the faint, cinnamon scent.
“If you have other reasons,” she was saying, “valid reasons, for resisting my offer, I should like to know them. To improve my proposition for the next gentleman who may apply.”
His cup hit the saucer with a rattle.The next gentleman?
Sentient thought and articulation returned to him in a rush. “I resist because the advertisement is a lie. Your insistence on learning the details of my venture is intrusive. And you are . . . ” He trailed off, searching for a word that would not betray him.
“I amunexpected?” she offered innocently, sipping her tea.
“I was going to saythreatening.”
“I threaten you?”
“Iam not threatened,” he lied. “I’m afraid of tipping the scales of your obvious madness into hysteria. There lies the threat.” And now hewassensationalizing. She hadn’t shown the slightest proclivity toward hysteria. But he could hardly say what he truly felt, which was distraction and curiosity and shock.
And mind-blanking attraction,he thought suddenly, honestly.
“I appear mad to you, my lord?”
“I’m not finished,” he said. “Your promise of money is unsubstantiated. What if some poor sod does the unthinkable and marries you, only to discover there is no money? No money at all?”
