“There is plenty to discuss, Miss Prim,” he stated. “Your brother asked me to marry you. In front of witnesses. And I promised him I would. Again in front of witnesses.”
He watched as a nearly palpable tension rode through her. After more than a moment’s hesitation and probably more than a little consternation, she walked back into the room, folded her arms across her chest, and stood looking down at him with anxious blue eyes. She didn’t look happy that he’d won that particular battle.
“I release you of that promise, Your Grace,” she said tersely.
“But that’s the thing. You can’t.”
“May I speak freely again?”
“Please don’t stop now.”
“I don’t want you in my house, let alone in my bed. I am in London to see that my sister Gwen has a proper Season, in hopes of a suitable match by the end of it. That is my only duty here. Once that is accomplished, I will return to Wayebury happily unmarried, to take care of my sisters until it is time to return to London for Lillian’s Season.”
There was fire behind her words, and her steady gaze was unrelenting. He had imagined many things before he knocked on the door. That she was painfully shy and unattractive, insistently chatty and loud, or that she was a demented shrew. But it had never crossed his mind that she wouldn’t want to marry him. He’d had young ladies lining up to marry him for years. He’d even suspected she put her uncle up to his brash behavior.
He never expected she’d reject him—and a duke, at that.
“It was your brother’s desire that we marry,” he said again.
“Thanks to you, my brother is dead.”
Her short, flat words hit him hard, but he did nothing to show any emotion in his manner or his expression, and she didn’t let up on her attack.
“His death, like my mother’s and my father’s before him, has assured that my duty is to my sisters. They need me, not you. So if you want to marry, I suggest you find someone who is willing and command her to marry you, because I am not available.”
The last vestige of him thinking she might be a fragile slip of a girl intent on making him her husband before summer came faded from his mind. He had a thought that he might have won a battle, but he wasn’t sure he could win the war.
That surprised him.
It surprised him even more that the thought of trying intrigued him.
Bray had had no intentions of taking on the responsibility of caring for a flock of females, but that was before he knew Miss Prim didn’t want him to. Who did she think she was to dictate anything to him?
The flames in the fireplace had burned low, but he felt a heat to the room that had nothing to do with the embers glowing in the ashes or Miss Prim’s attitude, for she was cold as stone toward him. Yet there was a feminine softness about her that he found comfortable, appealing, and warm.
Bray rose to tower over her.
He leaned in close to her and softly said, “I hope that is not a challenge for me to persuade you differently, Miss Prim, because if it is, I’ll have to accept.”
Chapter 4
When he is best he is a little worse than a man, and when he is worst he is a little better than a beast.
—The Merchant of Venice,act 1, scene 2
A challenge?
Louisa Prim forced her knees to stay steady as the Duke of Drakestone rose and towered over her with a commanding, primal presence. A weaker woman would have dropped to her knees. That, or fainted. But she had never been a wilting flower. She hadn’t had that luxury since her mother died, shortly after Bonnie was born. Louisa had been both mother and sister to the girls.
Despite her determined control, a slight flush crept into her cheeks as the man stepped closer to her, much closer than a gentleman should stand to a young lady he’d just met. Her heartbeat pounded. Instinct told her to flee, but from somewhere deep inside herself she summoned the nerve to look him directly in the eye.
Her courage hadn’t failed her.
Perhaps it was the fact that she held the duke responsible for her brother’s death. Even she had heard the many rumors about how wild the Duke of Drakestone was. She didn’t believe her brother, Nathan, was completely innocent concerning what had happened when he died, but she felt sure he wouldn’t have been racing that fatal night if he were not encouraged to do so by the notorious heir now standing in front of her.
Once Nathan became an heir to the title of viscount, he’d gone to London and turned into a different person. Not even her nonjudgmental father had been able to calm Nathan down when he was in London. By his own admission, Nathan left his sensible way of life behind and became just as wild and reckless as the other heirs he associated with.
But Louisa had to believe that Nathan, who always took good care of his sisters’ welfare, would never have willingly endangered his life. If her brother were still alive, she and her sisters would have his love and generosity and not be at the mercy of a stingy uncle who didn’t care a feather about her or them.
