“Charlotte, I must speak to you about something,” Eleanor began as they wound their way through the crowded streets.
“About Camden West, you mean?”
Eleanor’s mouth dropped open. “Camden West? Why would you ask that?”
Charlotte shrugged. “He seems to be hanging about an awful lot lately, and he looks at you like a starving man looks at a Christmas pudding.”
Heat rushed to Eleanor’s face. He does?
No. Of course he doesn’t. How foolish. He looked at her, yes, but not with hunger—more the way a swordsman looks at his opponent right before he thrusts at a gap in their armor. “Oh, what nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense. I saw it myself.”
Eleanor shivered. He’d come up behind her yesterday, his large, warm body so close to hers, and whispered something, something about his cousin and Charlotte, but it wasn’t his words she remembered. It was his lips, so near her ear she could feel the heat of his breath. His whisper stirred the hair near her temple, and the brush of his fingers against her neck, then his mouth, so sweet—
Damn him, and damn her for being fool enough to fall into shivering awareness when he touched her. No doubt it was all part of his grand plan to drag her down the aisle. He’d have a far easier time of it if her legs turned to a jelly.
Even if he did truly desire her, what of it? She’d see him sent to the devil before she ever agreed to marry him, and she’d do well to remember that the next time he tried to whisper in her ear or kiss her neck.
“He’s courting you, isn’t he?” Charlotte asked.
“Not exactly.” Eleanor paused. Good God, how to put this? She was hard pressed to make it sound anything but awful. “He’s not courting me so much as he’s . . .”
Blackmailing me into marriage. The truth hovered on the tip of her tongue. Eleanor tried to push it over the edge, but it hung there, refusing to make the leap into words.
She tried again. “That is, he’s—”
“He must intend to court you. If not, his attentions are inappropriate, and he deserves to be thrashed.”
Inappropriate? Goodness. Charlotte didn’t often lay claim tothatword. Eleanor glanced uneasily at her, and saw her sister’s lips had set into a familiar, stubborn line.
Oh, no.
Eleanor might not like it, but Charlotte was already a player in this little drama. She had to tell her sistersomething, yes, but not so much Charlotte got into a temper. Eleanor could handle Camden West herself, in her own way, from behind the curtain. “Well, he does want to marry me, but his manner of courtship is a trifle . . . unusual.”
“Unusual? What does that mean? For goodness sake, Eleanor, will you just say it?”
Eleanor bit her lip. “Well, he might have mentioned—it’s a small thing, really—but he might have said something about ruining you if I don’t marry him.”
Charlotte jerked to a halt in the middle of the street, her mouth falling open. “He what?”
Eleanor winced. “Either I marry him, or he’ll expose your lapse in propriety on the night of the Foster’s ball to the entire ton.”
The people behind them on the walkway made irritated noises as they tried to push past. Eleanor grasped Charlotte’s arm and tugged her back into motion. “I’d hoped to dissuade him by now, but it seems he’s more determined than I first suspected.”
“Dissuade him? A man with no honor, no conscience?” Charlotte’s voice rose. “How could you possibly dissuade such a man?”
Eleanor squeezed Charlotte’s arm to try and calm her. “Not in the usual way, but I thought he’d reconsider if I pretended to be witless. No man wants to marry a fool.”
“A clever idea, but it must not have worked, or else you wouldn’teverhave told me the truth.”
Eleanor heard the accusation in her sister’s voice, but she didn’t have time for that argument at the moment. “It didn’t work, no. It seems . . .”
I don’t matter. Is that what youmean, Mr. West?
She cleared the sudden lump of panic from her throat. “It seems he cares nothing at all about me. I can be as dim-witted as I wish, and it won’t make any difference. I don’t matter at all to him.”
Eleanor drew in a deep breath to calm the sudden crash of her heart against her ribs.
