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She stuck her brush into a can of solvent and pulled off her pinafore, dropping it on a paint-splattered stool.

“Your flower painting is very nice,” he commented. That didn’t sound praiseful enough. He noticed the three fallen petals, each curled in different directions, so he added, “Meticulous and graceful.”

She had been moving toward a group of chairs on the other side of the room; her shoulders froze, and then she kept walking, throwing an amused comment over her shoulder. “I am confident of my ability to paint flowers, Dominic. You needn’t strain your vocabulary.”

Feeling a flash of remorse—but honestly, what could one say about wilting flowers?—Dominic seated himself opposite her.

“I don’t understand your persistence,” Torie said, without preamble. “Can you ill afford to lose ten thousand pounds? Marrying me won’t bring back the money. Even if my first action as your wife—which I will never be—was to fire Nanny Bracknell, you wouldn’t save much.”

He shook his head. “That’s not a problem. Your father would like to screw me out of another fifteen, which I can afford, if need be.”

Torie bit her lip.

Dominic was wearing his most autocratic expression, the one with which he likely bullied members of the House of Lords into doing his bidding.

Obviously, Florence and Valentine were still pushing him to propose. She was touched, not just by the fact that the twins cared for her, but that he cared for them enough to make repeated attempts after being rebuffed. She couldn’t imagine he’d ever had to implore a woman to pay him attention.

Just now he was giving her that intensely observant look again. As if he were truly interested in her thoughts. As if she were the only woman in the world.

She probably found it so seductive because no man had looked at her that way before.

But she did not want to marry her sister’s fiancée out of fondness for two children, finding herself relegated to a nanny and tied to an irascible peer who thought a painting that had taken her months was “nice.”

“I do feel guilty about my father’s demand,” she said, clearing her throat. “Perhaps if I weren’t so extravagant, Sir William wouldn’t have exacted money for Leonora’s betrothal. I have a weakness for colored silk, in particular, and it’s horrendously expensive.”

Dominic shook his head. “If you’ll forgive my bluntness, your father is a rogue, not to mention an inveterate gamester.”

“Be that as it may, I still refuse your proposal,” Torie said, trying to ignore the fact that her heart seemed to have migrated into her throat and was threatening to suffocate her. She couldn’t imagine how his opponents in the House of Lords withstood his demands. Against all her best instincts, some errant part of her wanted to throw herself into his arms and breathe “yes” in his ear.

“Why?” Those blue-gray eyes were known for terrifying opponents during debates. Just at the moment, they weren’t fierce as much as—as confused. “True, Queensberry has a higher title, but I have Valentine and Florence, and surely you agree that the twins trump any benefit that a higher title might bring.”

Torie swallowed convulsively. “Because you were going to marry my sister! You were betrothed to Leonora for over two years. Can’t you see how humiliating it would be for me to marry you?”

“No,” he said, uncompromisingly. “I feel I am an excellent marriage prospect.”

“I promise to remain friends with the twins,” she offered.

“Only my wife can see Valentine and Florence both morning and night,” he replied, a distinctly calculating tone to his voice. “Only my wife can be there if they fall ill, or . . . or begin missing their dead parents. Grieving for them.”

He caught her expression. “Fine, the last is unlikely. I need a wife who will love the twins and help me talk Val into going to Eton, rather than banishing them to the country.”

She felt as if her heart was being torn in two. “I wouldn’t do that unless Eton opens its doors to girls. I do love them. You know that.”

“I do.”

“However, I think of you as my brother-in-law. Can you imagine the gossip if I married my sister’s fiancé?”

He shrugged. “Who cares what people think?”

That was easy for him to say. The viscount reportedly shouted at anyone who dared disagree with him. Shaming remarks would follow her around a room, and she couldn’t bully the gossipers into silence.

It was one thing if a duke was infatuated enough to overlook her deficiencies. People seemed to find it particularly romantic that Queensberry proposed despite her addled brains.

It was quite another if she ended up married to her sister’s jilted fiancé. The duke looked at her with adoration, the viscount with calculating interest.

Everyone would be certain that Torie had been forced to accept him. That money had been involved somehow. And they would talk . . . oh, how they would talk. Most of the shame would fall on her, but people would mock him as well.

“I care,” she told him, embarrassed to be revealing the truth, because generally she pretended to blithely ignore insulting chatter. “Leonora loathes gossip, but I think I hate it even more. People have always chattered about her because she’s beautiful and intelligent. That has not been my experience.”