Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,59

Or both.

She went hot, then cold, and the world about her seemed to spin. She’d thought she was prepared but she wasn’t. She was like her adolescent self, believing magical things would happen. Because a magical thing had happened a few weeks ago, in Putney, allowing her to escape.

Only a deluded schoolgirl or a grown woman in a state of delirium could imagine that she or any other unmarried gentlewoman could be discovered with His Dis-Grace the Duke of Ashmont, in clearly incriminating circumstances and in spite of having done nothing so terribly wrong, and be allowed to go on her merry way. As a man might do.

Well, perhaps she was deluded and delirious.

“Aunt, I cannot marry him.”

“Child, you know that woman will go straight to your mother with her tale, and it is far too ridiculous not to be believed.” Aunt Julia looked away, biting her lip. “And since you admitted that you cooperated—enthusiastically—”

“It is completely unfair. Men may sow their wild oats, but we may not.”

“It isn’t fair, and neither is a great deal in life, as you well know. If life were fair, we’d have no need of the Andromeda Society, would we? Well, think on that. As a duchess, you can accomplish a great deal more than you can in your present state.”

A duchess. His duchess. Were Cassandra still a girl in her teens, she’d be walking on air. But she was a woman of nearly six and twenty, who saw the world far more clearly. She saw him with painful, inescapable clarity. He was beautiful and charming and amusing and exciting.

And hopeless. A great waste. He would break her heart again. And again and again.

She couldn’t do it. She simply couldn’t.

“There has to be a solution,” Cassandra said, not long thereafter, as Ashmont turned his carriage into the King’s Road.

At present his uncle and her aunt rode ahead, their horses quite close to each other while they talked.

“The two wise ones seem unable to devise another,” he said. “Marriage solves everything.”

“They look at it from a practical standpoint.” What did Lord Frederick see in her? Cassandra wondered. Not Medusa, probably. He’d see good breeding stock. And possibly a young lady sufficiently tyrannical to manage his wayward nephew.

That was too much to expect of any woman.

“That isn’t enough for you?” Ashmont said. “The practical advantages. The solving several problems at once, including your sister’s situation.”

For one of the few times in her life, Cassandra felt like a coward. Afraid of having her heart broken, she was about to risk her sister’s happiness and her family’s good name. At present, she wasn’t even sure what her grandparents would make of matters. They were usually on her side, but she’d never encountered this sort of trouble before, the kind of man trouble other women had.

The most infuriating part was that she hadn’t done anything so terribly wrong. A kiss was what it came down to. A somewhat tempestuous one—but she hadn’t lost her virtue.

As though a woman’s virtue existed solely between her legs.

She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She did neither. She needed a functioning brain.

You’re in charge, miss.

“I’ll think of something,” Ashmont said. “I got you into this.”

“You had help.”

He turned and smiled at her.

“Mind the road,” she said. “Don’t congratulate yourself on your seductive wiles. I’m not helpless, as you well know.”

“All the same, I started it,” he said. “And even I know it was wrong of me to take liberties with your person.”

“What?” She turned in her seat to gaze at him, which did nothing to reduce their proximity. She was all too well aware of his powerful physique—oh, and that unfairly beautiful profile.

“The kissing,” he said. “And the . . . erm . . . hands where they weren’t supposed to be.”

She could feel them still. To her exasperation, she wanted to continue to feel them. “Yes, well, it was wrong of me not to plant you a facer or strike you in the tender parts, but I didn’t.”

“Either you were tired after almost killing me during the umbrella fight or we’re making progress,” he said.

“We are not making progress.”

“I’m not completely disgusting to you.”

“Does not completely disgusting strike you as sufficient reason to marry somebody?”

“We got along well for a few hours,” he said.

Too well. Like kindred spirits. The way she’d once imagined they would do.

A few hours of good behavior didn’t transform him into the hero of her youthful imaginings. What they had in common was simple enough. He’d said