Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,60
it: I’m outrageous. You’re outrageous.
A match made in Bedlam: the Gorgon and the prankster.
At that moment, the scheme came to her. She watched it unfold in her mind: a solution and a prank on Society and its infernal rules.
“I have an idea,” she said.
Ashmont’s heart sank.
He didn’t want her to have an idea. He wanted there to be no ideas except marrying him. She didn’t want to, but he would change her mind. And this time he’d do it the right way, one point at a time, if he had to.
“Does it involve killing the Countess of Bartham?” he said. “Because I can’t do that. Can’t attack women—that is to say, not unless they tell me to and they’re armed—at least with an umbrella—”
“We shall pretend I consented to marry you,” Miss Pomfret said. “We shall pretend to be engaged. We’ll delay the wedding by claiming the solicitors can’t agree on various articles. My father can help with that, and your uncle, too, I daresay. Of course—”
“Wait.”
“—we shall tell my aunt, your uncle, and my parents the truth. It makes no sense to do otherwise. Aunt Julia and Lord Frederick are difficult to deceive, and I should hate to deceive my aunt, in any event. My father must be informed for the same reason and also because he despises you. But if it’s only a temporary thing—”
“Wait.”
“A few weeks ought to do it. Other scandals will arise. Better yet, you can make one. You’ll do something so dreadful that nobody will blame me for breaking the engagement. What happened today is fairly mild, all things considered. We’ve only the one witness, vindictive though she is. It won’t be pleasant, I know, but it won’t last. Society likes fresh scandal.”
“Miss Pomfret, I’m not saying it’s a terrible idea—”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s only that—you know—Olympia bolted, and that wasn’t a month ago. And frankly, I’d rather not be jilted again quite so soon.”
A short, taut, pause.
“Then what do you suggest?” she said.
“I suggest you marry me.”
“No.”
“Why not? I’m not completely disgusting to you. I’m young. I’m solvent. I’m a duke, dammit.”
A much longer pause, before she said crisply, “I don’t trust you. The thought of putting my future in your hands fills me with horror.”
“Devil take it, Miss Pomfret, the future can be arranged with the lawyers. I wish you’d seen the conditions they set for Olympia. Reams and reams. Piles of pages. I had to soak my hand in a bowl of ice after signing the blasted things.”
“In other words, you refuse to cooperate.”
Uh-oh. He saw ice cracking now, at his feet. “Didn’t say that.”
“That’s what it sounds like,” she said. “It sounds as though you want it your way or no way, and do you know, duke, I feel the same. I love my family—well, most of them. I love my sister. I don’t want to embarrass anybody. But it’s a stupid rule and a trivial event—”
“Trivial.” She’d turned his world upside down and inside out. Something had happened to him and he didn’t know what, only that he was still reeling, and hadn’t time to make sense of it.
“A bit of naughtiness behind a curtain,” she said. “And I am not prepared to risk all my future happiness, not to mention that of my children—”
Good God. Children. They’d make children. Of course. He wanted a family.
“—on a gentleman who’s done nothing in his adult life to earn my respect, let alone my esteem. As to love—”
“No, no, back to the children, because—”
“I want my children to grow up in a loving family, as I did. I want their parents to respect and esteem and care deeply about each other, setting an example. It isn’t an impossible thing. It isn’t unreasonable of me to want that—and I don’t see why one small error of judgment must doom me forever.”
“Doom!”
“Not that I see anybody else asking me, but that’s no reason—that is to say, I’m not that desperate.”
Lady Charles glanced back at the cabriolet. “They’re quarreling.”
Lord Frederick did not look back. “He’s going to bungle it, the great oaf.”
“At least they’re talking,” she said. “I truly did not expect her to react so strongly. Perhaps I didn’t put matters as well as I ought to have done. But really, Lord Frederick. Behind a curtain. And of all women, that woman. Utterly ridiculous. You’ve no idea what it cost me to maintain my composure.” She let out a short, strangled laugh.
He chuckled, too.
“All the same, it is no laughing matter,” she said.