Who Wants to Marry a Duke - Sabrina Jeffries Page 0,44
like some brandy?”
“You know ladies aren’t supposed to drink brandy neat.”
“Yes, but chemists can drink whatever they please.”
“Are you trying to ply me with strong drink so you can have your wicked way with me, Your Grace?” she asked, with a lift of one eyebrow.
A lazy grin crossed his face. “Now, would I do something like that?”
“You know you would.” And she wouldn’t mind it either.
Oh, dear. Working so late had clearly muddled her brain.
“Still, I should like to taste it,” she told him. A little bit couldn’t hurt, could it? And something about being recklessly alone with him made her wish to do other reckless things.
He set down the empty glass and came toward her. “Then you can taste mine.” He handed her his glass. “Here you go.”
Her first sip went down like fire, making her cough. But it was a warming drink in the chill of the room, so she sipped again. “It’s . . . um . . . strong.” And it made her feel thoroughly naughty, which was as heady a sensation as the drink itself. She handed the glass back to him. “Too strong for me.”
He took a rather large swallow. “You get used to it.”
“You’re stalling,” she said softly.
“You caught me,” he said with a rueful laugh. Then he stared down into his glass. “That night at the Devonshires’ ball, did you intend for us to be caught kissing?”
She frowned. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Grey warned me that night to be careful of matchmaking mamas and scheming daughters. And in the years since then, I’ve found his advice to be sound.” He lifted his gaze to bore into her. “But . . . I was never sure about you and what you’d intended.”
The crushing pain in her chest was like how she’d felt when he’d made his cold offer the morning after the ball. “So you thought that I . . . that I . . .” She couldn’t breathe. “You thought I schemed to trap you into marriage.”
“At the time, I did. You’re the one who got me alone. You’re the one who encouraged me to remove my coat and waistcoat.”
Anger welled up in her, sudden and fierce. “You’re the one who kissed me.”
“True. That’s one reason I’ve been rethinking my assumptions.”
She jumped up. “If you had bothered to stop and talk to me on the way out of that library, I would have explained that I never intended that.”
“I probably wouldn’t have believed you, anyway.”
“But surely my rejection of your offer the next day must have told you I’d never meant to do anything so deceitful.”
“It told me you had changed your mind after kissing me. Perhaps I was too forward or—”
“Your kissing was fine,” she muttered. “But your proposal could have used improvement.”
“Right.” He searched her face. “Because I was ‘obvious’ in showing I didn’t wish to make it in the first place. That’s what you said the other night, at any rate.”
“It’s true. You clearly wanted to be anywhere but at my father’s town house, offering for my hand. I still don’t know why you came at all.” She stared at him. “That’s my question. You were a duke. You could have escaped any entanglement with just a word or two, and no one would have dared gainsay it.”
“I might point out that if I had used my rank for that purpose, you would have been ruined. Because I made the offer and you refused it, you were only considered a jilt. Especially after your stepmother worked so hard to blacken my reputation.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “She merely said what everyone else was saying.”
“Actually, no. Until then, I hadn’t had much of a reputation for anything except being more German than English in my habits. Your stepmother had to figure out a way to keep you from being blamed for jilting a duke, so she told people you refused me because of my rakehell ways. Thus our . . . indiscretion was seen in a different light.”
His tone turned sarcastic. “I became the wicked whore-hound taking advantage of a naive young woman, and you became the virtuous virgin who stood up to me. It was a brilliant strategy on her part.” He sipped his brandy. “And in a way, it worked in my favor, too, since society loves the wicked. The rumormongers have to have someone to talk about, after all. Your stepmother made sure they weren’t gossiping about you.”