the words out. “I-I am suggesting that I give you the company of myself for an evening, and then we will have done.”
The boldness of it! The sheer cheek. It was a beautiful thing to behold. And yet, he could not stop his simultaneous amusement. She clearly had little knowledge of the way the world worked. And so, he arranged his face in all seriousness. He could mock her. . . But, in this moment of her great courage, he did not wish to.
He had a terrible feeling; a man like her father had likely mocked her daily.
“You must think very highly of yourself,” he pointed out simply, neither an insult nor a condemnation, but a fact.
Her mouth dropped. “I beg your pardon?”
“30,000 pounds for one night,” he explained. “That is an astronomical sum for any woman. Do you really think you’re worth it?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Yes,” she replied.
A slow sensation spread through his chest, warming him, filling him up, making the room seemed smaller and entirely filled with. . . her.
Admiration. That was the damned sensation. He admired her.
She was a corker. A real comer. And damned if he didn’t think it a glorious thing to behold.
“You do know that the going rate is not nearly so high. Even for a virgin. Perhaps a hundred pounds?”
Her cheeks flamed, and she looked like she might march over to his fire and skewer him with his own poker.
His admiration increased tenfold.
“That will not do,” she countered firmly. “I need my father out of trouble.”
At that, he snorted. “Your father will never be out of trouble. That’s the kind of fellow he is.”
Something dark took him then. A need to make Lady Mary understand her situation fully. “You’ll get him out of it, and he’ll get into it again. Will you offer yourself for another night to another fellow then? Is that to be your life?”
She let out a gasp of air. Her shoulders rounding with a moment of defeat before she squared them again.
“My father is a very difficult person, true, but you’ve been threatening him.”
He shoved away from the mantle. “I threatened him because he owes me a great deal of money, and he seems to think you are the answer to it.”
“Am I?” she asked softly. And if he hadn’t known better, he would have thought temptingly.
She stared at him, her gaze searching his face. “The answer to it,” she continued.
“I don’t know.” He sighed.
And he meant it.
He surveyed her.
This was a dangerous game, indeed. If Lady Mary was willing to offer herself to save her father, she’d soon be doing it again with someone else if he did not take her father up on the offer of marriage.
That was when it struck him.
Bloody hell, he was considering it.
He could easily just eradicate the debt and send Lady Mary on her way.
It wasn’t the sort of man he was, nor would he prostitute a young woman. He had a particular abhorrence for prostitution. He’d seen the damage it could do to women, and it was why he did not allow the plying of female wares upon the gambling floor.
He did all he could for the women, women probably like the mother he’d never known, in his general area, trying to protect them as best he could from the worst of the pimps and the culls.
“I have no desire to take you to bed,” he gritted. A lie.
A lie. Oh, he could see himself ripping that prim cloak off her body, baring her pale limbs. . . Stretching her out and taking her with his rough body. . .
She winced. “Am I not worth it to you, then?”
His blood pulsed through his usually controlled frame. It pulsed for her. “Lady Mary, you are worth a great deal, I’m sure, but this? This is madness. You cannot come here, offering yourself to me to pay off your father’s debts. Your father will always be in debt.”
A look of understanding and pure horror crossed her face. Then defeat. A moment of defeat, on this glorious, fairy creature.
His very insides roared against it.
“Then, what do I do?” she asked. “I’m in a most difficult position. Father wishes me to marry you to make his financial situation better.”
Heath set his snifter on the mantle, facing her squarely. “Yes. He told me this, and apparently, he discussed it with you, but it is very clear he did not tell you that I was not necessarily amenable to the proposition.”
She gasped. “I beg your pardon? That’s