A Scot in the Dark (Scandal & Scoundrel #2) - Sarah MacLean Page 0,65
first place.
When Alec had entered the breakfast room, he’d dreaded facing Lily, sure she was planning to accuse him of the worst kind of roguishness and insist that he either send her from London or marry her.
He wasn’t certain that he could have done the first, honestly. Not after she’d come apart in his arms the night before, all beauty and perfection and temptation.
And he absolutely would not marry her. She deserved infinitely better than a man who was good for sexual pleasure and little else. Better than a brute beast who, until he inherited the title of Duke of Warnick, was barely worth a second look from fine English roses. And certainly was not worth a second night.
Too coarse. Too unrefined.
Lily was worth a dozen of him. Last night had proved it, and made him resolute in his plan. He would get her married. And when that was done, he would return to Scotland. And he would never return.
He had entered the room, intent on establishing those very clear rules. He hadn’t expected her to be so very beautiful, however, clad in the prettiest green silk he’d ever seen, stroking Hardy’s massive head as though she’d raised him from a pup.
It shouldn’t matter that she liked his dogs.
It didn’t matter.
What mattered was getting the girl married.
And so he should have been relieved when she agreed and named her mark, but it wasn’t relief that had flooded through him at that. It was something much more dangerous. Something that—if he didn’t know better—seemed remarkably like jealousy.
He replied nonetheless, pretending to be unmoved by the announcement. “Stanhope. You know him?”
“Every unmarried woman in London knows of him.”
He didn’t like the way she said it, as though the man were some kind of prize. “I didn’t know of him.”
She gave him a little smile. “You do not receive Pearls & Pelisses.”
Alec was proud that he even knew what the ladies’ magazine was. “As I am a grown man, I do not.”
“He’s a Lord to Land,” Lily said, as if that meant something.
Alec could not hide his ignorance. “What on earth does that mean?”
She sighed, and when she answered, it seemed as though she was irritated with his shocking lack of knowledge. “Lord Stanhope has been at the top of the list of London’s Lords to Land for as long as I’ve been reading the scandal sheets.”
“We will return to why you are reading the scandal sheets in short order,” Alec said. “But let’s begin with why Stanhope is so very”—he grimaced at the idea of saying the idiotic word—“landable.”
She counted Stanhope’s assets on her fingers. “He’s handsome, he’s charming, he’s titled, and he’s unmarried.”
Alec supposed women liked those qualities. “Not rich?”
One of Lily’s perfect brows rose. “That’s where I come in. As you well know. Isn’t that the key to your getting me married?”
The words grated. “It’s not only the wealth that I expect him to want,” he said, before he could stop himself. She was not a fool. She would ask—
“What else is there?”
He likely should not have answered. But there was something about seeing her there, Hardy at her feet, staring adoringly up at her, that made him tell her. “There is your beauty.”
Her brows went up in silent question.
It was the truth. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen with her red hair and grey eyes and a face shaped like the most perfect of hearts and a body that had developed in all the best ways.
A body he’d tried desperately not to notice until the prior evening, when it had been pressed against him and he’d had little choice but to notice it. To memorize it.
She was entirely magnificent.
And entirely not for him.
“Marred beauty at best, now that the world knows of the painting.”
“That’s rubbish,” he said, his throat was exceedingly dry. Coughing, he headed for more tea. Drank deep. “The painting doesn’t change the fact that you are perfect.”
Her words followed him. “And somehow, when you say it, Your Grace, it doesn’t sound like a compliment.”
“That’s because it’s not one.” He knew he was grumbling, but he could not stop himself. He righted the chair he’d sent crashing to the floor earlier.
When she’d referenced her experience.
As he set the furniture right, he was flooded with visions of what, precisely, that experience might have been. The visions were immediately followed by the kind of experience he might be able to give her.
And that way lay danger.
“With beauty comes trouble,” he added, a reminder to himself, more