Chapter Forty-Two
ON HER WAY FROM the garden to her room, Brooke stopped in the library to grab a book to occupy her for the rest of the day. She was too upset to even look at the titles first. A history of London, not bad for a blind choice, she thought when she was comfortable in her reading chair. But she couldn’t concentrate on reading when she was so upset that her relationship with Dominic was deteriorating thanks to his mother’s antipathy and her brother’s stirring up trouble between them.
As the hours passed, she got more and more downhearted because the progress she thought she had made in making him love her during those last days at Rothdale when they seemed to bond over Storm was undone. She’d been so sure more doors to his heart had opened during their journey to London, when he’d given her the most wonderful night of her life, introducing her to the most remarkable pleasures, and he’d been so sweet and protective of her. All that was undone, too. Now she was afraid Dominic was back to hating her as much as he hated Robert.
Yet she couldn’t give up. The marriage still had to happen. Besides, while the situation with the Wolfes and their servants wasn’t great, she would have a better future as Dominic’s wife than she would have if she returned to her family.
Maybe it was time to bargain with him for one of those marriages of convenience Alfreda had told her about. Or maybe a real bargain in which she gave him something he might want in exchange for—what? She gave it a lot of thought, but could only come up with one thing that would make it palatable for him and not cost him—much. At least he would believe she was serious when he heard what she would accept in return. So she was quite willing to join him for dinner when a maid showed up with the invitation.
But she was still smarting over what he had said to her today, including his pretty much accusing her of trying to poison his mother! So even though she gave him a tight smile when she entered the dining room, she asked, “Is your cook dead yet?”
He laughed. “No, but my mother is breathing easier.”
“I’m glad to hear it. You can thank me by not yelling at me anymore.”
“I don’t yell.”
“You did.”
“This is a yell!” he yelled to prove his point.
It sounded the same to her. He stood up and pulled out the chair next to him. She sat down in the chair at the opposite end of the long table. It looked as if he might rectify that, standing there a long moment debating whether to put her where he wanted her. She sighed in relief when he started to sit back down in his chair, but apparently he reconsidered and came down to her end of the table and sat in the chair to her right.
If she weren’t still so utterly disgusted with him, she might have laughed. Concessions when he’d been so cold and suspicious earlier? But she was mostly angry at her brother, for putting her back to day one with Dominic.
He was wearing a fresh shirt, minus a coat. He’d also been properly dressed as an elegant lord earlier in the day, so he obviously kept a full wardrobe of clothes at this house. Her gown was fresh, if a bit wrinkled. She could have asked one of the maids to steam it, but would probably have been ignored.
“If you’re going to continue my suggested regimen for your mother, you need to make sure she drinks at least four cups of each of the two teas.”
“You can do that. She won’t fight you anymore.”
“You can. Whatever you told her to change her mind about me isn’t going to really change her attitude any more than it does yours.”
“It’s not about you, it’s about lack of choice and what can be lost.”
She snorted at him. “What makes you think my family saw it any differently? I was promised Bedlam for the rest of my life if I balked at this marriage. We could have seen it differently, you and I, but you decided I can’t be trusted. So be it. Why don’t we put that on the table and agree we will never trust each other?”
“You have no reason not to trust me, while I—”
“Ha! When you listen to my brother’s lies about me?”
“I’ll concede I listened when he said you turned out more beautiful and clever than he expected.”
She stared at him incredulously; he said that so calmly, almost as if he were teasing, but he couldn’t be, not about this subject. So she clamped her mouth shut. The food started arriving. She ignored it for the moment. So did he. He seemed to be waiting for a rejoinder. Did he want to fight? She decided not to give him the satisfaction.
She took a deep calming breath. “Obviously you are never going to like this marriage. And you’re going to make sure that I don’t like it either. But I’m not leaving. I would prefer to be here with an ogre than back with my family. But tell me, has it even occurred to you that we actually have common ground?”
“What do you mean?”
“We aren’t even married yet and you and I still have many things in common, a remarkable number considering we are enemies.”
“Such as?”
She had to grit her teeth for a moment. A perfect opportunity for him to claim they weren’t really enemies and he didn’t take it.
“Such as, we both hate my brother. We both love horses and we even both want to breed more of them. And we both hate our futures being dictated by others. Oh, and we both love dogs. We have even both befriended servants, quite uncommon for the nobility to do. So we marry to force the Regent to look elsewhere for a way to pay off his debts, but that doesn’t mean we need to see it as a real marriage if you don’t want to. We could probably become friends instead. So let me propose a bargain. We could—”
“Are you trying to make me laugh?”
Her brows snapped together. “No, not a’tall.”
“We’ll never be friends.”
It did sound preposterous from where they stood now, but she still insisted, “Stranger things have happened, and you haven’t heard my bargain yet.”
“By all means.”
“We can marry in name only, you won’t even need to see me. I’m used to avoiding ‘family,’ and I will encourage you to take mistresses. You can even bring them home.” She said it all fast, before she lost her nerve, but she hadn’t yet added the seal for this bargain. “If you will buy me a thoroughbred for each one, I will be quite pleased. So do have lots of mistresses. I want my own horse farm when your curse catches up with you.”
“So now you believe in curses?”
The curve of his lower lip was telling. She had not meant to amuse him, but obviously she had. “No, what I think is, you are entirely too reckless with your life, duels, sailing right through blockades that are shooting at every boat they see, and who knows what other risks you are used to taking. It’s no wonder they say your family is cursed if the men in it were so cavalier about danger as you are. Besides, if you somehow manage to survive your twenty-fifth year, I would merely add my horses to your stock, as long as I have a say in their breeding program.”
“What about our breeding program for my heirs? D’you think you’ll get a say in that, too?”
Her cheeks lit up hotly. “Is that your way of saying you don’t want a marriage in name only?”
“I believe I’ve made it quite clear that the one thing I won’t mind about this marriage is you in my bed. And based on past experience, I got the impression you won’t mind lying with me in that bed.”
Brooke blushed. “You’re assuming too much!”
Dominic smiled sensually. “Am I?”
Her blush got deeper. “In any case, it doesn’t mean you won’t still take mistresses. I’m encouraging you to do so.”
“You’re making a bargain for me to do so.”
“Yes, exactly. I will even make suggestions if you like, help you pick them out, as it were—one reason why I thought we might reach a sort of friendship eventually.”
“And what is my incentive to agree?”
“To protect them,” she said without inflection.
He raised a brow. “Was that actually a threat?”
She shrugged. “I have sharp nails.”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought?”
No, damnit, she hadn’t. The idea had just come to her an hour ago. And spur-of-the-moment proposals rarely went well, at least, not without regrets. Had she just backed herself into an unpleasant corner?
But he didn’t wait for an answer. “If I’m going to die young, by your logic, why not just wait until all my horses are yours.”
“I don’t expect you to leave me anything. I expect your estate to go to your mother.”
“Your family would make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“So stop being so careless with your life and don’t die. Because I do not want them to benefit from this, when it’s my brother’s fault that I’m here. In fact, if you don’t have a will, you should make one and be specific in excluding Whitworths from benefiting. And if I’m not of age yet, name your mother as my guardian so they have no further control over me.”
“Thank you, you’ve given me back my appetite.”
She frowned as he started eating the food that had been set before him. “You don’t think I’m serious?”
“We shall see.”