If it were discovered that Chloe had sneaked off and now sat in the home of London’s most notorious scoundrel, she might as well pack her valises and prepare for a life abroad. There would be no recovering from such a scandal.
Or her mother’s ire.
Still, with the threat real and her already tarnished reputation at risk of further tattering, she found herself oddly fixed not on the servant who’d been stationed at the doorway as a sentry of sorts… but rather on a fish.
An inanimate one, that was.
Just as she had been for the past thirty-three minutes since she’d been shown to the Marquess of Tennyson’s Gray Parlor.
Seated on the silver satin sofa, she squinted across the room.
Or she believed the object was a fish.
Even after the footman who’d systematically lit the sconces, flooding the room with light, she still could not make out the creature.
Regardless, the bronze piece had held her transfixed the whole of her time here. At first, it was the one splash of oddly contrasting color to the otherwise sterile room that had called her attention. But the longer she stared and the more time lapsed, her focus had shifted for altogether different reasons.
Reaching for her cane, Chloe leaned her weight over the head of it and pushed herself up. Favoring her injured leg, she limped across the parlor.
What in the blazes was it?
She stopped at the Italian marble hearth. Leaning in, she examined the object that had kept her wondering, taking in the details that had, until now, escaped her—the open-work tail fins. She cocked her head. Or were they feathers? Regardless, they arced around the top of the creature’s head.
Chloe stretched her fingers out and trailed them along the bit of patina at the base of the cool metal that hinted at its age. Everything, from the high quality of the casting, to the foreign craftsmanship, marked it as an exotic piece.
Why hadn’t the marquess already sold the piece to cover some of his debts?
Her curiosity piqued, Chloe did another quick sweep of the desolate rooms. Gray curtains, gray Aubusson carpeting, a pair of tilt-top side tables absent of any baubles. In fact, the only ornamental item was the peculiar sculpture atop the mantel. What had made the marquess retain it, when the barren parlor spoke to items that had surely been sold?
Investigating the item again, she attempted to lift the statue.
She grunted as it remained firmly rooted to its spot.
Chloe attempted to lift it once more.
“Never tell me you’ve come to pillage from me, Chloe.”
That droll interruption rang a gasp from her lips. Heart thundering, Chloe whipped around. Lord Tennyson lounged casually against the doorjamb, one broad shoulder propped.
How did a man of his size move with such stealth? “How did you…? When did you…?” Her questions rolled together, forming incoherent ramblings. “How long have you been here?” she blurted, and then her cheeks promptly fired.
Of all the blasted questions to manage to squeeze out.
“Long enough to wonder if you intended to make off with that piece atop my mantel,” he drawled. Straightening, Leo entered the room.
Reaching behind him, he drew the door closed, shutting them in alone. The faint click and turn of the latch added a dangerous finality to her decision to come here.
There should have been a modicum of fear.
And yet, she followed his every movement, measuring his steps as he made for the corner of the room. Had the gentleman intended to harm her, he could have done so in Lord Waterson’s offices and then again a few short hours ago when he’d entered her bedchamber.
With his back to her, the marquess contemplated the half-empty bottles before selecting a crystal decanter from under the mahogany drink cart.
“What is it?” she called over to him.
He paused, sparing a glance over his shoulder.
Chloe gestured to the peculiar artwork.
Returning his attentions forward, Leo proceeded to uncork the bottle. “It’s a lamp.” He tossed aside the stopper, and it clattered noisily upon the surface of the table.
“I gathered as much,” she clarified, glancing back and exploring the piece with her gloved fingertip. “What I meant is… what is it supposed to be?”
“It’s a swan,” he said impatiently.
Her breath caught in a noisy inhalation as she whipped around. Chloe hurried to right her precarious balance. All the while, she clung to that annoyed utterance. “A swan,” she breathed. It was a sign. Surely it was no mere coincidence that, of all the adornments in his sparsely decorated residence, the Marquess of Tennyson should have… a swan, the creature that had brought scandal down on Mrs. Monroe’s Finishing School and opened the coveted post of headmistress.
“You insist on being on your ankle, madam?” he observed, calling her back to the moment.
Fighting to settle her thoughts, Chloe made her lips move. “It is feeling marginally better.”
It wasn’t altogether a lie. Though the ache lingered, the mind-gripping pain had receded.
The clink of crystal touching crystal and the steady stream of liquid as he poured his drink intruded, resurfacing the dangers posed by this man—and all men. Making a mockery of the bronze swan. This was real. This man’s dependency on spirits. “I hardly…” As he spoke, his voice drifted in and out of focus.
She fought through the humming in her ears to make sense of his words.
Unbidden, her gaze fell to his glass and lingered upon the reddish-brown liquid contained within.
The potent stench of brandy assaulted her senses as another man, a hated one, flashed to her mind, haunting as he invariably did.
I know you’re herreee… I’m not happy with you, girl. Time to pay the price…
Chloe clung to the head of her cane, welcoming the bite of the carved handle as it dug into her palm, keeping her on this side of sanity.
“Chloe?”
That heavily impatient baritone pulled her back from the precipice.
What had he been saying? And more… why had she come? And then it all slammed into her again: Lord Waterson’s ball, the gossip, Mrs. Munroe’s.
“Why do you want to marry me?” she asked, getting to the heart of the question that had brought her here.
Lord Tennyson froze, his glass halfway to his lips. “Beg pardon?”
Nay, not Lord Tennyson. Leo. At the very least, given that she was even entertaining the prospect of marriage to him, she should muster the use of his Christian name.
“Well, it is just…” She paused and gestured to the chairs. “May I?”
“Please do.” He waved his drink in the general direction of the silver upholstered sofa.
With those brief utterances and the veneer of politeness, one might believe they were any proper lord and lady engaged in a casual discourse, and not a pair who’d rocked Polite Society with their scandal and sought to come to an agreement amenable to both. Settling into the seat she’d vacated a short while ago, Chloe rested her cane against the nearby side table. “Why do you want to marry me?” she repeated.
“I don’t. I need to. And it is in your best interest to marry me.”
Her lips twitched. That honesty she could appreciate. “It is that ‘need’ that I’m most curious about.”
He trailed a finger distractedly around the rim of his glass. “It would be enough for any lady that I made you an offer to spare you from scandal.”
He was hedging.
Chloe smiled wryly. “I am not ‘any lady,’ my lord.” She was a woman who knew her mind and what she wanted, and whose reputation mattered only for what it represented—her freedom.
“No, you’re certainly not,” he groused under his breath.
And mayhap it was a trick of her ears, but they pricked up at the hint of appreciation in that reply.
Nor did it escape her notice that time was marching on as he evaded answering her.
Collecting her cane, Chloe thumped it on the hardwood floor, the plush Aubusson carpet muffling the sound. “Well?” She didn’t know what drove him, but she knew that he was no honorable gentleman hoping to rescue a virtuous lady from ruin. “A rake with your reputation must have been discovered in countless similar situations, and you’ve remained unwed. Why should you marry me now?”
Something dark flashed in his eyes. Leo tossed back his drink, downing it in one long, smooth swallow. The column of his throat worked quickly. Instead of setting the glass aside, he reached for the decanter.
Her black-hearted father had subsisted on spirits, a poison that destroyed.
“Must you do that?” she asked quietly.
Leo followed her stare to the bottle dangling between his long, gloved fingers. He hesitated, and for a long moment, she believed he intended to pour the next glass. She believed he’d do it as a testament to his power and to thumb his nose at her insolence for daring to question him.
And when he did, her reputation be damned, she’d walk out. She’d turn on her heel as quick as her still-aching ankle allowed, accepting that Mrs. Munroe’s would never be hers and that her future would be forever set. She would be the eccentric aunt whose name had been ruined in a scandal that had shaken Society and, as such, marriage, employment, or any other opportunity would be denied her.
Leo returned the decanter to the table. His glass followed suit.
Chloe’s lips parted, and she swiftly closed her mouth, schooling her surprise at the marquess’ unexpected show of control.
No one could have impelled her dead sire to put aside his spirits. The one time she had pleaded with him to stop, he’d thrashed her so that not a spare expanse of skin on her back had been anything but black, blue, or purple.
“Very well.” The gentleman moved out from behind the drink cart. “You wish to know why I offered marriage to you?” He strolled over with his sleek, pantherlike steps.
She shook her head. “No, I want to know why it is so important that I shape you into a respectable gentleman.”
With his thick, hooded lashes and hard lips, he was a predator hunting his prey, the perfect lion his namesake professed him to be. And mayhap if she were wiser, she’d be fearful. But he’d set aside his drink. He’d exercised restraint and revealed his hand. Lord Leo, the Marquess of Tennyson, might be ruthless and single-minded. But he was not a monster.
Monsters cared not for the wishes or whims of anyone, not children or wives, and certainly not strangers, and she took strength in that.
He stopped at the back of her sofa and leaned over so close his breath fanned the back of her neck, eliciting dangerous shivers that tingled through her.
Chloe’s mouth went dry, and she desperately tried to make the muscles of her throat move so she might swallow. He is just a man. He is just a man.
And she was not a woman to be seduced by forbidden whispers and touches.
So why did her body continue to react to his nearness?
“Would you rather have pretty words, my lady?” he purred, wrapping that slowly drawn-out question in velvet. “Or mayhap you crave seductive ones? Shattering kisses? Forbidden touches.” He slid two fingers between the slight gape at her cloak, further parting the noisy fabric.
Drawing in a shaky breath, Chloe slapped at his hands. “I’ve no desire to be shattered by anything.” She hated the threadbare quality to that retort. Hated even more the masculine triumph that glittered in his blue eyes. The arrogance indicated he’d heard her falter and, worse, reveled in it.
“Which can only mean you’ve never known the pleasure to be had in a man’s arms, Chloe,” he enticed. “Because, if you did, you would gladly surrender to it.”
Leo dusted his gloved fingertips along her shoulder. Back and forth. Over and over. It was a light, barely discernable caress. Yet, even through the protective fabric of her muslin cloak, her skin burned from that fleeting touch. It both tickled and tempted.
Chloe swallowed. And she, who prided herself on not being one of those silly misses who could be led astray by a ruthless rake or rogue, confronted her own fallacy with nothing more than the stroke of his knuckles. “Y-you are attempting to distract me.”
He brushed his lips along the nape of her neck. The delicate kiss was so quick, with muslin a barrier between them, it might have been conjured of her own shockingly hypnotized musings. “Is it working?”
Chloe grinned. His teasing reply restored her mind to rights and reestablished the purpose of their latest meeting. “No.” Scooting to the edge of her seat, she deprived him of the ability to bestow any more of those quixotic kisses. Chloe held his gaze. “You gave me a day to consider your proposal. I’m giving you even less. This is the last time I’ll ask. Why? If you truly wish for me to entertain the possibility of marriage to you, I want an answer.” One that he desperately clung to, which only further fueled her curiosity.
Leo flattened hard lips into an unyielding line. “My uncle.”
She tipped her head. His uncle? Of all the reasons she’d expected—her dowry, his whoring, drinking, or wagering—the last she’d expected was that. “Beg pardon?”
“I have an uncle who has…” A vein bulged at the corner of his eye in a fascinating tell of his discomfort. “He’s indulged my ways and assisted with my creditors. I was warned to be more discreet. If I failed to become,” he grimaced, “respectable, he’d cut me loose.”
It all made sense. “And then we were discovered together.”
He sank onto the back of the sofa and folded his arms loosely at his chest. “Precisely.”
He’d lost the benevolent support of his uncle due to an imagined indiscretion.
“He’s cut you off, then? Unless you… that is… w-we,” Chloe stumbled over the word that united them in a horrifying intimate way, “m—”
“Yes,” Leo cut her off.
How very funny to find herself wholly unlike this man in so many ways and then to find common footing on their shared loathing of marriage.
Before her courage deserted her, Chloe spoke in a rush. “I would have certain terms met.”
He shook his head once.
“If…” She lifted a finger. And it was still a gigantic, nearly insurmountable if. “I marry you, I have expectations.”
She’d come to him with terms.
And if nausea still didn’t roil in Leo’s belly at the prospect of marriage to her—or anyone—he’d have managed a grin.
As it was…
She is actually considering it. She is here, of her own volition, to discuss a union with me.
The lady was either madder than the late King George or desperate.
Only desperation could have sent her from her rooms, injured ankle and all, to seek him out in his residence, and lay out… terms, as she called them.
Leo slowly lowered his arms. “Terms?” he repeated back, to be sure he’d not misheard.
Chloe nodded. “Ten of them.” She sucked in a loud breath. “If you agree to all of them, then I’ll help you become… respectable.”
Intrigued, Leo straightened. He joined her on the sofa.
The lady cleared her throat. Reaching inside her cloak, she fished out a folded scrap and turned it over.
His fingers reflexively curled around the thick parchment. He glanced between the sheet and his early-morn visitor and then back again at the page. “You’ve written them down?”
She frowned. “If we are discussing a business arrangement, then it should be properly handled as all business arrangements are.”
“And you have conducted very many business dealings?” He was unable to keep the smile from creeping into his question.
“You’re teasing me.” A pretty blush stained her cheeks.
Leo snorted. “I assure you, I don’t tease anyone.” That light repartee was reserved for foppish young pups, the manner of one he’d been a lifetime ago.
She spoke as though she hadn’t heard him. Or mayhap it was that she didn’t trust his word. Clever girl. “As you wish,” she clipped out with a crispness to rival the queen’s speech. “If you’d rather make light of me and my wishes—” She made a grab for the rough contract she’d come with, but Leo held up his arm.
“Forgive me,” he said, angling his back to keep the page from her reach.
“You don’t sound apologetic,” she groused as he began to unfold the sheet.
“It’s because I’m not.” Glancing back at her, he softened that with a wink.
Chloe pointed her eyes skyward, pulling another grin from him.
Returning his focus forward in a bid to hide his amusement, Leo made a show of opening the intricately folded note.
He was having entirely too much fun with the lady. More fun than he’d had in years. The extent of his dealings with women entailed wicked bedroom activities and torrid affairs, and he’d never desired anything more than physical release. Verbal sparring was not something he engaged in with women, because it had never served a purpose. Only, now he found himself very much enjoying it with the spitfire beside him.
It had been years since he had engaged any woman in banter not born out of his sexual pursuit.
A lifetime ago.
“Well?” Chloe urged at his back, breaking the recollections of the first and last woman he’d let too close.
“I’m reading,” he lied. Snapping the page in his hands, he directed his efforts to the requests inked there.
Marital Requirements of Chloe Edgerton
He flinched. The lady had put her name in bold upon the page, a sheet that could be picked up by any servant or nosy lady and bandied about by all. She’d have made a rotted spy. Sighing, Leo read.
1. I am granted ownership and total control of my dowry.
2. I will maintain relationships with my family and friends without interference.
He paused, glancing back. “You don’t have a high opinion where men are concerned.”
With an arch look, Chloe gave him a thorough up and down, and his ears went hot at the pointed recrimination. My God, hell hath frozen over and chilled the whole of England with it. He, Leo Dunlop, was capable of… blushing.
Shifting on the sofa, he faced forward again. “Uh… yes.” He shook the page. “Continuing on.” Even as he set to resume his reading, however, questions swirled around his mind about the mysterious lady who’d invaded his home. What gentleman was responsible for her world weariness? The same one now responsible for the spitfire’s still-unmarried state?
“Are you reading?”
“I’m reading,” he groused.
“Your eyes weren’t moving on the page.”
My God, she missed nothing.
Taking care to again present the too observant minx with his back, Leo pressed ahead.
3. I will maintain residence where and when I would—also without interference.
“I’m beginning to notice a trend.” He directed the dry observation at the page.
4. I will not be required to organize, host, or attend any ball… unless I so wish it.
“It appears we have something in common,” he muttered under his breath.
The rustle of muslin and the nearness of her voice when she spoke indicated she’d moved closer. “What was that?”
“I said…” His words trailed off as he snagged on the next item upon her list.
5. At my discretion and choosing, I shall be permitted the selection of a dog.
“A dog, madam?” That was one of her requirements? He faced her. “You want a dog?”
She nodded. “Indeed. My family was never one to have them. Not even for hunting. Except…” Leaning around him, she snatched the sheet from his hands. Speaking softly, her mutterings wholly imperceptible to his ears, she scooted to the end of the sofa. He stared on with bewilderment as she fished around her cloak. Snaking something free, she leaned over the arm of the seat.
The rhythmic click of a pencil striking the table echoed in the quiet. A moment later, she handed back the sheet.
As Leo read her amendment, his eyebrows came together.
“Specifically, a mastiff,” she clarified, as though he couldn’t read the words written there and needed further elucidation. Which, in fairness, he did.
5. At my discretion and choosing, I shall be permitted the selection of a dog mastiff.
He had stepped into some farcical play. There was nothing else accounting for what this morning had dissolved into. Leo scrubbed his hand over the day of growth on his face.
Mistrust flickered in Chloe’s eyes. “Do you have a problem with dogs, my lord?”
So she was “my lording” him… and her suspicion had been restored with force.
“I have more problems with the two-legged type.”
A startled laugh burst from Chloe’s perfectly bow-shaped lips. That mirthful sound was not the practiced, sultry ones affected by past lovers. It shook her slender frame and knocked her cloak further agape.
He stared on, transfixed. With her twinkling saucer-round eyes and flushed cheeks, she was transformed from the original common English miss he’d taken her for into a siren.
Her laughter abruptly faded. He grieved the loss of that oddly enticing innocent expression of joy. “What?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
Leo dug around for some flippant, rake reply to earn another of the lady’s eye-rolls. But God help him, for the first time in twelve years, he who’d never been without a retort—even a cruel one—came up empty. “It is nothing,” he said in even tones, grateful for the diversion presented on her page.
Hurrying through the remainder of the items drafted, he stored away each detail. “A dog, then,” he muttered.
Her interest in those four-legged creatures provided another intimate detail. With every reveal, she became less a stranger and more a peculiar woman who wished for dogs and isolation and… control. Her list evidenced a woman desiring of control… but also one who naively believed that charitable works mattered.
6. I am free to conduct my time at any charitable venture I deem important. I am also free to use my funds as donations to those unstated organizations.
7. We shall maintain separate lives.
Leo paused on item seven. Chloe wished for a separate life, wanted a dog—a mastiff, to be precise—and she preferred solitude.
Nay, that wasn’t altogether true. He shifted his gaze to item two. Part of her demands included the freedom to maintain relationships with family and friends without interference from him. He tapped that telling item in her neatly scrawled hand.
Again, his earlier wondering surfaced.
“A broken heart?” An inexplicable curiosity pulled the question from him before he could call it back.
She went still.
Leo shook her list. “Was it some rogue who offered you pretty words and wrote poems to your beauty and then broke your heart?” It had been a role he’d played once with another woman. Only, it hadn’t begun as such. It had begun as more…
The parchment crinkled noisily in his tightening grip.
Something in thinking of Chloe so hurt by a bastard such as Leo roused a primal fury in him. Which was ironic, given that he, as a rule and in reality, no longer felt anything… for anyone.
The lady wet her lips. Her expression guarded, her eyes unreadable, she proved him wrong in this instance. A lady who could dissemble in that coolly aloof manner could very well find her way in the Home Office. “Keep reading.” The clipped command only served as further proof.
Leo resumed scanning the page and choked a bit on his swallow.
Feeling Chloe’s eyes on him, he looked up slowly. With unhurried movements, he folded the sheet back into the neat little square she’d handed it over in.
She grabbed it and drew it close.
Coming to his feet, he yanked off his gloves and cast them aside. The soft leather landed with a thwack on the nearby console table.
“Well?” she pressed, fiddling with her cane.
“Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. Yes. No. And nine?” He shrugged out of his jacket, tossing it on the sofa. It landed next to her. The midnight wool fabric crushed against her dark, muslin skirts. “Is an emphatic no.” Leo rolled his tense shoulders. “Ten, however, is a yes.” A peculiar one at that.
The lady wanted the freedom to take employment should she desire. It was a wholly foreign concept to both Leo and Society, especially the privileged beauties Leo took as his lovers. They wanted baubles and fripperies and a life of ease. Who was the bizarre lady he’d stumbled upon in Waterson’s corridors?
While he contemplated her even now, the spirited minx silently counted and then consulted her list.
“No dogs,” he clarified. It was the easiest place to begin their negotiations. “I’ll not have one in my residence.”
“Well, if I were in London when you are also in London, it would be our residence.” She favored him with a generous smile that dimpled her cheeks.
Our residence. His palms went damp, and he scrubbed them on the sides of his pants. There was a permanency to their being melded as one, joined forever, until death did they part.
Nonetheless, he glanced covetously at the drink she’d challenged him to put down, needing it more than ever, but refusing to relinquish that control.
“No dog,” he repeated.
“Very well.” She grabbed her cane. “It appears our negotiations have broken down and—”
“A bloody mastiff,” he snapped.
Her smile widened all the more, meeting her eyes. “Splendid,” she said. With a pleased little nod, she settled back into her spot.
Leo sharpened his gaze on her. If his career and the Cato case weren’t dependent upon his making a match with the lady, he’d have tossed her out on her delectably rounded arse. The minx was going to prove troublesome, and he had his own matters of trouble—ones that affected the whole of the bloody kingdom—to focus on that were vastly more important than an unbending Chloe Edgerton.
“I remain a firm nay on items eight and nine.”
“Those are nonnegotiable.” Another rush of color flooded her cheeks, turning them a deep crimson.
He looped his arms at his back. “Then it seems we are at an impasse, Chloe.” He allowed those words to roll from his tongue, tempting her. For, her item nine—he was not to place his hands upon her, in any way—ran counter to every dark, carnal urge of his being.
The lady struggled to her feet. “Th-then we are truly done.”
He closed the distance between them in four long strides. Sliding himself into her path, he cut off her retreat.
Five or six inches past five feet, she was taller than most women.
With no more than a handbreadth between them, he saw all: the rapid rise and fall of her chest, her flushed cheeks, her quivering mouth. Whether she wished it or not, her body responded to him.
Leo stroked his knuckles in an errant caress down her cheek. “Do you know the problem, Chloe?”
“I was unaware I had one.” Her voice emerged breathless, the whisper of lemon and mint tantalizing in their innocence.
“Oh, yes. You do.” He shifted his touch lower, along her slim jawline, dusting it across her delicate chin. “You’ve not yet discovered all the splendorous pleasures to be had from a man’s touch.” Her lashes fluttered wildly, and she leaned into him.
He reveled in the evidence of her hungering. “I’ll show you all the pleasures you’ve not yet explored. I’ll open your body to a passion that will sear your soul and leave you hungry and craving the rhapsody to be found in my arms.”
The lady’s throat moved.
She abruptly stepped back, stumbling a bit, and then she righted herself. “I’m not looking for a lover.”
The soft flush on her skin made a lie of that pronouncement.
She knew it. He knew it.
As such, he offered a half-grin. “A compromise, then?”
Chloe thinned her eyebrows. “I am listening,” she said gruffly.
“I’ll not put my hands upon you,” he said as he caressed his gaze over her slender frame before returning his stare to hers. “Unless you wish it,” he enticed.
She snorted. “I wouldn’t.”
Not I won’t. But rather, I wouldn’t. Which spoke to her eventual capitulation. Triumph was nearly his.
And, with it, shackles. Instead of the earlier horror that had turned his gut and caused a cold sweat, there was an eager anticipation.
Leo dipped his head. “If,” when, “you want to know pleasure in my arms, Chloe, your term number eight is dissolved.” He’d not debate that point with her now. Soon. After they were married, he’d have her in his bed, begging for him.
The lady drew in a shaky breath and nodded. “Very well. But I’m inflexible on my terms for item nine.”
He jerked erect. “No.”
“That is not an emphatic ‘no.’”
“This one is.” What she asked was impossible. “You’d ask for my f-f-f—”
“Fi-de-li-ty.” She stretched out the syllables, sounding the words out the way a tutor might deliver a language lesson to a slow-to-learn student.
“And…” He strangled on the word.
A mischievous twinkle lit her gaze. She snapped her page out and waved it under his eyes. “I expect your faithfulness.”
Leo ripped the page from her hands and gave it a shake of his own. “Why should it matter to you whom I bed?” Particularly when she’d requested a marriage of convenience.
“I’m incapable of,” he curled his lip, “sexual purity.”
The lady gave a flounce of her golden curls. “Then you, my lord, are incapable of marriage to me.”
He opened his mouth to debate the inherent foolishness of her contradictory requests—a marriage of convenience with an imposed celibacy—and abruptly stopped. He snapped his lips closed and contemplated her requests.
Why… why…
She believed he’d deny her requests. It was the reason for the eccentric items scrawled in her neat, swooping letters.
Releasing some of the tension in his frame, he rolled his shoulders. “Very well,” he conceded.
She choked. “Wh-what?”
He reached out and thumped her between the shoulder blades. “I’ll agree to your terms.”
Suspicion turned her sky-blue eyes dark. “It can’t be that easy,” she said slowly, backing away from him.
“Don’t trust me, love?” He waggled his eyebrows.
Chloe laughed, a clear, bell-like quality that echoed around the room. “I’d be mad to.” Her amusement immediately faded. “As such,” she went on, no-nonsense once more, “prior to our wedding, the formal arrangement will be carefully laid out in a contract.”
The farce continued. “A contract?” he parroted. “You want me to put into writing—”
“All items we’ve agreed upon?” She nodded emphatically.
Actually, he’d been about to mention their conjugal relationship once wedded.
As he studied her, his wariness grew. A lady who’d dictate his movements and actions, and who was far too clever by half, was one he’d be best running in the opposite direction from. And yet, there was no choice.
He took a step closer. “I’d also have certain promises from you.”
“Oh?” she asked cautiously.
“In addition to your helping me attain respectability,” or at least helping him craft that thin veneer, “I do not want any personal questions about me or my past or my present or future. Nothing.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That hardly establishes a companionable match.”
“Because it is not companionable,” he reminded. “By your own terms, it is a business arrangement.”
“But you also wish to bed me?” she returned.
The lady was still an innocent. She believed the two could not be mutually exclusive. She expected that with sex came intimacy. She’d learn—in time.
“What is your answer, madam?”
“Very well. I’ll not ask you any questions. What else, then, my lord?”
Did he imagine the hint of disappointment in her tone? Regardless, they were strangers. He’d marry her, but ultimately wanted her to remain a stranger. Any emotional entanglements were dangerous ones. They prevented a man from fully devoting himself to a case.
“My office is off-limits. If you desire offices of your own, madam, I’ll have the servants prepare one. I’m not to be disturbed when I’m in there, and you are not to enter, whether I’m in there or not. Is that clear?”
She scowled. “I’m not a child.”
With her nipped waist, flared hips, and breasts made to fit his palms, no, no, she certainly wasn’t. “Do you agree?”
“Very well.” Chloe nudged her chin. “What is your next requirement?”
“You are not to fall in love with me,” he said gravely. It had been the folly only one other woman had committed before. He was unworthy and unwanting of those sentiments.
A fulsome laugh exploded from Chloe’s lips. Her mirth shook her frame until tears streamed down her cheeks.
Another would have been offended. Leo’s shoulders sagged with relief.
The lady dusted off the remnants of her amusement. “I can offer an emphatic ‘yes’ on that term, my lord.”
“Then it is settled,” he said, starting across the room. There was much to see to, and quickly—before the lady’s brother returned, or before she came to her senses and changed her mind.
“That is all?” she called out.
Leo didn’t even break stride. “Would you prefer I ask you for more?”
She wisely fell silent.
“I’ll have the contract drawn up and—”
“No.”
Oh, bloody hell. She’d already changed her mind. Or, more likely, she was as greedy as every last lady in London. “What now?” he snapped.
“I want my family’s solicitor to draft the document and be present for the… the…” Wedding.
He shook his head. “The moment your brother discovers your intentions, our arrangement will be at an end, madam.” Leo stole a glance at the clock. As it was, with dawn rapidly approaching, the gentleman would soon discover her gone. Impatience snaked through him.
“My brother is gone to retrieve my mother,” she supplied, neatly following his thoughts. “He left this morn and will likely return within two days. I’ll not elope. As such, a proper betrothal is our only option.”
Stalking over to the sofa, Leo retrieved his jacket and found the officious document tucked away. “I’ve already secured the special license.”
The lady’s startled gaze went to the document allowing them to wed and then back to his. “You secured a special license from the archbishop?”
“That is generally the way one goes about it, as long as one desires a legal union.”
Accepting the document he held out, Chloe skimmed the sealed pages.
Yet, with his notorious reputation and black heart, she’d sufficient reason to doubt how one such as he had earned that fellow’s approval. His work for the Brethren, however, would remain the eternal secret between him and his almost bride. Given her list of requirements for their marriage, it should be a secret easy enough to keep from her.
Striding over to the bellpull, he gave the slim string a tug. “I’ll have you shown to your rooms.”
“My rooms? Surely you jest. I c-cannot s-stay here,” she sputtered.
“Provide me the name of your family’s solicitor, and I’ll have him summoned. We’ll be married as soon as the documents are drafted.”
A knock sounded at the door. “Enter,” he boomed.
Chloe whipped her gaze toward the door. The alacrity of that movement dislodged several curls and set them to bouncing above her eye. “But—but…”
“Tomlinson,” he instructed. “If you’ll show the lady to the rooms next to mine?”
The lady blushed a crimson hue that could have set her afire.
“As you wish, my lord.” To Tomlinson’s credit, that revelation earned not even the slightest crack in the older man’s composure. Or mayhap it was more a mark to Leo’s wickedness these years that the servant wouldn’t so much as flinch at a young lady invading Leo’s home and being assigned the room beside his. “My lady?” his butler urged, motioning to the doorway.
Chloe remained rooted to the floor, immobile. Her quickly rising chest provided the only movement to her still form.
As time ticked by and she remained unmoving, Leo expected her to renege and bolt as fast as her “marginally better” ankle would allow. That all this had been a brave show on her part, but when push came to proverbial shove, she recognized the folly in both trusting him and wedding him.
Chloe exhaled slowly through her compressed lips. With a slight nod in Leo’s direction, she turned on her heel and ambled off.
He stared at the empty doorway long after she’d gone.
It would seem this was, indeed, the day pigs had flown over the Thames.
And despite the fact that Leo was just a short while from abandoning his bachelor state, he smiled.