Kissing her had been lunacy. Going to speak to her now was lunacy. He was supposed to marryher sisterfor the love of all that was holy. And yes, that particular arrangement wasn’t going as well as he might have hoped, but that didn’t mean that he needed to embroil himself in the snake’s nest of trouble that was Miss Phoebe Turner.
And bloodyyet, here he was. Knocking on her door.
The moment she saw who was standing outside her bedchamber, she scowled—which was fair enough, if not precisely the reaction a man might hope to receive from a woman he had recently kissed.
“Goaway,” she said acidly.
“No,” he said.
She let out a sigh that was so fantastically beleaguered that it was frankly a work of art, then grabbed him by the front of his jacket and hauled him into the room. He went, amused more than coerced.
What must it be like, he wondered, to express every emotion so clearly? How did Miss Turner bear to go about the world like that with her heart on her sleeve?
Because it was. Aaron looked at her pose, standing with arms defiantly crossed, with her chin held high, with her lower lip thrust mulishly out, and saw every thought that passed herbothersome little mind. She clearly felt bad about the incident between them the night before, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still intrigued—at least enough to draw him into her bedchamber rather than slamming the door in his face.
Aaron was intrigued by her, too—though, sadly, he wasn’t here to explore that particular bit of curiosity. There was something else, something more important than mere allure. Something he needed to know before he could decide whether or not he wanted to continue any sort of alliance with the Turner family.
“Those secrets of yours…” he said, keeping his posture loose and open, a contrast to her defensive stance. He didn’t need to put himself on the defensive. He held all the cards—or nearly all of them at least. “… are you ready to reveal them yet?”
She laughed in his face.
“Your Grace,” she said, and Aaron had heard his title used as an insult before—there were many enlisted men in the military who felt that nobles who purchased their commissions were softer than butter in July; Aaron put them straight quickly enough—but Miss Turner was as adept at any of them in turning politeness into poison.
“You have been too long at war,” she said. “You see deceit at every turn. Or perhaps, you just have so many enemies that you must constantly be on the lookout for betrayal. That sounds tiring. Might I suggest changing your ways?”
She fluttered her eyelashes at him in a distinctly vicious manner.
Aaron found, to his intense surprise, that he was enjoying this already.
She was right, of course, that he’d spent too long at war. It had made him patently unsuitable for Society. That was the origin of all his current problems.
But as he stared into her flashing eyes, Aaron wondered if he hadn’t been gone from war too long—if he wasn’t like a knife, sharpened to a deadly edge, then left, languishing in a drawer. It felt good to cut again, even if their blades were only words.
Maybebecausetheir blades were only words. Anything he dealt to Miss Turner, she would return in kind.
Maybe this was why men enjoyed fencing. He’d never understood playacting at battle before, but now, he started to get the point of it all.
“Your personal commentary, no matter how clever, is hardly the point here,” he said flatly. Just because this was amusing didn’t mean that he wanted her to know as much. This was a diversion, but diversions were only acceptable as long as he held the upper hand in continuing or ending them. “Tell me, what scandal are you hiding?”
“You,” she said, “are imagining things.”
Oh, that wretched little liar! She didn’t blink or look askance as she said it. She didn’t shift her posture or explain too much.
But she was lying. She was definitely lying.
“You do know that a woman breaking up a betrothal in the manner that your sister has chosen could cause a scandal, don’t you?” he asked evenly. “Add to that whatever you are hiding... Can your family's reputation really survive those dual blows?”
Something shifted, and Aaron realized that she was well and truly angry now. He wanted to regret it—it would have been gentlemanly to regret insulting a lady—but he felt nothing more than a fierce satisfaction that he’d found the right thread to pull.
“If our society cannot withstand the absoluteaudacityof a woman choosing not to marry—” she began hotly, “—if they cannot bear the idea that a lady might want todecidewhat man she submits herself to entirely—which of you entitled sots she decides to become legal property of—if they cannot tolerate a woman having her own mind, her own desires, her own direction—if they cannot bear a woman being unchaperoned, treating a lady’s solitude like the most grievous sin?”
The furious sound in the back of her throat was more than a scoff. It was pent-up rage that had finally broken free. Her cheeks were bright red with it.
“If all that is true,” she said, “our society is too fragile, and I have no patience for it. I have no patience foryou—a man who would blackmail a young woman in order to force her to wear his ring.”
Aaron took a step forward, no longer feeling quite so calm. How did she manage to disrupt his calm so easily?
“That wasn’t what I meant, and you know it,” he snapped back at her.
