The two ladies entered the room and moved around the sofa to sit across from them in two facing chairs. Sophia’s face was pale. Mrs. Gunther’s chin was high in the air as she glared hotly at Seger. No one said anything for a few seconds until a parlor maid arrived with a tray of tea and scones.
“May I pour for you, my lord?” Sophia offered with a smile, trying to ease the tension. It would not be eased, however. Not with Mrs. Gunther’s nostrils flaring on the other side of the room.
All Clara could do was sit quietly and try to quell her racing heart and force the hot, stinging blush from her cheeks. Her body was still heated with an insatiable need for more love play with the marquess. Her mind was besieged.
She glanced warily at her sister. How long had she been standing there?
Without batting an eye, Sophia led the conversation into lighter matters. She inquired about the health of Seger’s stepmother and asked polite questions about his home in the country. Mrs. Gunther was grimly silent.
Ten awkward minutes later, Seger set down his cup and addressed Sophia. “I wonder if you would be so kind, Duchess, as to permit me a moment alone with your sister?”
Clara gazed at him in shock. His meaning could not have been more clear. Gentlemen did not request private conversations with unmarried ladies in drawing rooms unless they intended to discuss something personally significant.
Something momentous.
Something that involved questions that were asked on one knee.
Had James forced him to do this?
Heart racing, Clara had to remind herself to breathe. The marquess did not meet her gaze.
All Seger’s attention was focused on the duchess as he waited for her reply because he wanted everyone out of there.
“Of course,” she said at last, looking uncharacteristically flustered. “Mrs. Gunther, won’t you join me in the library for a few minutes?”
The woman refused to move. Her cold gaze darted from the duchess to Seger, then back at the duchess again as if she were struggling for a way to prevent what was about to happen.
But Seger wasn’t even sure he knew what that was. He was at the mercy of his desires, his unquenchable lust for this alluring young woman who had shattered his ability to stave off emotion. When he was with her, he lost all sense of reason and strength of will, and he was astonished by his malleability. He could not be blasé with her, for this entire experience was fresh and new. He had not known it was possible to want a woman this badly.
“Mrs. Gunther,” the duchess repeated more forcefully, rising to her feet. Seger rose also.
The woman gathered her aplomb and finally stood, sending a seething glare in Seger’s direction as she passed by on the way to the door.
He wondered suddenly what he was going to say next. He gazed down at Clara and saw in her eyes a hopeful but cautious expectation.
So, there it was. The first step toward the life he had been avoiding for eight years, the life that went beyond superficiality where a woman was concerned. He realized suddenly that a partial reason for his avoidance of it was to punish his stepmother and his late father for what had happened with Daphne. Even though the old marquess was long cold in his grave, Seger had wanted to deprive him of the next heir.
Now, for the first time, that meant nothing to Seger. All he knew was what he wanted, and that he could not bear the thought of anyone else proposing to Clara Wilson. He wanted her for himself. In his bed. Forever.
The thought shocked him. He had never meant for Clara—or any woman for that matter—to become so important to him.
As soon as the duchess and chaperone were gone, Seger sat down again and turned to face Clara. He should end this now...say goodbye, but his mental faculties could not gain a foothold over his lust and need. He wanted Clara. He wanted access to her rare inner beauty, and there was no fighting it. All he could do now was try to say the right things without becoming a man he did not wish to become. A man at the mercy of his emotions.
Consequently, he searched for bearings, and fell back into the habits that had become the foundation of his existence. He summoned his surface charm and forced a lid on anything deeper.
Clara’s thoughts were screaming inside her head. What were his intentions? Was she being presumptuous, imagining that he meant to propose?
“I don’t wish to cause any more scandals,” he said.
“Then maybe we shouldn’t be alone right now.”
“But we must be, if I am to say what I wish to say.”
She had to struggle to keep her voice steady when every nerve in her body was buzzing like an electric current. “And what is that, my lord?”
Looking relaxed and confident, he smiled. “That I desire you. That I want you.”
Despite her anxiousness, she somehow managed to return an equally confident smile. “You didn’t need to come all the way over here to tell me that. I already knew it. You made it more than clear to me last night.”
