Caroline made a face as she looked over her shoulder at him.
“What are you still doing at the door?” she demanded.
Damien leaned his shoulder against the doorframe and clasped his hands in front of him.
“I may have opened your door, but I am still polite enough to wait for an invitation to come in,” he replied.
Caroline snickered.Him? Polite?
“I am not planning to invite you in,” she said as she rose to her feet. “That would be terribly improper. Imagine what people would say about me if they saw me inviting strange men into my house. I would rather like my life to be free of rumors.”
“Oh, you do not need to worry about that,” Damien said confidently, taking a step into her cottage. “Once people realize who I am, they will not dare speak about my business. And seeing as you aremybetrothed andmybusiness, they will not speak about you either, or I will deal with them personally.”
Caroline gaped at him as he walked to the center of the room and took a long look around.
“You are mad. Or incredibly over-self-confident, I cannot decide,” she stated as she shook her head. “Either way, I cannot fathom how my cousins put up with you. I think it would be best if you left.”
Damien’s probing gaze fixed on her. Even in the darkness, he seemed able to spot her. She shivered at the intensity of his stillness and the cold, and she tried to find the right words to get him to leave. She was not going back to Mayfair. That was final.
“Are you cold?” Damien asked, his head cocking slightly to the side.
Caroline shook her head, even as she drew her hands up to her arms and rubbed them to warm them. In truth, she was freezing.
“Liar,” he accused, then walked around her to get to the fireplace. “Where is your firewood? I shall light a fire for you.”
Caroline stared down at the spot where the wood usually lay, feeling self-conscious about her lack of preparation.
“I…” She felt her old self start to rise. That timid person she had been for so long. “I was going to ask my neighbors to loan me some of theirs on the way home. I... I was not expecting my employer to make me stay late.”
“Loanyou some firewood?” he questioned. “How does one go about loaning something that will be burned to ash?”
Caroline felt her blush grow hotter.
“Once I had the money to purchase more, I was going to give them back however many logs they gave me.”
Damien took a step toward her, leaning down until they were eye to eye, and she could see his amber eyes glisten with annoyance in the darkness.
“What do you mean by ‘once you had the money to purchase more?’ You do not have enough now?” he asked, his deep voice laced with something dangerous. “What if I had not found you?”
Caroline swallowed, intimidated by his intense gaze, and licked her suddenly dry lips.
“I usually manage better. I just... I had to pay the landlord to fix the window. He makes repairs as long as I can pay him for them.”
Damien leaned back, but not before she caught the rage in his expression.
“That scoundrel. You pay him rent,” he snarled. “That should include repairs!”
“Well, I know, but he insisted, and I did not wish to argue now that I had a roof above my head,” she hastily explained, hating how weak her arguments sounded. “I was lucky enough to be able to be allowed to rent this place on my own as it was!”
Mumbled curses tumbled from Damien’s lips as he turned away from her and walked to the nearest chair. He picked it up, and before she could ask what he was doing, he lifted it over his head and smashed it into the ground, splintering it into dozens of pieces.
Chapter 4
“Why did you do that!” Caroline squeaked, fear trembling through her veins as she watched his display of violence and strength.
“This is no way for you to live,” Damien testily replied. He bent down, scooped up the broken bits of wood, and chucked them into the darkened hearth. “You are aware of that, right? That you deserve better?”
Caroline shook her head as she watched him kneel down to the hearth, the sound of the flint scraping against the stone fireplace as he picked it up. He was mad. She had questioned it before, but she was certain of it now.
