“No. Something tells me you are too clever for me to trust without collateral.”
“Then upon payment, install me in your townhouse.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“That is not an invitation to bed me before the wedding, Your Grace.”
He leaned back in the settee and looked at her. “Rest easy, Miss Linton. No prudent buyer damages goods further between payment and delivery. Whatever is left of your virtue would keep quite safely under my roof.”
Her throat moved. Rosy colour spread from her neck to her face.
“I do not think laying such insults would benefit you in any way, Your Grace.”
“You negotiate as though you have options, Miss Linton. We both know all you have is a price. I have bought horses with more ceremony.”
The teacup met its saucer with a clean, deliberate sound. She was on her feet and across the distance between them before he understood her intention, and then his cheek was burning, and the sound of the slap was still sharp in the room.
He caught her wrist before she could draw it back. His grip was not gentle. He brought her close enough that he could feel the heat of her breath and see the golden specks in her amber eyes. Her throat was near enough to taste. He did not speak until whatever had risen in him had settled.
“You will never strike me again.” His voice was very low, very even. “Do you understand me, Miss Linton?”
“Then you will never again speak to me as though I am for sale,” she gritted through her teeth.
She had not pulled away. She did not drop her gaze. Her pulse hammered against his fingers, and the fear she would not show on her face lived in her body instead. He held her wrist a beat longer than necessary, and in that beat, fear moved through him—that this woman would command his respect, and perhaps more.
With that startling knowledge on his mind, he released her wrist and stepped back. The distance between them filled with something he had no word for.
She turned away and stood with her back to him. Her hands were at her side, and he could see that they were shaking. His own hand closed at his side. Guilt. Shame.
When she turned back, her face was composed. “Now, where were we?”
His cheek throbbed and felt hot.
“Do you still wish to be my wife?”
“Yes, Your Grace. I am no fool.”
“No. I imagine not.”
A door slammed somewhere at the back of the house. Both turned toward the sound. Footsteps, rapid and uneven, came through the passage behind the drawing room. A woman’s voice, high and exultant, called out.
“Violet! Violet! I have found it. TheHelleborus viridis. I told Bickle it grew along the Regent’s Canal and she would not believe me. I have found it. Three specimens, and aDaphne laureolabesides. I am soaked through, but it does not signify.”
The door to the drawing room swung wide.
The woman standing in the doorway was perhaps fifty, though the years sat on her unevenly. She was barefoot. Her dress was soaked to the hem and above it. Her hair had come loose from its pins and hung in wet ropes over her shoulders. In her arms she carried a bundle wrapped in sacking, from which protruded stems and leaves and a quantity of dark wet earth. Her face was flushed. Her eyes were bright and triumphant.
She stopped when she saw Henry.
Miss Linton was already moving. She took her mother’s hands between her own and rubbed her warmth into them. “Kit, the blanket from the morning room. And the valerian, the brown bottle, second shelf.” Her eyes returned to her mother who had been staring at him. “Mama, we have a guest. This is the Duke of Iredell.”
“A duke.”
“Mama. Please sit by the fire and warm up.”
“Do not fuss, Violet. I am perfectly well. I walked from Regent’s Park. The rain is very mild for February.”
“You are barefoot again, Mama.”
