“And your cousins?” she asked after a moment’s consideration.
“What about them?”
She shrugged, but he could tell that it was for show, not because she was truly ambivalent about what she was saying.
“They seem kind. Friendly. Even to me—and I am just staff.”
He didn’t like the idea of her calling herselfjustanything, but he found that he disliked her defense of the rest of his family even less.
“I am perfectly aware of your admiration for them, Miss Knightley,” he said stiffly.
She looked disappointed in him, and he found that this dug deep inside his chest. She stood, as if to leave, and he mimicked her, not certain if he intended to stop her.
“You do recall that you are half Lightholder, too, don’t you?” she asked. “There is nothem,not where you’re concerned.”
He raked his fingers through his hair.
“Not for lack of trying,” he said, aware that he sounded too bitter, that he was revealing too much of himself. “My mother was never satisfied with my father. His dukedom struggled compared to the Godwin estate. She was never satisfied with that, never mind that she had more than she could ever need—a hundred times more than most other noblewomen, and a hundredthousandtimes more than most common women in this country. To her, he was always the impoverished, lowly man that her father had forced her to wed, because Grandfather Cornelius wanted to shore up his own power, his children’s happiness be damned.”
“Are you sure it was about the money?” Letitia asked. “Women’s unhappiness is often about more than money. You know that, don’t you?”
He bristled.
“Don’t,” he said, taking a step forward. He was behaving badly, he knew. He was taller than her, stronger, more powerful. He had rights that she didn’t. It was unconscionable for him to step into her space like this, to come at her in anger, even if he would never,everraise a hand to a woman. But, in the grip of his temper, he could not seem to quite control himself.
Besides, she didn’t look intimidated in the least. She stubbornly squared her shoulders and looked up at him.
“Don’twhat?” she retorted. “Don’t imply that women aren’t just thoughtless, venal creatures that only care about money?”
“That’s not what I was doing,” he snapped back. “You were implying that it was my father’s fault.”
She didn’t deny it. She just shrugged her shoulders.
“In my experience,” she said, “women’s problems usually don’t originate in money. They originate inmen.”
He didn’t know what he hated more—the implied slight against his father, a man who had always been treated as if he were less than those around him, or the suggestion that other men had been bothering Letitia.
“Stop it,” he ordered.
Her eyes went dangerously narrow, but, hell, he was feeling dangerous, too.
“Of course, that would be what you say,” she said, a new thread of tension in her words.
Oh, now the slight was againsthimand his father.
“I am warning you, Miss Knightley,” he said, his voice rigid with ducal authority. It was the kind of tone that usually made people go pale and back away. “You need tostop this.”
Miss Knightley was notmost people.
“I will not stop it!” This time,shetook a step forward. “I am tired of you all—all yougentlemen. You think the world revolves around you! You think you are the only ones who matter. And you...” She jabbed him in the chest. “You are as insufferable as any of them.” She fluttered her fingers near her temple. “Always driving me mad, and being so troublesome, and?—”
She jabbed him in the chest again, and he caught her fingers. Her hand was so warm in his.
She didn’t pull away.
Her palm flattened against his chest.
He took another, minuscule step forward.
