“Of course I would, you dear girl,” he said, his voice going softer. “I’mthe mysterious tortured gentleman.”
“You?”
“Cannot you tell?”
“Well, no, I could not,” Beatrice said, looking at him in wonder.
“Did you wish me to be?”
“Just recently…”
Van Doren swept her up in his arms. “You have made me a lunatic, Beatrice Bennington.”
Beatrice drooped in his arms, and she wondered if her legs had decided they were tired of holding her up. Was this real? It did not seem as if it could be.
How had she come to be in Van Doren’s arms? And him seeming so…intemperate.
“I was thinking tonight of when Rothcraft’s cousin came to visit,” he said, holding her close against his chest and whispering in her ear. “That insufferable baron who danced with you. Do you remember?”
She nodded, wrapping her arms tight around his neck. Of course, Beatrice did remember. It had been the first moment that she’d chafed under Van Doren’s directives. He’d said the baron would leave the neighborhood and forget all about her, which of course he had. She’d been so stung by it.
“That was the beginning of the coolness between us,” Van Doren said softly. “I ought to have fixed it right then and there and I am determined to do so now.”
“Oh, I am glad.”
Van Doren pulled away ever so slightly and looked down at her upturned face.
“I hoped you might be,” he said, leaning down to her lips.
He kissed her rather more passionately than she had imagined a staid gentleman like Van Doren might. He seemed more a pirate or highwayman than a viscount and it took her breath away.
He paused and looked into her eyes.
“Do that again,” Beatrice said.
Van Doren smiled, and then he did do it again.
What the past few moments had wrought! She would not need to be a spinster after all. That was, assuming…
He’d moved down and was doing wonderful things to her neck with his lips. She whispered, “Do you mean to marry me, then?”
“Of course I mean to marry you,” he whispered into her hair. “Why else would I have railed against Rothcraft’s cousin, or spent half my life at your house, or spent this ungodly season driving every other gentleman off? I’ll not have you marry anybody else.” He paused and then whispered, “And that is my final hint.”
She traced her finger along his lips, those lips she’d been looking at all her life. “Do you suppose you might do a violence to yourself were I to refuse?” Beatrice asked. She did not have the least intention of refusing, but she was interested to know how it would be if she did.
“Entirely likely,” Van Doren said, nuzzling her neck.
“And your hair, it almost seems as if you’ve been tearing at it?”
“Terribly. It’s a miracle I have any left.”
“And I suppose if you could not drive suitors off, you might have demanded a duel?”
“I would line them up and dispatch them one by one.”
“Well, then,” Beatrice whispered, “I say I will.”
“Dearest Beatrice, the girl I have loved all along, even when I convinced myself otherwise.”
