Page 49 of What a Lord Wants

“‘Then my daughter should be prize enough.’”

“I’m beginning to like your father,” he murmured as he reached for a lantern. “And if a man wants both you and a position within the company?”

“‘Then he is a greedy bastard who deserves neither.’”

Dom laughed.

She irritably tossed away the thread with a peeved sniff. “You think it’s amusing that my father is so concerned with protecting his business that he nearly ruined his daughters’ chances at securing good marriages?”

“I think that your father is doing his best to help you.”

“By letting it be known that his sons-in-law will never be brought into the company and his daughters will never inherit? He was setting us up to be spinsters.”

“He was setting you up for a love match.”

Her chest tightened. She wanted to believe that, but look where it had gotten her. Into her fifth season without serious suitors.Nonewould be forthcoming at all now that Burton had revealed her to be the worst kind of unmarried miss—a clingy, cloying one without fortune or position.

“You thought you had that with Williams, didn’t you?” He lit the lantern and hung it over a peg on the post nearest her. “What happened?”

Avoiding his gaze, she tightened the belt of the robe. “He wanted to marry me, but we didn’t want to wait for the weeks it would have taken to read the banns and negotiate the settlement. So we decided to elope.”

He was silent for a long moment, then said softly, “I see.”

Oh, but he didn’t. “Notbecause he loved me, I know now, but because he feared that Papa would refuse the marriage.” Humiliation heated her cheeks as she admitted, “Because Burton had no idea that there was no dowry or inheritance to be gained by marrying me.”

“You didn’t tell him?”

“I thought he already knew. When he did eventually find out, we were halfway to Scotland. He abandoned me at a posting inn along the Great North Road.” With no money, no one to help her, and no way to return to London. She’d never been more helpless or vulnerable in her life. “Thank God we didn’t have the money for ship passage and had to travel by mail coach, so that Mariah and Hugh Whitby were able to catch up with us and rescue me. And then Robert Carlisle arrived, chasing after them.”

“Carlisle chasedafteryour sister?” Confusion thickened his voice. “But I’d heard that they eloped.”

A bleak smile pulled at her lips. “Which is what they want everyone to believe. Thattheyhad decided to elope to Scotland, with Hugh Whitby and I coming along to be witnesses.” A knot of emotion tightened in her belly. “But actually, they married over the anvil to save me, to hide my failed elopement behind their own successful one.”

He slowly approached her. “So that’s why Williams shared your letters at the party. He wanted revenge for your lack of a dowry.”

“The perfect revenge.” She shrugged a shoulder as nonchalantly as possible, despite the hollow ache in her chest where her heart used to be. “I can’t defend myself without revealing that our relationship was more than the failed courtship people think it was, and now he’s chased away any possible suitors.”

Not that she’d had any to begin with except for Burton. She was too adventurous, too bold, and far too outspoken to draw men’s proper attentions. She should have suspected the truth when Burton came calling. A viscount’s son would never have been interested in a troublesome miss like her simply for love.

“Not quite the perfect revenge,” Dom countered, stopping in front of her. When she tilted her head back to look up at him, he lowered himself onto the balls of his boots, bringing his face nearly level with hers. “He’s embarrassed you with those letters, but he hasn’t ruined you by spreading rumors of the elopement.”

“Because he can’t.” She grimaced. “The Carlisles will toss him onto the first ship bound for the South Pacific if he does.”

“And theywill, too. That’s one thing I’ve always admired about them.” He reached to tuck a stray curl behind her ear. “They fiercely protect the ones they love.”

She swallowed. Even now his casual touch fluttered butterflies in her belly. “Youprotected me, when you took those letters from Burton.”

“That wasn’t protection.”

But the gleam in his eyes told her otherwise. “Then what was it?”

“Preventing a murder. If he hadn’t handed them over, I would have pummeled him right there.” She sharply caught her breath, and he attempted to soften his words by teasing, “What a great shame it would have been to get bloodstains all over Lady Hawthorne’s fine Persian rug.”

Her mouth fell open. “You would never…He’s the son of a peer!”

“And Iama peer,” he reminded her, then smiled with chagrin that she’d momentarily forgotten. “That damned title had better be good for something besides ruining my career as an artist.”

Then he dropped his hand away. The brightness in his eyes faded as he pulled himself up to his full height.