Page 22 of The Rake’s Convenient Bride

“I understand and will attend.” She regretted the words as soon as she’d spoken them, and tried to mask her unease with a nonchalant lift of her shoulder. “Those who care most for us simply want our happiness. Oftentimes a hurried engagement speaks of more troubles than bliss. My father, for example…”

She bit her lip and scrunched her nose.

“So that is what I’m up against, is it?” Lord Darington nodded to himself.

“Indeed.”

“Better to know what I’ll face going in. Thank you, dearest.”

Dearest.

Elizabeth swallowed. “Y…you’re welcome, my lord.”

He smiled at her, a soft, lopsided grin that stole her heart right from her breast. “Jasper.”

Then he kissed her hand once more, rose, and bowed cordially in her direction, before quitting the room, leaving her hand humming with the memory of his lips and her body hot with a curious sensation she didn’t know how to name.

All she knew was that Lord Darington—Jasper—was every bit as much trouble as his reputation suggested. And she had more than the impending dinner to worry about when it came to her faux fiancé.

Jasper followed the butler to Lord Langston’s study, trying hard not to acknowledge the unaccustomed rattle of nerves.

This was why he’d never met the fathers of the women in his past. Those women had all been widows, young women who had been married off to cadaverous old men, women whose lust for life had yet to be explored and enjoyed. Though his exploits with those women earned him his reputation, he never once debauched an innocent. He’d never set his sights on one for that matter.

Not until Lady Elizabeth.

But he’d kept his distance, not allowing himself to give in to the desire to that draw of attraction that had hooked him the first time he saw her lingering near the wallpaper at a ball over two years ago. The way she’d brightened when her friends joined her, her smile beatific.

The butler announced Jasper to Lord Langston, and Jasper drew a steadying breath, knowing the anxiety knotting his insides would never show on the outside. He’d had a lifetime of experience in hiding his emotions.

After all, showing emotions was like exposing one’s jugular to a predator.

No, he’d learned his lesson well.

The butler returned and nodded to Jasper before admitting him inside the study. Dark wood shone beneath a gleam of polish on an array of full bookshelves, and the pipe pinched in the earl’s hand curled up with a stream of gray-white smoke, its sweet scent permeating the room.

Lord Langston had the same brown hair as his daughter, though his was sparse above his brow and shot through with streaks of white. He indicated the chair before his desk and drew a puff of tobacco from his pipe.

Jasper sat, feeling much the way he did as a boy at Eton when reprimanded for one infraction or another. “I’m not good enough for your daughter,” Jasper announced.

Langston’s mouth stretched in an agreeable frown, and he nodded. The smoke released from his mouth as he spoke, “I dare say, this is a good way to start a difficult conversation with something we both clearly agree on.”

Some of the tension pinching Jasper’s shoulders relaxed. He’d always been good at setting people at ease, even when he himself was not.

“Why are you marrying my daughter?” Langston pinched the bowl of the pipe in his hand and leaned back in his chair. “I’m not normally so blunt, Darington, but this is my daughter. Damn the formalities, I want only her happiness, do you understand?”

The tightness returned in Jasper’s shoulders. No matter how much he tried to diffuse the conversation, it would be difficult.

There was no empathy in Langston’s narrowed eyes. “You don’t require her dowry as far as I’m aware. Your reputation has drawn you to more worldly women. You’ve never shown an inclination toward marriage. And what’s more, you’ve never displayed a modicum of interest in my Elizabeth.” He leaned forward in his seat, the leather creaking beneath his solid frame. “You never even approached me to court her, let alone pay your addresses.”

Before Jasper could offer any reply to the very astute accusations laid at his feet, Langston went on, “Have you compromised my daughter, sir?”

“I have not.” Jasper’s voice was firm, wanting to leave no question in Elizabeth’s father’s mind as to her innocence.

Jasper was a rake—or, at least, he had been once upon a time—but he had never been that kind of rake.

Langston regarded him for a moment, as if weighing his words, a father wanting desperately to know his daughter was a good girl.

A bolt of rage flashed through Jasper, surprising him with the intensity of the need to defend her. “Do you think so little of your daughter that you would question her character?”