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She needed to know more. She straightened her shoulders. “What are your intentions with me, Duke?”

He lowered his newspaper, and his eyes narrowed on her with suspicion. His amber stare brought warmth into her whole body. “Forgive me, you sound too educated for a swineherd’s wife. Why is that?”

She gulped. Was that a good thing or not? Making an attempt at a Bedfordshire accent, she said, “Must have picked it up from my mother. She was a lady’s maid.”

He frowned, looking her over with a grunt that sent anger through her, and returned to his paper. She studied the long, masculine fingers holding the paper, the muscular crossed legs stretched across the small space between their opposite seats.

She wouldn’t take him ignoring her like that. No. This was her life, and she needed to know what he had in mind.

“What do you want with me, Your Grace?” she asked. “A good-looking, rich man like you surely doesn’t need to buy a wife. Can’t you have any woman you want?”

He lowered his newspaper, his amber eyes as dark as chestnuts, watching her. “Like I said, you will do fine.”

“For what, my lord?”

“For what I have in mind.”

She rolled her eyes. “And what’s that?”

“To put you in silks and the latest fashions and tell the whole ton you’re my wife.”

With that, he reopened his newspaper and buried his nose in it as though she didn’t exist.

The charm he’d had over her evaporated. He couldn’t be the gallant protector she’d thought he was. He had bought her for his own purposes, whatever they were. They had nothing to do with him being kind to her or his valor. He was as arrogant and selfish as any aristocrat. He may be even worse than her husband.

She couldn’t see his face behind the double sheet of paper. It was perfectly ironed, like any gentleman’s, and it was like a slap in her face. She deserved more than that. Swineherd’s wife or not, she had the right to know what he had planned for her.

And if he was going to ignore her like that, as though she were a piece of furniture he had just purchased, she’d annoy him. She’d dig information out of him whatever it took. After all, this was her future, and it was quite unfair that he was not giving her the information that would define her whole life.

She lifted herself from the seat and shifted her bottom to the opposite seat and plumped herself right next to him. His profile was like a Roman statue against the backdrop of the sunlit window.

“But why do you need me for that? To put someone in silks and the latest fashions and tell the whole ton she’s your wife, you don’t need a swineherd’s wife.”

From behind the newspaper came a lazy, cold reply. “I fail to see why it concerns you. Please let me read in peace.”

She scoffed. Quite unladylike. Perfect for a farmer’s wife. “It concerns me because it’s my life.”

He lowered the newspaper to his lap and looked at her, his amber glare as sharp as shards. “Please return to the opposite seat, madam.”

“Not until you tell me the whole truth. And where are your manners?”

“My manners?” His upper lip crawled to his nose. “My manners are being suffocated by your horrendous stink.”

Ah! Finally, she’d gotten him with something. She’d roused some sort of feeling from the cold, unyielding duke. Pig’s shit—that was what had him react! A smile blossomed on her lips.

Giving him a wee bit of a break, she returned to the opposite seat and looked out the window. They drove through the woods now, trees and bushes passing by.

Completely uninterested in the landscape outside, the duke opened his newspaper again. “Please refrain from speaking to me again until we arrive and you have bathed.”

“No,” she said. “I will not let you scare me with your gorgeous, handsome demeanor until you tell me your reason for buying me. What if you’re a murderer?”

He raised his brows at her over the newspaper. “You think I’d tell you if I were a murderer?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Well, I’m not one. I’m also trying not to breathe too much.”

She was not trying to breathe, either. She hid her smile. “So tell me, then. Why?”