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‘Someone with all the social graces.’
She certainly didn’t have any of those.
‘Someone with a title and money, and, oh, all the things I haven’t got. But because of my temper, my awful temper, you have told people you are going to marry me.’ Her eyes swam with regret and penitence. ‘But I’m sure, if we put our heads together, we can come up with another plan, an even better plan, to stop you from having to go through with it. We could perhaps tell everyone that we discovered we do not suit, for example, or—’
‘Put our heads together?’ Everything in him rose up in revolt. If he thought she could wriggle out of this, she had another think coming. There was only one way he wanted their heads close together. ‘Do you mean, like this?’ he said, before closing the gap between their mouths and stopping her foolish objections with a kiss.
She made a wholly feminine sound of surrender and fell into his kiss as though she was starving for the taste of his lips. With a sort of desperation that made him suspect she intended it as a farewell. As though she was giving in to the temptation to sample what she considered forbidden fruit just one last time.
At length, she pulled away and turned her face into his neck. She was panting. Her cheeks were flushed.
But when she eventually sat up, her face wore an expression of resolve.
‘That was not what I had in mind,’ she said, unnecessarily. Though it was pretty much all that was in his mind and had been from the moment he’d pulled her onto his lap.
‘Poor Clare,’ he murmured, without a shred of sympathy. ‘So determined to escape my evil clutches…’
She went rigid, as though his words reminded her she’d been making precious little attempt to escape him from the moment he’d taken her in his arms. And bit down on her lower lip, the lip he’d been enjoying kissing so much not a moment before. And with which she’d kissed him back.
Her expression of chagrin made him want to laugh.
She nearly always made him want to laugh.
It was a large part of why he’d proposed to her that first time. He’d just endured one of those days that were such a factor of life in Kelsham Park. His mother barricaded in her room. His father out shooting. The staff tiptoeing around as though scared of rousing a sleeping beast. Life had seemed so bleak. And then there she’d been, so full of life, and zeal, and all the things that were lacking in his. And she’d made him laugh. When he’d thought there was nothing of joy to be found anywhere in his life.
And he’d wanted to capture it. Capture her. So that he could…warm himself at the flame that was her spirit.
The proposal had burst from his lips before he’d thought it through. But then, as now, the moment he’d spoken he’d wanted it to become real. Wanted her by his side. In his life. Keeping the chill of Kelsham Park at bay.
He cleared away the lump that came to his throat, so that his voice would not betray the swell of emotion which had just taken him unawares.
‘So determined to escape me. Yet you are the only woman to whom I have ever made an honourable proposal.’
‘What?’ She looked completely flummoxed by that.
‘Yes. All the others,’ he put in swiftly, before the conversation could turn to that first proposal and all the hurt that had ensued, ‘were quite happy to receive dishonourable ones.’
Her puzzled frown turned to a veritable scowl. And she made her first real attempt to get off his lap.
Since he’d already decided they’d been starting to venture rather too close to territory he would rather not revisit, he let her go. All the way to the table where she seized the teapot with what looked like relief.
But the expression faded as she set the pot down after pouring herself a cup of tea, as if she’d realised that, although she’d scored one point in escaping his lap, there was still a major battle to fight. And the look she darted him as he got to his feet and followed her to the table was one of outright desperation.
‘I, um, should thank you, then, for doing me the honour of…though actually, you didn’t propose, did you? You just informed the world that I was your fiancée.’
‘Nevertheless,’ he said, pouring himself a glass of ale, ‘you will become my wife.’
