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“In every little thing. I don’t expect you’ll be any different. Daddy dear is paying for your devotion, after all.”
“Daddy dear is paying for my title—there was nothing in the contract about devotion. And why are you so bent on besting the Countess of Dexter?”
“We’ve been friends since childhood, but she turned against me and stole my friends and then she stole my thunder when she came back to Boston a countess. Everyone chose her over me and treated her like the queen of England.”
“I’m sure you’ll be a great success.”
“Play your part, Westbury, and you’ll have more money than you can shake a stick at. You can open your own gambling house if you want to for all I care.”
“I hate to say it, Miss Chandler, but everyone in London knows why this marriage is taking place. They won’t believe I’m courting you in earnest.”
“Then you’ll have to sell it in a big way. I’m not asking for much. All I want is for you to make me the envy of every woman in London.”
Miss Chandler pouted, which should have been a winsome sight, except that all West could see when he looked at her was a woman who hadsomething to prove—and he was her means to prove it. Fair enough. They were using each other.
Why that gave him a qualm of conscience he didn’t want to analyze. Something to do with the speech Miss Beaton had given him in the study.
A marriage without love is a sad, empty fate.
At least he could learn a little more about Miss Chandler before she became his wife. Her eyes were a rich dark shade of brown with no flecks of amber, he noticed.
“What’s your preference in literature, Miss Chandler?”
“I don’t have much time for reading. This coiffure alone took two hours.” She patted the hair sculpted atop her head in an ornate arrangement of braids and curls.
“Your favorite food?”
“I’m partial to beefsteak with butter sauce, but my mother won’t allow me to so much as glance at butter until after our wedding.”
“Your favorite thing to do on a rainy day?”
She tilted her head quizzically. “Stay indoors and play a card game.”
He catalogued her responses to report to Miss Beaton, to prove to her that he’d done his homework and knew the woman he was to marry.
She stared at him. “You’re not going to do anything foolish, like fall in love with me, are you, dear Duke? Because I want to keep this a strictly business arrangement.”
A startled laugh escaped his lips. “You’re remarkably forthright.”
“I’m American.”
“Your mother said something about political ambitions.”
“Daddy is going to be a senator. He’ll be the next president of the United States if Mama has anything to do with it. And she’s grooming my brother to become a politician as well.”
“You have one brother and no sisters?”
“That’s right. Why all the questions?”
“I’m only trying to know you a little better.”
“I know what I want, and I go out and get it. Here’s what I want from you. I want you to court me. But it will only be playacting. You won’t fall in love with me, and I certainly won’t fall in love with you.”
West placed a hand over his heart. “I’m wounded.”
“No, you’re not. You’re just like all men. You collect broken hearts to mount on your wall. Trophies of the beasts you hunted and killed.”
“Spoken like a woman who’s had her heart broken. What was his name?”
