“Good heavens,” Lady Margaret breathed and gripped her husband’s arms, as if seeking support from swooning. “A very sensible arrangement, Your Grace. Your sense of honor does you credit.” She bobbed her head so vigorously the high purple turban with the plume feathers attached was in the precarious position of falling.
Adel was too stupefied to do anything but stare at the duke.
“Leave us,” he commanded to the room at large. “I wish to have a few words with Miss Adeline.”
Irritation bubbled in her when her stepmother and father bowed and scrambled out. Lord Gladstone nodded and he too made to depart.
They were leaving her alone with the man?
“Your Grace, please—” Her teeth snapped together at the gentle closing of the door. She closed her eyes for precious seconds. “You cannot wish to marry me.” For some reason she had believed he would refuse her father’s demands, not that he had even given Papa the chance to bluster. The duke did not seem like a man easily intimidated.
His eyebrow lifted slightly. “I do.”
She searched his gaze frantically, and found nothing but sincerity. “But why?” she spluttered.
“You were found in my bed, and I had been seconds away from drawing you underneath me and stealing your virtue,” he said so dryly they could have been discussing the weather.
Embarrassment heated her cheeks. “There is no need to be so explicit,” she countered staunchly. “And my virtue was never in any danger.”
“Even if our encounter has somehow slipped your memory, I am sure you remember our host and hostess discovering us.”
He said it as if they had conspired to have a clandestine rendezvous. She narrowed her eyes. “I feel compelled to point out I was in the middle of the room when Lady Gladstone entered.”
Provoking amusement lit his eyes, then disappeared so swiftly she wondered if she had imagined it. “We are compromised and therefore we must marry. I will not tarnish my honor by walking away.”
Though he said the words lightly, instinctively she recognized that being honorable was important to him. But how could he commit to something as permanent as marriage for honor? How could Adel consent when a man who loved her was probably eagerly waiting to speak with her? She was clasping her hands so tightly together her fingers hurt. “You do realize I believed you were someone else.”
He prowled closer, his expression inscrutable. “Did you?”
She swallowed, taking small retreating steps away from him, desperate to maintain a particular distance between them. “Yes. A Mr. James Atwood. We are close in temperament and age, not that I am saying you are old, Your Grace.” Heat burned her and she was sure her face was as red as the lobster she had eaten earlier. “Mr. Atwood… Ahh…he offered for me, but my father said no. It was his chamber I had intended to enter.”
The duke frowned briefly. “I have a clear memory of you telling me I felt harder, tasted sweet, that you felt hot and wet. I put forth the argument you knew I was not your young Mr. Atwood, Miss Adeline.”
The bloody scoundrel! It was not the mark of a gentleman to so baldly and arrogantly remind a lady of her lapse in judgment. Worse, she was alarmed at the possibility that he was right. “You are mistaken, Your Grace,” she said frostily.
The dratted man smiled, though it did not reach his eyes. “You knew I was not Mr. Atwood the instant you touched me.”
Her head swam with the humiliating truth of his words. She hadn’t been sure. But he couldn’t know…could he? The minute she had tumbled into his powerful frame, the masculine fragrance of sandalwood and a cologne she had never smelled before had wrapped around her senses, confusing her. In desperation she had reached out, feeling and caressing, and had been met with a hardness that surprised and enthralled her. She had wondered how it was possible for the very slim and elegant Mr. Atwood to feel so male. Awareness had bloomed, but she had ignored the doubt, insisting it was nerves and too much liquid courage.
Evie and Adel’s plan had not even intended her to kiss Mr. Atwood, only to be caught standing in his chamber. But she had kissed this man, and she had known without a shadow of doubt she had sneaked into the wrong bed. The curious desire that had blazed in her blood had been alarming and wonderful. How utterly foolish she had been.
“I have no notion of what you speak. You are kind in making your generous offer, but I cannot marry you,” she whispered, sickened with the awareness of how easily she had been inconstant. She needed to see Mr. Atwood right away.
The duke’s mien shuttered even more. “You are ruined and your current state can only be rendered respectable by marriage.”
Ruined. She trembled and his silver gaze sharpened. In that moment he looked like a predator and her heart started a slow thud. Why did he want to marry her? He was not even offering a token of resistance. Shouldn’t the duke be insisting he would not bind himself to a lady with so little to recommend her?
“Why do you wish to marry me?” It’s the mad duke. The whispers from the hallway crowded her thoughts. “Are you the man the ton calls the mad duke?”
Anger flickered in his gray eyes, and a chilling smile formed on his lips. She was at a loss as to how she had thought him charming and approachable. The man before her stood cloaked in cold ruthlessness. Uncertainty gripped her in a powerful hold. “Forgive me for being thoughtless and impertinent.”
“It is one of the names I’ve been called.”
He was clearly not afflicted.
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“Why?”