'I hate to interrupt you in full flow, but I'm curious to know just what precisely you object to. Gibber must run in the family,' he added half to himself.
She gasped. 'You can ask that?' You manoeuvred me into making that phone call seem legitimate.'
'Considering you've been raised at Charlcot, I'm amazed how naive you can be sometimes, Emmy. I simply told the truth.'
'Truth,' she muttered disparagingly. 'You wouldn't know it if you fell over it. That was a complete fabrication from beginning to end.'
'I recall distinctly that you said you'd prefer to marry me than Gavin.'
She snorted with derision. 'That's so typical of you. Take everything out of context, distort it.'
'It set me thinking,' he continued as though she hadn't spoken. 'What a good idea it would be, marriage to a Stapely, a member of the inner circle.' His sensual mouth curved cynically as he slipped off the bland mask; his eyes were searingly blue and as steely as his taut expression. 'It seems an ideal solution all round.'
She shuddered and stared at him with growing incredulity. Serious…it wasn't possible…not even Luke was that fixated, or unrealistic. 'Not from where I'm standing.' She gave a faint laugh. 'I feel stupid just acting as if you're serious, Luke; naive I might be, but I've not got a drop of martyr's blood in my veins. I'd never, in any circumstances, marry you.'
'You were going to marry Gavin.'
'I love---' she began, only to be interrupted furiously.
'Fiction and you know it,' he bit back, his eyes examining her face with clinical detachment.
She couldn't bring herself to deny this; she never had loved Gavin, but that didn't make her willing to contemplate such an impossibly ridiculous proposition.
'You might have succeeded in bringing me here, Luke, but marrying me against my will might prove taxing even for your ingenuity. The whole thing is preposterous.' She couldn't quite believe he meant any of it. Any second now he would crack a joke—this was all part of his warped sense of humour.
'I don't find you boring, Emmy,' he said slowly, reflectively, his tone low, intimate, with husky, swirling depths that were incredibly seductive. A corner of his mouth lifted as she wrapped her arms around her body. 'And sexually speaking I find you one of the most sensual creatures alive. While it lasted, infant, we could have pleasure.'
She gave a startled gasp. His voice…just his voice had almost been enough to bewitch her, and then the pragmatic 'while it lasted' had awoken her to the criminal folly of listening to the sensual cravings of her wilful body.
'This is to be temporary, then, this marriage,' she said, carefully neutral.
'Most are, it seems to me,' he said harshly, frowning slightly at her sudden self-possession.
'And I take it liaisons—discreet, of course—would be acceptable.' She felt a small surge of confidence at his blank look. 'You see, although Gavin and I may not be meant to be lifetime partners, he was a very… satisfactory lover,' she announced gravely. 'I'm sure we could come to some civilised arrangement.'
She heard the sound of his teeth grate against one another and saw the gleaming, predatory expression steal across his face. 'My wife won't require another lover.'
He was awesome, she had to admit it. Something in her thrilled to the hawkish, wholly aggressive expression that had effectively blotted out the urbane, self-possessed man she knew. 'And I could never be satisfied by one man.' She was playing with fire, but it would be worth it. How dared he assume she was his for the taking, that she would be stupid enough to fall in with whatever scheme he proposed?
She was sure he was going to explode as he assimilated her provocative statement in stony silence. The austere disapproval transformed in the blink of an eye to laughter, sudden genuine laughter, deep and attractive. 'You're right, Emily, that wasn't a very attractive proposal. You were piqued…'
Piqued she was, appalled, insulted, though perhaps it had been ambitious to play games with the master of the art. 'You really are serious, aren't you?' Finally she was convinced. 'You'd actually marry because it's the most sophisticated form of torture you can conceive.'
His eyes narrowed at the look of disgust that contorted her features. 'What other reason could there be?'
His tone eluded her; he was evincing strong emotions she couldn't quite track to their source. 'I take it that was a rhetorical question,' she said bitterly. His words had the ability to stab.
He smiled and she immediately knew she was going to hate what he said. 'I wonder what Daddy would say if he knew his concern over his precious little girl was four years late? What, Emily, would Daddy think if he knew his little girl had slid into my bed all those years ago…right under his roof?' He watched the colour seep from her face and his expression didn't alter. 'I think on balance it would rate even higher in the humiliation stakes than marrying me now. What do you think?' he enquired.