Sidmouth and find transport there. It’s only a couple of miles.” She turned and marched away.
He leaped forward and caught her arm. “Wait.”
Immediately, even through her sleeve, there was that electric connection he’d felt cupping her naked breast last night. When she turned an appalled brown gaze on him, he knew she felt it, too. Much as she clearly wished she didn’t. He fought the urge to sweep the girl into his arms. The brief taste of her lips had left him hungry for more. The memory of her glorious body had kept him awake most of the night. In occasional snatches of sleep, he’d dreamed of her. Naked. Willing. Sighing her pleasure as he pounded into her.
She trembled under his hand. “You don’t need to manhandle me.”
“I mightn’t need to, but I’d certainly like to,” he purred and was rewarded with another beguiling blush. Jonas couldn’t recall the last time he’d consorted with a woman innocent enough to blush. The only females who took him on had become jaded with the banal charms of unmutilated men. “What about Roberta’s debt?”
Miss Forsythe’s self-righteousness faded. “I came to you. I—”
He struggled to ignore the fear in her face. Now wasn’t the time to develop a conscience. “No matter,” he said with a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “Roberta can sell some jewelry to repay me.”
“That’s impossible.” He felt her quivering resistance under his grasp. “William would find out.”
Ah, at last they reached the nut of the matter. “I expect he would.”
His gut twisted with reluctant remorse when tears brightened the girl’s eyes. Tears she bravely blinked away. Just as she’d bravely offered herself to save her sister. Sidonie Forsythe was a remarkable woman. Which didn’t make him one whit more inclined to send her away.
A strange moment to realize that he envied Roberta. It must be wonderful to know such steadfast love as Sidonie demonstrated. His father had undoubtedly loved him. But his father had been crippled by sorrow for his wife and then the ensuing scandal. Through a life of betrayal and rejection, Jonas had learned to mistrust love. Too often it masked self-serving interests. Too often it proved a fragile thread that snapped under the lightest pressure. And even if it was the powerful, overwhelming force the poets claimed, it brought destruction in its wake. Yet Sidonie loved her sister enough to sacrifice herself like this.
Bah, he became sentimental. He shook off the uncharacteristic self-pity and concentrated on the woman before him.
Her stare was bleak. “You know, don’t you?”
“That William takes his temper out on his wife? Not until last night. I spent hours awake, puzzling out your behavior.” And cursing like the devil that his pride exiled him to the dressing room’s minuscule cot. “Your actions only make sense if the consequences of Roberta’s seduction are dire indeed. And my cousin has always met disappointment with violence.”
With a twist of his gut, he realized his free hand crept up to touch his disfigured cheek. Hoping Miss Forsythe hadn’t noticed the betraying gesture, he forced his arm back to his side. His tone hardened. “I should have guessed.”
Poor bloody Roberta. Life as William’s wife must be hell on earth. Her frenetic gaiety in society made sense now—she was probably relieved that her husband wouldn’t cuff her in public. Jonas could almost forgive her for the way she cringed at the merest sight of him.
Miss Forsythe looked devastated. Her voice was low and shaking. “If you know…Roberta’s circumstances, chivalry insists you pardon the debt.”
His lips lengthened in an unamused smile. “Like honor, chivalry isn’t a rule in this game. Surely you know by now that I’m a bastard by nature just as I’m a bastard by birth.”
He expected her to flinch from his plain speaking, but she confronted him squarely. “If I stay here, I’ll be ruined.”
With a grunt of disgust—at himself more than her—he released her arm and prowled back to the window. She came after him, standing too near for caution and staring at him as though seeking some evidence of goodness. She’d search till doomsday. The world had turned him into a monster. He’d done his best since to live up to the description.
“You must have realized that before you arrived.” He forced himself to sound careless, no matter that her proximity stirred his senses so powerfully. The sun flooding through the window lit rich colors in her opulent hair. Flax. Gold. Auburn. “Presumably you’ve told your nearest and dearest some tale to keep them at bay over the next seven days.”
“I still don’t want my name sullied.”
“You have my word our…liaison will remain secret.” Sarcasm sharpened his voice as he continued. “Rejoice in your freedom, Miss Forsythe. This week you’re at liberty.”
“I’m not at liberty to become a libertine.”
His lips quirked at her quick response. “Actually you are.”
Sidonie Forsythe was totally unawakened—good God, how had no man seen what he had?—but she was in essence a sensual creature. He was adept enough at pleasing a woman, however grotesque his face. His deepest instincts insisted she’d relish the act once she’d conquered her qualms.
She surveyed him with unconcealed contempt. “You’d force me into your bed, knowing the only reason I’m there is to save my sister physical harm?”
“I told you—my taste doesn’t run to martyrs.”
Her gaze remained stony. “I’ll never come to you willingly.”
When he caught her hand, the jolt of heat threatened to blast his control to ashes. He drew her down beside him on the window seat. “I’d like the chance to convince you otherwise, bella.”
When had her willingness become so important? Sometime since he’d kissed her and caught a hint of how sweet she’d be in his arms when she finally gave herself up.
She tried and failed to pull away. “Only a swaggering coxcomb would hope to change my mind in a mere week. I won’t change my mind in a hundred years.”
He fought another smile. Did she feel the vivid energy flickering between them? He couldn’t believe he burned alone, for all she denied him with words. “You make the challenge so delicious.”
“I’m not…flirting with you, Mr. Merrick. I’m pointing out you waste your time with this absurd scheme.”
“In which case, you’ll return to your sister none the worse,” he said calmly, efficiently stripping her glove away. He ached to touch her skin.
The cynicism in her expression made her look older than her twenty-four years. “You don’t for one moment expect to lose, do you?”
He raised her hand to his lips and pressed a fervent kiss to her soft palm. Her scent filled his head, intoxicating him like the finest wine. “I rely upon my fatal charm.”
She tugged at her hand. Her cheeks were pink with outrage and what unfounded optimism read as grudging pleasure. “It would almost be worth staying to take you down a few pegs.”
“I’m
