effect, and it worked. Owen knew nothing about fashion and cared less. He had an innate taste and wore his clothes with the sort of careless elegance that his valet deplored. Tess Darent, he thought, deployed her wardrobe like a weapon. She knew the value of appearance and the way it could give you protection as well as confidence.
He walked towards her very slowly, very purposefully, his footsteps ringing on the bare wooden boards of the library floor. There were no deep rugs or carpets here to soften the austerity of the room. Rothbury House had been woefully neglected under his cousin Peregrine, who had been widowed for years and had seldom been in England. All the Rothbury estates were in disrepair and would take thousands to renovate. Marriage to an heiress was an obvious solution, as his aunt Martindale had pointed out. If he wed and produced an heir, she had said, she would settle the Rothbury debts and pay for the estates to be restored.
Lady Martindale would not approve of Tess Darent as a bride. The idea of marrying a woman who would incur his great-aunt’s deepest disapproval pleased Owen, a small act of rebellion when he was hamstrung by so much of his new inheritance. It was not a good reason for marriage. He knew it. Yet it appealed to him.
He stopped when he was no more than a couple of feet away from Tess. Her violet-blue eyes met his very directly. There was now no nervousness in them. Owen wondered if he had imagined the tension he thought he had sensed in her. But no. He felt it again, and saw the way in which she stepped back, almost imperceptibly, to put more distance between them. She was withdrawing from him. Evidently she was not comfortable with physical proximity. Which was very odd indeed if the rumours about her were true.
“I doubt most men would see marriage to you as a prize if they are not permitted to sleep with you,” Owen said drily. “Forgive my plain speaking,” he added, seeing the flash of anger in her eyes. “I always find it best to be quite frank in discussions of an intimate nature.”
“I have never thought of marriage as an intimate matter,” Tess snapped. The pink colour had come into her face now. “I fear you have a sadly colonial view of the institution, Lord Rothbury. Marriage in the ton is for profit alone. You profit from my beauty and connections and I gain the protection of your name.”
“Forgive me again,” Owen said, “but is that an equal bargain?”
“No,” Tess said, “the bargain favours you by far. I would be the one compromising by marrying a mere viscount.”
“One does not need to possess a thoroughbred horse to admire its beauty,” Owen said.
Tess raised a haughty brow. “I beg your pardon? Is one of us an animal in your analogy?”
“And as for connections in the ton,” Owen continued, “I do not value them.”
“That is short-sighted of you,” Tess said. “So short-sighted I doubt you have the vision to appreciate your thoroughbred.”
Owen smiled. Oh, he appreciated her. She was beautiful enough to turn any man’s head. And at the very least, he thought, if he married her he would never be bored. Conversation with Tess Darent had the astringency of a dose of salts. Though no doubt she would say that a fashionable husband and wife spoke to one another as little as possible and preferably only via the servants.
“And your reputation?” he said. “Many men might balk at taking a wife with the sort of reputation for sin one would normally hope for in a mistress.”
Once again he had been brutally frank and he awaited her response with interest. Her defences were so perfectly in place, however, that he could discern not one flicker of emotion in her: no shock, no anger, nothing. She looked him over with that detached blue gaze he was starting to know.
“You,” she said, after a moment, “have a reputation as a pirate and a mercenary soldier. Most women would prefer such a man as a lover rather than a husband.”
Touché.
Owen inclined his head. “I was not a pirate, though I suppose you could say I was a mercenary soldier,” he admitted.
“Whereas I have never been a whore,” Tess said. The coolness of her response made him smile. She certainly had nerve. “And were we to wed,” she continued, “I would behave with the utmost propriety. I am marrying to try to rescue my reputation, so there would be no point in my sinking it further.”
“I feel I must point out,” Owen said, “that I found you climbing out of a brothel window last night.”
Her pansy eyes lit with mockery. “We were not betrothed last night, Lord Rothbury.”
He had to give her credit. She played the coolest hand of anyone he knew. Which was perfectly in keeping with a woman who might lead a secret life as a radical sympathiser, who carried a pistol in her reticule and who might well have been in Mrs. Tong’s brothel for purposes other than a night of debauchery.
He was intrigued. Owen admitted it to himself. He had a low threshold of boredom, the product of a lifetime of constantly moving onward and seeking new challenges. He had gone to sea when he was in his teens and had spent his life exploring, fighting and carving out a future. He liked unpredictability and risk. It was what made him feel alive.
Tess Darent was enough of a challenge for one man for an entire lifetime.
“Of course,” Tess said, very casually, “there is also my fortune. I am accounted very rich indeed.”
That got his attention. Owen realised that he had been vaguely aware that she was a wealthy widow but had no idea whether that meant she was merely plump in the pocket or wildly affluent.
“How rich?” he said.
Once again her blue gaze mocked his directness. “Over one hundred and fifty thousand pounds rich,” Tess said, frank as he. “Is that sufficient to tempt you, my lord, where my other advantages do not?”
Truth was he had already been deeply tempted. Now her words stole his breath.
“Extraordinary how very attractive a lady may suddenly become when she is adorned in gold,” Tess said, seeing his expression. “Now I am become a gift horse, in your analogy, or possibly a goose laying golden eggs.” But for all the dryness of her words there was a flicker of something else in her eyes that looked like disappointment. Owen wondered if she had wanted him to accept her for herself alone. It seemed unlikely that she would care.
“I cannot deny that a fortune of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds is a strong inducement,” he said.
“Well, at least you would never lie to me and pretend you cared more for my charming person than you did for my money,” Tess said, still dry. “You may be famously blunt, Lord Rothbury, but actually I prefer it. It saves trouble in the end.”
“Then perhaps we will deal well together,” Owen said. Their eyes met and he felt a flare of awareness, an attraction that was most certainly for her rather than for her fortune.
“You mentioned that you wished to marry to save your reputation,” he said. He gestured to a chair. “Why don’t you tell me more?”
She hesitated. There was real vulnerability in her face now and it was so unexpected that it touched Owen more than he wanted, more than he had expected. He had wondered if she had been using her desire to repair her reputation as a convenient excuse for marriage but now he saw that she was sincere. The
