he didn’t give a rap what she thought of him. In fact, on occasion, he’d gone so far out of his way to show her how unimportant she was that he’d even disgusted himself.
Yet she could still wound him by shuddering in genuine horror at the prospect of marrying him.
And suddenly, he couldn’t think of any sweeter form of revenge than actually doing it.
Marrying her.
Because, for the rest of their lives, if ever she felt inclined to look down her nose at him, or complain about his lax morals, or...anything...he’d be able to point out that it was entirely her own fault she was shackled to such a reprobate.
His lips quirked. He couldn’t help it. She could be his, now. For as long as they both would live, if he dug in his heels. And she would have nobody to blame but herself.
Because she’d lost her temper and swung that punch a split second before he’d made his own move. Since, he’d reasoned, she couldn’t think any less of him than she clearly did, since he hadn’t thought he had anything to lose, he’d decided he might as well kiss her. It would, he’d thought, have taken the wind out of her sails. Taken her down a peg or two.
Thank God for her temper. Because now she was the instigator of the scene which had fatally compromised her and he was the magnanimous one, stepping in to save the day. Rather than playing the role of villain for the rest of their lives, the villain who’d ruined her reputation by kissing her in the corridor of a public inn, he would always be able to claim the moral high ground.
He could hardly wait.
‘You don’t really mean that, do you?’ She lifted a tragic face to his.
He hadn’t. Not to begin with. Announcing she was his fiancée had simply been the only thing he could think of, on the spur of the moment, that would both extricate her from her immediate difficulty and thoroughly annoy her at one and the same time. But now that he’d considered carrying through on his threat, the advantages were becoming clearer by the second.
Especially since he’d kissed her.
Because he’d been longing to get her into his bed for years. Even after she’d rejected him, she’d continued to fascinate him. He’d watched, with mounting frustration, as she’d blossomed from captivating girl to alluring woman. Always dancing just beyond his reach.
But now she was sitting on his lap. And once he got that ring on her finger, she’d have no excuse for refusing him. Not considering the vows she was going to make, in church. Vows which she, with her heightened religious conscience, would consider binding.
‘Don’t I?’
She peered at him as though trying to understand him. Really understand him, rather than jumping to conclusions based on the lies and half-truths fed to her by the likes of Clement.
‘Well, I rather thought,’ she said, ‘that you only said it because it was the one thing that would guarantee getting me out of hot water. And while I appreciate the, um, brilliance of your quick thinking—’
‘Trying to turn me up sweet?’
‘No,’ she said with exasperation. ‘I was trying to give credit where it is due. But since I know you cannot really wish to marry me—’
‘Can’t I? And just why would that be?’
‘You are going to make me spell it out?’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Very well, then. Since you seem determined to amuse yourself at my expense today, then I will freely admit that you ought to marry someone who is all the things I am not. Someone beautiful, for a start.’
And Clare was not beautiful, not in the conventional sense.
‘Someone with all the social graces.’
She certainly didn’t have any of those.
‘Someone with a title and money, and, oh, all the things I haven’t got. But because of my temper, my awful temper, you have told people you are going to marry me.’ Her eyes swam with regret and penitence. ‘But I’m sure, if we put our heads together, we can come up with another plan, an even better plan, to stop you from having to go through with it. We could perhaps tell everyone that we discovered we do not suit, for example, or—’
‘Put our heads together?’ Everything in him rose up in revolt. If he thought she could wriggle out of this, she had another think coming. There was only one way he wanted their heads close together. ‘Do you mean, like this?’ he said, before closing the gap between their mouths and stopping her foolish objections with a kiss.
She made a wholly feminine sound of surrender and fell into his kiss as though she was starving for the taste of his lips. With a sort of desperation that made him suspect she intended it as a farewell. As though she was giving in to the temptation to sample what she considered forbidden fruit just one last time.
At length, she pulled away and turned her face into his neck. She was panting. Her cheeks were flushed.
But when she eventually sat up, her face wore an expression of resolve.
‘That was not what I had in mind,’ she said, unnecessarily. Though it was pretty much all that was in his mind and had been from the moment he’d pulled her onto his lap.
‘Poor Clare,’ he murmured, without a shred of sympathy. ‘So determined to escape my evil clutches...’
She went rigid, as though his words reminded her she’d been making precious little attempt to escape him from the moment he’d taken her in his arms. And bit down on her lower lip, the lip he’d been enjoying kissing so much not a moment before. And with which she’d kissed him back.
Her expression of chagrin made him want to laugh.
She nearly always made him want to laugh.
It was a large part of why he’d proposed to her that first time. He’d just endured one of those days that were such a factor of life in Kelsham Park. His mother barricaded in her room. His father out shooting. The staff tiptoeing around as though scared of rousing a sleeping beast. Life had seemed so bleak. And then there she’d been, so full of life, and zeal, and all the things that were lacking in his. And she’d made him laugh. When he’d thought there was nothing of joy to be found anywhere in his life.
And he’d wanted to capture it. Capture her. So that he could...warm himself at the flame that was her spirit.
The proposal had burst from his lips before he’d thought it through. But then, as now, the moment he’d spoken he’d wanted it to become real. Wanted her by his side. In his life. Keeping the chill of Kelsham Park at bay.
He cleared away the lump that came to his throat, so that his voice would not betray the swell of emotion which had just taken him unawares.
‘So determined to escape me. Yet you are the only woman to whom I have ever made an honourable proposal.’
‘What?’ She looked completely flummoxed by that.
‘Yes.
