do not want the kind of friendship you are offering me,’ she snapped. ‘Poor I may be, but I would never, ever...’
His brows snapped down. ‘Nor would I, ever, make a gently bred girl the kind of offer you seem to think I’m about to make. What kind of man do you think I am?’
She flushed. Felt her insides skid about as much as when she’d tried to walk a straight path on the ice. ‘I...I don’t know what kind of man you are, that’s just the point. I just cannot see why you should concern yourself over someone like me. I’m nobody. And it’s not as if I’m even pretty. And you’re so handsome and dashing you could have any girl you want at the snap of your fingers.’
In mortification, her hand flew to her mouth, though it was too late to stop the words that had tumbled out.
And letting go of the branch proved to be as reckless as speaking her mind. For her left leg promptly shot off to the right while her right leg went straight forward. She had no choice but to grab hold of the front of Lord Havelock’s coat, which had the effect of spinning them both right round, then landing her flush up against the tree trunk, with her wedged between it and the solid bulk of his body.
‘So. You think I’m so handsome I could have any girl I wanted, do you?’
‘I didn’t mean it!’ She uncurled her fingers and gave his coat a firm shove. It only had the effect of propelling her harder against the tree. ‘At least,’ her honesty compelled her to admit, ‘I didn’t mean to say it out loud.’
‘But you did say it,’ he replied with a grin, closing the small gap she’d opened up between them. ‘Which gives me hope. I was beginning to think I’d never break through your defences.’
‘B-break through my defences? Why would you want to do that? And as for saying never...why, we only met a handful of days ago.’
‘And yet the attraction was instant. And powerful. You feel it, too. Though you are trying to resist it.’
She hadn’t thought it possible to feel more embarrassed, but hearing him lay her innermost soul bare in that way, when she hadn’t even worked it all out for herself, was utterly mortifying.
‘You don’t need to resist it, Miss Carpenter. For I want you, too. Very much. And just so there is no misunderstanding about it, I mean, as my wife.’
It was just as well she was wedged between the tree, and his body, because the shock of hearing him propose took all the strength from her legs.
‘Your wife? But you cannot!’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we know nothing about each other.’
‘We know enough,’ he said, giving her another one of those melting looks. She was suddenly very aware of how close they were. And how their breath, rising on the air in two plumes of white vapour, mingled and merged not very far up into one cloud.
‘Let me prove it to you.’
He began to lower his head. Her breath hitched in her throat. He was going to attempt to kiss her. And there was no way to escape. If he let go of her, she would fall over.
That was the moment she realised he wasn’t actually holding her. No, she was the one who was clinging to him, or at least, to his coat. But it was only so that she wouldn’t fall over. Not because...
Not because...
And anyway, if she really, really didn’t want him to kiss her, all she would have to do was turn her head away and his lips would land relatively harmlessly on her cheek.
But she couldn’t move her head. She stayed frozen in place while his mouth came closer and closer to hers. Until his lips touched hers. Pressed, and caressed, and coaxed her own apart. And then their breath was mingling not five feet up in the air, but in her very mouth. And the swirling sensation went right down through her stomach, getting hotter, and hotter, until she wondered that the ice beneath their feet did not melt and suck them down into a vortex that would drown them both.
She’d never felt anything like it in her life. So powerfully all-consuming. So compelling that she didn’t care if carrying on experiencing it did melt the ice and she drowned.
With a whimper, she pressed up against him and slid her arms round his waist. His own went round hers, so that she was no longer the one clinging to him, but they were clinging to each other.
‘So,’ he breathed, ending the most wonderful encounter she’d ever had in her life, ‘you will marry me, then?’
‘What?’ Hearing him persist in talking of marriage felt like plunging right through the ice into the black void beneath. ‘No!’
She tried to pull out of his arms, skidded and had no choice but to grab hold of him again.
‘What do you mean no?’ He frowned down at her. ‘You enjoyed that kiss as much as I did.’
‘That is not the point.’
‘Then what is the point? What can you possibly want from life, if you can turn up your nose at a proposal from a dashing, handsome, and I’ll have you know, solvent peer of the realm? Who could have any other woman for the snapping of my fingers?’
She sucked in a short, shocked breath. How cruel of him to fling her very own words back in her face.
And his face was hard now, harder than she’d ever seen it. Gone was the mask of affability he’d worn when he’d been trying to win her round. Gone the charming smile and the warmth in his eyes. It had been replaced by something with which she was far more familiar.
Cold, hard anger.
Oh, but it was just as well she’d seen this side of him, before it was too late. Before she’d forgotten just how miserable her father had made her mother, within the cage that their marriage had become. She would never, ever, let a man bully her and break her down. Nor coerce her with...with deceitfully delightful kisses!
This time when she tried to break from his hold, he let her go. As though he’d recognised the determination in her eyes and realised it was over.
‘The only sort of man I would even consider marrying,’ she retorted, ‘not that I have any intention of doing anything so stupid, would be...would be...a sailor!’
‘A what?’
‘You heard me. A sailor.’
‘Why the deuce would you prefer a sailor to me?’
‘Because a sailor,’ she snapped, almost beside herself with fury at the way she was having to hang on to a tree merely to maintain her upright position, while he was standing there, hands on his hips, looking down his nose at her with the kind of disdain only an aristocrat could ever muster, ‘would hand over his money, and go off to sea for months, perhaps even years, and leave me in peace to live exactly as I wished!’
There. That had done it. He’d stalk away now—or rather skate away—without a backward glance. And never deign to so much as recognise her if he saw her in the street.
But to her astonishment, he did no such thing. On the contrary,
