Page 3 of A Virgin for the Cruel Duke

“Just as much? Am I not more?” she asked, tilting her head to one side curiously. “After all, shall I not be leaving my family home and all those I love to go to yours?”

Stephen frowned at her words. The sharpness of her wit was something he might have enjoyed at another time, in another place. If she were not a Barnes, he might even have been enticed by her. But here in the drawing room of this accursed family all he felt was vexation. One simple answer was all that he wanted. “And you will be given wealth and a home of your own in return,” he said. “You will be a duchess. Many would say you are the winner here.”

“Is there a winner here?”

It was so strikingly close to his own thoughts that Stephen was begrudgingly impressed. She was such a small, drab thing and yet her words were so fast, her wit so quick to match his own that he had to admire her for it, for all that she was driving him mad.

“Is there a loser?”

“I don’t know, Your Grace,” Lady Elizabeth said, smiling at him. It was the faintest raising of the corners of her lips. It was asmuch of a lie as anything her father had ever said. “Do you think of me as a prize?”

He almost snorted and had to cough to cover it. “Lady Elizabeth,” he said finally. “I will not insult you by using the usual forms of a proposal and pretending that this is not something you expected or that you are unaware of my merits as a prospect. We are sensible people. I am asking for your hand in marriage, you know how much rides on this arrangement. What do you say to the matter?”

He did not go to one knee or protest romantic love. He felt that she would scorn him behind those sharp, fierce eyes. He felt that it would be something she would detest and moreover he would never get down on a knee before a Barnes. She thought for a moment, and then laughed - a hard noise so loud and sudden that it shocked him. When she spoke, her voice was cold and mocking.

“You speak as though I have a choice in the matter,Your Grace, and yet we both know that my father and you have already decided it all for me. At least do me the respect of not pretending otherwise.”

Stephen felt himself flush in anger, the sharpness of her words inflaming him almost as much as the fire in her eyes. He took a great step towards her, pleased as she backed up, retreated from him.

Yet she never looked away, her chin tilted back defiantly as he walked slowly towards her, backing her up until she was trapped against a wall, his arms caging her on either side.

“Have a care, Elizabeth,” he said lowly, leaning in so that his breath was hot in her ear. “You should not try to provoke my anger.”

“Or what,” Elizabeth said, her eyes blazing. “What shall you do, Your Grace?”

He caught her chin, bringing their gazes together like lightning striking. “You will not like the consequences if you do,” he said.

He could smell her scent, something light and barely perfumed and he could feel the heat of her, like a fluttering bird. He looked down on her cheeks and could see a flush spreading up from her neck, down past her fichu.

How far might it go down her body?

The thought caught him, pinned him, made his heart beat fast in his chest. What she was doing to him made him more aware of himself than he had ever been in his life, more overwhelmed, more - out of control. He could touch her cheek and feel her skin beneath his fingers, he could…

Stephen stepped back abruptly and bowed, composing himself. “I will see you at the wedding, Madam.”

He turned on his heel and stormed from the room. He was not going to lose himself to her. She was a means to an end and that was all. That was all she would ever be.

CHAPTER 2

“Will there be sweetmeats?”

“There will be cakes and sweets aplenty, Annie, now do get down from there and help me with this,” Mrs. Adams said, her kind face contorted with the effort of not laughing. “It is our Miss Elizabeth’s wedding day, after all. We must be getting on!”

“Will all the ladies be dressed in lace and frills?” Annie said, grinning and spinning on one foot. She was stood on the chair at Elizabeth’s dresser and was trying her hardest to make a fichu look like a bridal veil. “And will there be enough flowers that I could have some?”

“Now, none of that,” Mrs. Adams said, looking over at Sally with a raised eyebrow that said she thought her older daughter might have been filling her youngest’s head with fancies. “Any flowers will belong to Lady Elizabeth and she’ll get to say what happens to them.”

“I would be glad to send you some, Annie,” Elizabeth said. “But I do not think I shall have the time.” In secret she rather suspected that she did not in fact get to say what happened to anything, but it would do no good to spoil the girl’s fun by saying so.

Sally smiled at her mother and ducked around Elizabeth to pull her little sister down and take the gloves and fichu off her so they could continue putting the finishing touches on the packing.

Their laughter was so familiar to Elizabeth that it was like a hug, and that made her feel all the more like there was a knife going into her stomach with every second that she got closer to leaving forever.

Annie had been so little not so long ago, just a tiny little slip of a girl and here she was already shot up to Elizabeth’s height, a strapping girl of three and ten. She had her own duties for the family, she was almost a young woman now.

What else might Elizabeth miss of her life now she was going away?

She was standing in the center of all the bustle and chaos staring out the window but she was caught in the middle of thoughts of the only family she really cared about and how she couldn’t take them with her or even come visit them, not properly.

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