Page 95 of The Trouble with Anna

His arms tightened around her and all his teasing fell away. “Enough for you to be completely independent. Enough so you can pension Chatham’s servants and build a stable of your own. Enough so that when I ask you to marry me again, you’ll know it’s not out of guilt, or, god forbid, pity.”

Anna’s breath caught.

A muscle in Julian’s jaw tightened painfully. “I don’t think I can wait any longer, Anna. Buy your horses, load your servants down with gold, dig up all my estates and replace them with paddocks for all I care. Do what you like, so long as you do itas my wife. Marry me, Anna.”

A quicksilver thrill shot through Anna. She could feel her skin flush and her pulse beating hard in her neck, but she couldn’t look away.

“Well?” Julian demanded.

She opened her mouth helplessly, but couldn’t seem to muster a response. The silence grew and grew and still the words wouldn’t come. So, ever a woman of action, she answered the only way she knew how. Anna took two fistfuls of his greatcoat and lifted herself up into his kiss.

Julian’s mouth hovered above hers, just out of reach. “No. Answer me. Say you’ll marry me, you wretch.”

“Yes! Yes, of course I will.”

Something peculiar washed over Julian’s face, as if the sheer magnitude of his relief buckled him. In a blink, the strange expression was gone, replaced by a look so feral it chased everything else away.

“Stay with me tonight.”

The air sparked between them.

Anna’s body trembled, and she tensed her muscles and forced them to still. It was a day for courage, not for fear. She swallowed. “Yes, I’ll stay with you tonight.”

CHAPTER39

JULIAN HAD ANNA UP ONher horse and clattering out onto the cobblestones of Mayfair before she could blink.

Yes.

Yes to marriage.

Yes to much more.

Tonight.

Oh god, what have I done?

Yeshad seemed like such a good answer—the only answer—when Julian’s hands were around her waist, his mouth achingly close to hers, and all his heat drawing her in. But now, with the dark and cold nipping at her, Anna had questions.

What, exactly, was he going to do to her?

Or was it with her?

Anna frowned. She was pretty sure she was supposed to participate, although what she was meant to do, exactly…

She gave a hiss of frustration.You know what to do! For heaven’s sake, you breed horses!Her mind flashed to Decimus, his hooves slicing into the mares beneath him, the great chunks he bit out of their necks.

Stop it! Julian’s not going to eat you!

Although Charlotte had once mentioned something about—

Anna choked, like a cat expelling a hairball.

Julian turned toward her, his eyes liquid heat, his voice a dark rumble. “We’re almost there.”

She nodded weakly.

The mouth of an alley gaped ahead of them and they drew up beside it. A massive limestone wall loomed over them and the flames of the distant streetlights hitting against it cast the alley into even greater gloom.

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