Page 31 of Bound By her Earl

“Immaterial,” he said shortly. “It was you there with me in that corner, and that means it is your name that is inextricably linked with mine in the annals of gossip.”

“So we are meant to link them in the eyes of God as well?”

She asked the question like it was ridiculous, but he chose to answer it at face value.

“Yes,” he said, aiming for gentleness but probably missing the mark. “It’s the only way to preserve your reputation.”

“Oh, whocaresabout my dratted reputation?” she exclaimed. “I was going to be a spinster anyway! I wasfinewith being a spinster!”

Benedict found, to his surprise, thathecared about her reputation, but he felt more compelled to address her last comment than to answer her question.

“Why?” he asked curiously. Most young women—not that he knew any of them on a particularly close basis—dreaded the specter of spinsterhood and treated it as a form of social death from which one could never recover.

There were exceptions, of course. There were bluestockings and those who agitated for women’s rights, who protested marriage on principle. There were women who preferred the company of other women. There were wealthy heiresses with unentailed estates headed their way who merely had to wait out their fathers to achieve the kind of freedom that most women could only imagine—and many of these, he allowed, still married anyway.

Even so, Miss Rutley fit none of these categories. She wasn’t overly rich though not destitute either. She wasn’t a bluestocking.

And she had enjoyedhiscompany, at the very least, if the needy moans that had come from her were any indication.

But, again, he put those thoughts aside. His trousers were far too tight for such recollections, and besides, it would not do to become, ah,intriguedby Miss Rutley’s person in her father’s house.

She stopped walking suddenly, her skirts pressing momentarily against the shape of her legs which did nothing to help Benedict’sintrigue.

“Why what?” she demanded.

“Why were you so happy to become a spinster?” he pressed.

She waved a hand like this question was the height of foolishness and returned to her pacing. Benedict knew, though, that the dismissal of a question rarely indicated it was irrelevant—rather the opposite.

He grasped her by the wrist, pulling her to a halt. She looked at him with wide, wide eyes.

“Why were you content to become a spinster?” he asked again, voice quieter, more probing.

For a moment, he thought he had her then her eyes flashed.

“Because nobody had asked me to marry him, My Lord,” she said with the patient tones of someone explaining something very simple to a very small child.

Benedict tightened his grip on her wrist, not enough to cause any discomfort but enough that she couldn’t fail to notice. He had a suspicion that his little bride was used to managing everyone around her. Well, now was as good a time as any for her to discover that she wouldn’t be managinghim.

“That’s not what I asked,” he said quietly, his eyes fixed on hers. Her lovely hazel eyes, he couldn’t help but notice, faded seamlessly from brown to gold with the barest hints of green towards their centers. “I asked why you werecontentwith this.”

She sighed, and he felt the surrender in that sigh, felt it reverberate through his touch on her wrist and settle, curled up with contentment, somewhere inside him.

“I sought a husband so that I could serve as chaperone to my sisters,” she said. This was nothing he hadn’t already gathered, yet it still felt like a confession. “I did not succeed. Yet, when my sisters debuted, only the sternest sticklers sniffed at my chaperoning them. So, it turns out that I did succeed after all.” She shrugged but only with the arm not held in his grasp. “Why should I be sorry about that?”

His thumb moved over her inner wrist, across the soft skin and thrumming pulse there. She remained still, but he saw her reaction in the widening of her pupils.

“Well, perhaps,” he said, his voice dropping low, “you did not only want things for your sisters.” His thumb stroked again. “Perhaps you wanted something for yourself; perhaps you still do. After all, Miss Rutley, could youreallybe content with spinsterhood after you melted so beautifully in my arms?”

He hadn’t consciously been aiming to seduce his little bride here in her front parlor—and good bloody thing, too, because she did not melt into him again when he referenced their kiss. Instead, she gasped in affront and yanked her wrist out of his grasp.

He told himself he was not disappointed.

“I—” she said, looking at him reproachfully. “You—” She huffed out an irritated breath. “You should not mention such things,” she said imperiously.

It was a sickness, really, the perverse entertainment he got from needling her.

“Why not?” He took a step toward her. She took a step back in turn, but a settee got in her way. “You cannot tell me you didn’t like it.”

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