Page 70 of Guilty Pleasures

“Of course.” There was something in his eyes, something so intense and passionate. “I remember everything.”

She could feel herself shaking inside, so afraid. She was afraid of being his passion today, but not tomorrow, afraid of how much it would hurt in the future if she let herself believe him now.

“You look lovely in it,” he went on. “Pink suits you.”

“Don’t!” she ordered in a fierce undertone. “Please do not give me these compliments.”

“Very well. I shall change the subject and thank you for your unique gift. I received it only a few hours ago, and may I say I was never so gratified to receive anything in my life.”

He did not even blink at her skeptical look or her humph of disbelief. “I speak truly, for you have been so cruel as to keep me on tenterhooks for three days, and I was beginning to lose hope of ever receiving a reply.”

“It was never my intent to cause you such suspense,” she countered. “The thing had to sit in an ice house for three days to ensure it was quite dead.”

He gave a shout of laughter, and she glanced at the blurred faces of the people around them. “Shush,” she admonished. “People are staring at us.”

“Yes, I know.” Still smiling, he said, “Words cannot express how happy I was to receive a dead, frozen ice plant. It shows me how much you care.”

“Happy?” she countered. “I am disappointed, for I was hoping your feelings would take a different direction, toward futility rather than gladness.”

“Not at all. Perhaps my reply tomorrow will be able to convince you that I live for any scrap of your favor and attention.”

“Oh, stop this, Anthony! I do not like you this way.”

“What way is that?”

“All these compliments and lavish expressions of sentiment. It smacks of insincerity, for it is so unlike you.”

“I told you I always give my opinions honestly. I would not say it if it were not the truth. Not that I blame you for thinking compliments unlike me,” he added before she could speak. “After all, I have not been the most articulate of suitors, to talk of duty and obligation, when I should have been talking of romance and passion and your beautiful eyes.”

“Stop this! You are making me quite cross.”

“You, Daphne? The woman who throws trowels at my head is cross? I do not believe it.”

“I did not throw it at you on purpose,” she reminded him. “And if I had, I would have exercised sufficient aim to actually hit you.”

“I have no doubt of it.”

She once again fixed her gaze on his cravat, pressed her lips together, and did not reply.

“Why are you angry with me, Daphne?”

She was not angry. She was trying to harden herself against him, but the tenderness of his voice was making her raw. She looked up at him, looked away, and looked back at him again. “You went to the baron and told him we were to marry. How could you presume such a thing when I have explicitly refused you?”

“Yes, I went to Durand. I did not tell him we were to be married. As he is your closest male relation, I told him of my desire to marry you, and I secured his permission to court you in honorable fashion. That is all.”

“Knowing all the while he would entertain no doubt of my acceptance of your suit!”

“Well, yes,” he admitted, trying very hard not to smile. “But I confessed to you long ago my abhorrence for the word no . I am hoping that at some point I will have persuaded you to overlook that defect in my character and that you will marry me in spite of it.”

“I do not wish to marry you, and I have told you so. Why will you not accept that?”

“Because I cannot stop thinking of you. Of our dances and our conversations and the first time I ever heard you laugh. I cannot stop thinking of us, of that night in the antika,” he said, his voice low and fierce and wrenching to hear. “I remember how your skin was so cold at first, but I could feel it warming as I touched you. I remember how you looked in the moonlight with your head tilted back and your breasts in my hands.”

“Stop it.” She was blushing under the staring eyes of a room of people.

“I remember how you said my name over and over again as I touched you, of how I loved hearing you say it, of how you were filling my senses until I could not think.”

She caught back a sob of pain and fury. “You are cruel, Anthony,” she told him in a fierce whisper. “Cruel to say such things to me when we both know it is only your determination to have your way that impels you to say them.”

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