Page 47 of The Defiant One
"Besides," she added, "there is no way I'd allow you into my bed unless my feelings change, and the way you're treating me, that is not going to happen unless you invent another brilliant potion, this one to create artificial love."
"Ah, so artificial lust is not enough, eh? You must have love as well? Hmm. Artificial love. Perhaps that will be my next project."
"The only project you ought to be working on is finding a way out of what looks to be an inevitable marriage destined straight for the pits of hell. And furthermore, I do wish you would stop sketching for a moment. I'm talking to you."
"And I'm talking to you."
"It would be nice to have your attention while we're carrying on this conversation."
"You have my attention."
"I don't have all of it."
He lifted his gaze, quite nonchalantly, and let it settle on her. "There. You have my complete attention."
"It was the aphrodisiac," she repeated, lifting her chin.
"Madam, I suggest you forget the damned aphrodisiac and its consequences. What's done is done. If we can't find a way out of this damnable marriage, we can at least work on making our lives tolerable within it. You'll go your way, I'll go mine, and we can count ourselves fortunate if we don't run into each other more than once a month."
"That doesn't sound like a tolerable marriage to me."
"No?"
She bent her head and found a sudden interest in the button that held her cuff closed. "It sounds like a lonely one. It sounds like you're going to hole yourself up in your laboratory and shut both me and the world out and never go anywhere with me, never do anything." She shrugged, a little, fluttering, embarrassed gesture that showed an odd and unexpected vulnerability. Her voice dropped, and her interest in the button seemed to intensify. "If we're to be married, I'd at least like to see you once in a while."
"Why?"
"Why?" she repeated, looking up at him as though he possessed the intellect of a five-year-old. "Because husbands and wives are supposed to spend time together. Because even though we shall have a marriage of convenience —"
"You mean a marriage of contrivance."
"Convenience, contrivance, no matter what you choose to call it, the fact remains that we could come to at least like each other given half a chance, and people who like each other usually enjoy being together."
"I see. So you think we could end up liking each other."
"Well, we can certainly try to at least be nice to each other," she said sullenly, bending her head and fiddling with the button once more. "I know you're angry with the duke, and you know I'm angry with him as well. Putting the aphrodisiac in the brandy was nothing short of diabolical. Thanks to him, you and I got off to a bad start. Thanks to him, we've been nothing more than puppets in his hand. Of course we're angry — we have every right to be" — she looked up at him then, her eyes almost pleading — "but do we have to take it out on each other?"
Andrew swallowed and looked away, out the window.
"The least we could do is try to get along," she continued plaintively. Neither one of us wants this marriage, but if we put our heads together and try to find a way of preventing it, we'll accomplish far more than sniping at each other. And if we're nice to each other, I should think it a natural course of events that liking comes next."
"And then this absurd thing called love?" he drawled.
She met his flat stare with equal resolve. "Not if you continue to behave like a bear with a toothache."
"Sorry," he muttered, his eyes hard as he looked out the window once more. "I might manage liking, but love is beyond my comprehension."
"It is beyond mine as well, but it can happen, even in a marriage of convenience."
"Contrivance."
"What ever one chooses to call it."
He leaned back, pulled his sword from his scabbard just enough to sharpen his pencil on it, and resumed sketching. His emotions were unstable. He didn't want to like her. He didn't want her to like him. He just wanted her to stay away from him — nothing more.
And yet why, when she lowered her defenses as she was doing now, and got all nice to him even though he was doing his damnedest to push her away, did he feel a softening toward her that terrified him?
A . . . liking?
