He rose as well, outrage bursting open inside him with so much force, he could not stay himself from catching her elbow in his grasp. “You go too far, madam. I did not force my attentions upon you, and nor would I do so with any other female. How dare you suggest otherwise?”
She had turned to flame in his embrace. Damn her for a liar to suggest she had not.
Her lips, still swollen with his kisses, tightened. “How dare you, Your Grace? I am a woman whose reputation is paramount. I rely upon my good name to put food on not only my table but on the tables of countless others. You do not have the right to lure me into such recklessness.”
She was not wrong in her assertions, and he knew it. He could seduce as he wished. He could fuck her in each chamber of this damned house, fulfilling his every fantasy. At the end of it all, he would still be the leader of the Special League. He would still be the Duke of Westmorland. But as an unmarried woman, she would lose her good name, and in so doing, everything she had worked to build.
“I am sorry,” he managed hoarsely, bowing his head to avoid her gaze and gather his wits.
Her face was so stricken, like a goddess in the ruins of her temple. He hated the ghost of tears he suspected he’d seen glistening in her gaze. His hands shook. He still had her hair pins clenched in his fist. They were cool rebukes, warming to the heat of his skin. The urge to keep them rose, and he could not shake it.
“Your apology is too little, too late,” she said, her voice bobbling as if she too were overwhelmed with emotion.
Their desire had been so strong. All-consuming. Callie’s interruption had plunged them from the heights of the clouds to the depths of the pitiless earth. All they had left were the memories of their kisses and the harshness of their realities, so far removed from each other.
He was a duke. She was the proprietress of a typewriting school. What the devil had he been thinking to touch her? He had not, and that was the problem.
He raised his head to look at her once more, and this time he allowed himself the luxury of memorizing the intriguing qualities of her face, all those which made her so uniquely beautiful. With her hair unbound, she was the siren who lived beneath her dour façade.
“Nevertheless, Miss Hilgrove, I am sorry.” Still, he could not find it in him to return her hair pins. “I will see that the endorsement is delivered to you for your approval, prior to the printing in the Times.”
“I do not want your endorsement, Your Grace.” Having delivered that parting shot, she turned and left the library, clutching her pins, her hair a curtain of gold, the soft waves cascading down her back.
He watched her go, regret sinking its claws into him. Miss Isabella Hilgrove was a rare woman. But this was best, he told himself. She was not for him, and neither was he for her. They would only prove to be each other’s ruin.
Chapter Seven
After a long day spent instructing a new class of typewriters at her school, Isabella descended from her hired hack into the bitter chill of the unrelenting January wind. Though being the sole heir of her father’s fortune, such as it was, had left her in a comfortable situation, she was still the daughter of Thomas Hilgrove. Economy had been born into her just as the Hilgrove chin and icy-blonde hair had. Therefore, she could not bear to take on the expense of owning her own conveyance and horses.
Which was perhaps why the sight of the gleaming black carriage and matched horses parked outside her home gave her such pause. That and the suspicion rocking through her. It had been nearly a week since she had all but run from Westmorland House in Mayfair, and she still spent every day regretting what had happened.
Could it be that he had come to pay her a call?
She hesitated on the pavements, gazing at the windows of her modest home, as if the duke would be watching her from the cozy little guest salon which overlooked the street. It would hardly be the duke visiting her. They had parted ways in distressing fashion. She had experienced the most incendiary moment of her life only to be tossed to the dogs, all in the span of a moment.
Or so it had seemed.
Her lips burned in remembrance of his kisses. Her body burned, too, in defiance of the frigid winter wind and in defiance of the quelling sense of her rational mind. Why would she suppose it was him? Why could she not seem to remove him from her thoughts? Why, oh why, did the Duke of Westmorland seem to haunt her every day? He was not for her. Nor was she for him.
Her school was growing by the day. The world was changing, and it was an exciting time for women who hungered for their independence. She was proud to be at the vanguard of this revolution, and there was no place for dependence upon romantic whimsy. She had everything she had ever longed for within her grasp.
Except for one man, whispered a voice within.
A voice she promptly stifled.
What a ninny she was, lingering here in the howling wind when a perfectly warm house awaited her. She forced herself to move up the front walk, chasing away any nonsensical notion that her unexpected guest was the Duke of Westmorland.
When she reached the front door, Betsy, her maid-of-all-work, answered with wide eyes and a curtsey. “Good evening, Miss Hilgrove. You have a visitor.”
Isabella stepped into the entryway, easily one sixteenth the size of the entry hall at Westmorland
