Her words hit him in the heart as if they were a barb. “You are not in danger from me. I promise to take care of you.”
She shook her head. “I have already told you I will not be your mistress, Westmorland. Nor will I remain under your roof beyond tonight. The temptation is too great, and the risk to your sister’s reputation clear. She is my friend, and I have no wish to do her harm.”
He lost the fight to keep from touching her then. It had been hours since he had held her in his arms. Far, far too long. He clamped his hands on her waist, finding it deliciously soft and sweetly curved without the encumbrance of her stiffly boned corset. She fit against him as if her body had been made for his.
He was convinced it had been. No one had ever made him feel the way she did. “I do not want you to be my mistress, Isabella. I want you to be my wife.”
His revelation had the opposite of the intended effect, however.
Instead of softening, her resolve seemed to double in size. She wriggled from his hold, putting distance between them, her expression as unreadable as her gaze.
She wrapped her arms around her midriff, watching him. “You cannot be serious.”
He met her stare, unwavering, unflinching, more certain of this than he had been of anything. Even if it scared the hell out of him. “Utterly.”
“No.”
“Yes.” He closed the space separating them, taking her hands in his. They were cold, trembling. “Isabella, I would not jest about marriage. I do not find the institution amusing in the slightest.”
No, he found it as serious as the Great Fire of London.
He hoped to hell it would not ravage him in the same way the flames had destroyed so much of the city long ago.
“You are offering out of guilt, then,” she said definitively, as if she had just arrived at the only reason why he would wish to marry her. “You need not fear on my account, however. I have no intention of ever finding a husband. There will be no one to notice the loss of my virginity.”
“You have already found a husband,” he countered, pulling her back into his chest. “Me.”
But still, she remained rigid in his arms, a far cry from the wanton, seductive siren she had been that morning. “That is impossible. I am not of your class. Dukes do not marry the proprietresses of typewriting schools. They employ them.”
He could argue dukes did not take the maidenheads of proprietresses on a study desk either, but he did not. Best to direct his scorn inward, where it belonged. Shedding more light on the ugliness of his flaws could not help his case.
“This duke does,” he told her stubbornly.
“This particular proprietress has no wish to marry you, however.” Her full lips compressed.
In her high-necked night rail and her economical plaid dressing robe, she looked somehow innocently sensual. He wanted to peel her out of these ugly garments and give her the best of everything. He wanted to stop her from laboring on her own. He wanted her in his bed, in his life every day. And not seated at a damned typewriter. He wanted her without excuse, without apologies.
He wanted her, Isabella Hilgrove. And that was that.
Because he loved her.
Yes, he did. Damn his feelings to hell and back. This was a deuce of a time for them to emerge.
But somehow, his lips would not form the three words which may help his suit most. The emotion was too raw, too new. Too unlike him. He, too, had been determined to avoid marriage. He had thought, at the very least, if he determined a need for an heir in the future, he would deal with the unwanted particulars then.
“You could be carrying my child,” he said instead. “Have you considered that?”
Her lips parted, a furrow marring the delicate skin between her brows. “I…no.”
“We need to marry as soon as possible,” he pressed, thinking perhaps he had found a vulnerability in the defensive walls she had erected around herself during the hours he had been gone.
“If there is a child, I would not hold you responsible.” Her stubborn nature came to the fore once more.
“For God’s sake, Isabella, I would hold myself responsible,” he thundered, hating the way she was retreating from him. She was in his arms, warm and lush, and yet it was as if she had already left him. “I was reckless with you earlier. I did not take precautions as I ought to have done because I lost my head. But in truth, I do not regret it. I do not want to marry you because there may be a child. I want to marry you because I want you. I want you as my duchess, by my side, beneath my roof, always.”
It was the closest he could come to a declaration. And for a man who had avoided emotional entanglements for thirty years, it was one hell of a step. Especially on the heels of watching the magnitude of his own failure today. First with Isabella, then in his duties as Special League leader.
She was pale in the firelight and the glow of the lamps, her beautiful eyes a sea of mystery and shadow he longed to chart. “You do not mean that. Today was a trying day for you, and the hour is late. Undoubtedly, you are out of your head.”
“Yes, I am out of my head.” At last they had found a point on which they could agree. He was grim, his grip on her waist tightening. “I am out of my head with wanting you.”
“Your Grace,” she protested weakly.
But though she clung to her formality, he detected the breathlessness in her voice, giving her away. The air was hung with the heaviness of their attraction. Undeniable and potent as ever.
He wanted her more now that he had made love to her. She was a fever
