Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue

obligation you might feel is misplaced.”

“Your family won’t think so.”

Her chin tipped up. “Perhaps, but they’re not me. Regardless, while I thank you for your kind offer, I must decline.”

With that, she whirled away.

“Damn it, come back here!”

“Why? So you can attempt to browbeat me into accepting your offer? I thank you, but no.”

“We need to discuss this like sensible adults.”

“There’s nothing to discuss. I am not going to marry anyone, but I am especially not going to marry a man forced to the altar by notions of honor and obligation.”

“Damn it! No one’s forcing me—”

Reaching the door, she swung around and pointed at him. “You don’t want to marry me — you know you don’t. Admit it.”

He hesitated.

“Aha — see?” Her eyes glittered. “You don’t want to marry me, I don’t want to marry you, and there’s no reason why we should, so we won’t, and that’s that.”

Hauling open the door, she rushed out and shut the thick panel behind her.

He stared at the door. “I do want to marry you.”

The words were too quiet to carry beyond the room.

After a long moment, in which she didn’t return, in which he wondered why he was hoping she would, he exhaled, then ran his hands over his face.

“Now what?”

Unsurprisingly, no answer came.

Increasingly grim, he tossed back the covers and rose, one thought resonating in his brain.

She might have her future organized, but what about him?

If she had her way, the future he’d imagined the previous night, the pleasant future that had started to take shape in his mind, would remain nothing more than a fantasy, a golden vision of what might have been. .

Jaw setting, he hauled on his clothes.

She wasn’t getting away from him that easily.

Chapter Fifteen

He found her at the high table in the hall, breaking her fast with porridge drizzled with honey. Although there were others nearby, groups of men at two of the lower tables chatting and exchanging predictions for the day, there was no one else at the table on the dais.

Drawing out the chair beside her, he sat.

A little maid appeared and bobbed at his elbow, then asked if he’d like some porridge. He managed a smile and agreed. The maid flitted off; the instant she was out of earshot, he said, “There’s no point running. We have to sort this out.”

Heather slanted him a glance filled with. . irritation?

Before he could be sure, she shifted her gaze back to her bowl. “By which you mean we need to organize a wedding?”

“There is no other choice.”

Her lips tightened, but the maid returned at that moment with a steaming bowl of porridge.

He thanked the girl, helped himself to honey from the glass jar on the table, then slowly stirred the golden nectar into the thick oatmeal. “The situation is simple — I am, in case you’ve forgotten, commonly held to be the foremost rake in the ton. I didn’t come by that reputation by playing cards at White’s.” He kept his voice low, but his accents were clipped; he couldn’t find his usual, suavely persuasive tone. “Given that — who I am — then any gently bred unmarried lady with whom I even nominally spend one night alone will be deemed ruined, and marriage is the only acceptable way to mitigate that outcome — and before you start arguing, whether I in any way was at fault in bringing about that night alone is of not the smallest consequence, any more than the question of whether anything of an improper nature actually transpired is.”

He felt his jaw tighten, scooped up a mouthful of the sweetened porridge. Before raising it, he cast a swift glance sideways; her gaze was still lowered, but she was listening. “Add to that that you are who you are — one of the Cynster princesses — and there is no question but that a wedding between us is mandatory.”

She glanced sharply at him. “According to society.”

He didn’t deign to reply; she knew the reality.

The porridge was surprisingly good, nutty-flavored, smooth, and creamy. Looking down, he scooped up another mouthful. Savored, swallowed, then went on in the same low, tight tone, “As there is no chance of avoiding matrimony, I see no benefit in trying to fight the tide. There’s no reason we can’t wed. I’m already under sisterly edict to find myself a wife, and you’re unattached”—he realized he knew that for fact; if she’d harbored any feelings for any other gentleman she would never have allowed him to seduce her—“and our families move in the same circle to the point that a match between us would be considered an excellent one on all counts. Given all that, there’s no impediment whatever, no hurdle, no difficulty, standing between us and the altar.”

“Except for one fact.” Heather set down her spoon, her appetite gone. She met his hazel eyes. “I care nothing for society’s approbation, not over this.”

She didn’t have to fabricate the tension in her voice, the underlying determination fueled and given an edge by growing anger. “Understand this — I am adamantly opposed to marrying”—you. Despite her best efforts, the lie stuck in her throat. She dragged in a breath, substituted, “Under such circumstances. I have no ambition to marry, not you, not any man, just because society says I should!”

It wasn’t just her voice that was unsteady; her head was reeling; she felt faintly dizzy.

When he’d first stated, so baldly, that they would have to wed, she’d been so shaken it had taken all her concentration to rush out of his room before she’d given herself away.

Because the instant he’d raised the prospect of them marrying. .

Anger had her by the throat and was threatening to strangle her. Welling fury at herself as much as with him. How the devil had she allowed matters to reach such a pass? Had some unforgivably witless part of her been secretly hoping and praying he would, after a few nights of passion, suddenly discover he was in the throes of love with her?

Drawing a tight breath, she held his gaze. “I am not interested in marriage to a man who doesn’t want to marry me.”

His lips tightened; his expression darkened ominously.

She tipped up her chin. “As I intend to remain in the country and henceforth eschew society, I see no reason to pander to its dictates. This is my life we’re discussing, and I’ll live it as I please.”

He was listening, his attention locked on her — it was one of the things she loved about him, the way he focused so intently on her to the exclusion of the world. . no!

She blinked, shoved aside the distraction. She had to cling to her anger — anger at him for, even if unknowingly, suddenly dangling a prospect she’d never imagined before her, offering her everything that, to her utter shock, she now realized she wanted with every fiber of her being.

Except there was a nasty, slimy worm spoiling the rosy apple. He’d offered her everything her stupid heart had apparently all along desired, except for the one, vital, crucial element necessary to make it work.

She wanted him as her husband — had she always? She had a lowering suspicion her previous prickly attitude to him had been a symptom of unrequited regard — but no matter that her giddy heart had leapt at his bald statement, no matter how rosily some foolish, hitherto unknown part of her wanted to paint their prospective future, no matter how much she yearned to walk into that future with him by her side, just as they’d walked over the mountains to the Vale, she wouldn’t—couldn’t—marry him like this, without so much as a whiff of love.

Hardening her heart, and her determination, she placed an elbow on the table and, eyes locked with his,