The Lady Who Loved Him

by Christi Caldwell

  Leo returned the decanter to the table. His glass followed suit.

  Chloe’s lips parted, and she swiftly closed her mouth, schooling her surprise at the marquess’ unexpected show of control.

  No one could have impelled her dead sire to put aside his spirits. The one time she had pleaded with him to stop, he’d thrashed her so that not a spare expanse of skin on her back had been anything but black, blue, or purple.

  “Very well.” The gentleman moved out from behind the drink cart. “You wish to know why I offered marriage to you?” He strolled over with his sleek, pantherlike steps.

  She shook her head. “No, I want to know why it is so important that I shape you into a respectable gentleman.”

  With his thick, hooded lashes and hard lips, he was a predator hunting his prey, the perfect lion his namesake professed him to be. And mayhap if she were wiser, she’d be fearful. But he’d set aside his drink. He’d exercised restraint and revealed his hand. Lord Leo, the Marquess of Tennyson, might be ruthless and single-minded. But he was not a monster.

  Monsters cared not for the wishes or whims of anyone, not children or wives, and certainly not strangers, and she took strength in that.

  He stopped at the back of her sofa and leaned over so close his breath fanned the back of her neck, eliciting dangerous shivers that tingled through her.

  Chloe’s mouth went dry, and she desperately tried to make the muscles of her throat move so she might swallow. He is just a man. He is just a man.

  And she was not a woman to be seduced by forbidden whispers and touches.

  So why did her body continue to react to his nearness?

  “Would you rather have pretty words, my lady?” he purred, wrapping that slowly drawn-out question in velvet. “Or mayhap you crave seductive ones? Shattering kisses? Forbidden touches.” He slid two fingers between the slight gape at her cloak, further parting the noisy fabric.

  Drawing in a shaky breath, Chloe slapped at his hands. “I’ve no desire to be shattered by anything.” She hated the threadbare quality to that retort. Hated even more the masculine triumph that glittered in his blue eyes. The arrogance indicated he’d heard her falter and, worse, reveled in it.

  “Which can only mean you’ve never known the pleasure to be had in a man’s arms, Chloe,” he enticed. “Because, if you did, you would gladly surrender to it.”

  Leo dusted his gloved fingertips along her shoulder. Back and forth. Over and over. It was a light, barely discernable caress. Yet, even through the protective fabric of her muslin cloak, her skin burned from that fleeting touch. It both tickled and tempted.

  Chloe swallowed. And she, who prided herself on not being one of those silly misses who could be led astray by a ruthless rake or rogue, confronted her own fallacy with nothing more than the stroke of his knuckles. “Y-you are attempting to distract me.”

  He brushed his lips along the nape of her neck. The delicate kiss was so quick, with muslin a barrier between them, it might have been conjured of her own shockingly hypnotized musings. “Is it working?”

  Chloe grinned. His teasing reply restored her mind to rights and reestablished the purpose of their latest meeting. “No.” Scooting to the edge of her seat, she deprived him of the ability to bestow any more of those quixotic kisses. Chloe held his gaze. “You gave me a day to consider your proposal. I’m giving you even less. This is the last time I’ll ask. Why? If you truly wish for me to entertain the possibility of marriage to you, I want an answer.” One that he desperately clung to, which only further fueled her curiosity.

  Leo flattened hard lips into an unyielding line. “My uncle.”

  She tipped her head. His uncle? Of all the reasons she’d expected—her dowry, his whoring, drinking, or wagering—the last she’d expected was that. “Beg pardon?”

  “I have an uncle who has…” A vein bulged at the corner of his eye in a fascinating tell of his discomfort. “He’s indulged my ways and assisted with my creditors. I was warned to be more discreet. If I failed to become,” he grimaced, “respectable, he’d cut me loose.”

  It all made sense. “And then we were discovered together.”

  He sank onto the back of the sofa and folded his arms loosely at his chest. “Precisely.”

  He’d lost the benevolent support of his uncle due to an imagined indiscretion.

  “He’s cut you off, then? Unless you… that is… w-we,” Chloe stumbled over the word that united them in a horrifying intimate way, “m—”

  “Yes,” Leo cut her off.

  How very funny to find herself wholly unlike this man in so many ways and then to find common footing on their shared loathing of marriage.

  Before her courage deserted her, Chloe spoke in a rush. “I would have certain terms met.”

  He shook his head once.

  “If…” She lifted a finger. And it was still a gigantic, nearly insurmountable if. “I marry you, I have expectations.”

  *

  She’d come to him with terms.

  And if nausea still didn’t roil in Leo’s belly at the prospect of marriage to her—or anyone—he’d have managed a grin.

  As it was…

  She is actually considering it. She is here, of her own volition, to discuss a union with me.

  The lady was either madder than the late King George or desperate.

  Only desperation could have sent her from her rooms, injured ankle and all, to seek him out in his residence, and lay out… terms, as she called them.

  Leo slowly lowered his arms. “Terms?” he repeated back, to be sure he’d not misheard.

  Chloe nodded. “Ten of them.” She sucked in a loud breath. “If you agree to all of them, then I’ll help you become… respectable.”

  Intrigued, Leo straightened. He joined her on the sofa.

  The lady cleared her throat. Reaching inside her cloak, she fished out a folded scrap and turned it over.

  His fingers reflexively curled around the thick parchment. He glanced between the sheet and his early-morn visitor and then back again at the page. “You’ve written them down?”

  She frowned. “If we are discussing a business arrangement, then it should be properly handled as all business arrangements are.”

  “And you have conducted very many business dealings?” He was unable to keep the smile from creeping into his question.

  “You’re teasing me.” A pretty blush stained her cheeks.

  Leo snorted. “I assure you, I don’t tease anyone.” That light repartee was reserved for foppish young pups, the manner of one he’d been a lifetime ago.

  She spoke as though she hadn’t heard him. Or mayhap it was that she didn’t trust his word. Clever girl. “As you wish,” she clipped out with a crispness to rival the queen’s speech. “If you’d rather make light of me and my wishes—” She made a grab for the rough contract she’d come with, but Leo held up his arm.

  “Forgive me,” he said, angling his back to keep the page from her reach.

  “You don’t sound apologetic,” she groused as he began to unfold the sheet.

  “It’s because I’m not.” Glancing back at her, he softened that with a wink.

  Chloe pointed her eyes skyward, pulling another grin from him.

  Returning his focus forward in a bid to hide his amusement, Leo made a show of opening the intricately folded note.

  He was having entirely too much fun with the lady. More fun than he’d had in years. The extent of his dealings with women entailed wicked bedroom activities and torrid affairs, and he’d never desired anything more than physical release. Verbal sparring was not something he engaged in with women, because it had never served a purpose. Only, now he found himself very much enjoying it with the spitfire beside him.

  It had been years since he had engaged any woman in banter not born out of his sexual pursuit.

  A lifetime ago.

  “Well?” Chloe urged at his back, breaking the recollections of the first and last woman he’d let too close.
/>   “I’m reading,” he lied. Snapping the page in his hands, he directed his efforts to the requests inked there.

  Marital Requirements of Chloe Edgerton

  He flinched. The lady had put her name in bold upon the page, a sheet that could be picked up by any servant or nosy lady and bandied about by all. She’d have made a rotted spy. Sighing, Leo read.

  1. I am granted ownership and total control of my dowry.

  2. I will maintain relationships with my family and friends without interference.

  He paused, glancing back. “You don’t have a high opinion where men are concerned.”

  With an arch look, Chloe gave him a thorough up and down, and his ears went hot at the pointed recrimination. My God, hell hath frozen over and chilled the whole of England with it. He, Leo Dunlop, was capable of… blushing.

  Shifting on the sofa, he faced forward again. “Uh… yes.” He shook the page. “Continuing on.” Even as he set to resume his reading, however, questions swirled around his mind about the mysterious lady who’d invaded his home. What gentleman was responsible for her world weariness? The same one now responsible for the spitfire’s still-unmarried state?

  “Are you reading?”

  “I’m reading,” he groused.

  “Your eyes weren’t moving on the page.”

  My God, she missed nothing.

  Taking care to again present the too observant minx with his back, Leo pressed ahead.

  3. I will maintain residence where and when I would—also without interference.

  “I’m beginning to notice a trend.” He directed the dry observation at the page.

  4. I will not be required to organize, host, or attend any ball… unless I so wish it.

  “It appears we have something in common,” he muttered under his breath.

  The rustle of muslin and the nearness of her voice when she spoke indicated she’d moved closer. “What was that?”

  “I said…” His words trailed off as he snagged on the next item upon her list.

  5. At my discretion and choosing, I shall be permitted the selection of a dog.

  “A dog, madam?” That was one of her requirements? He faced her. “You want a dog?”

  She nodded. “Indeed. My family was never one to have them. Not even for hunting. Except…” Leaning around him, she snatched the sheet from his hands. Speaking softly, her mutterings wholly imperceptible to his ears, she scooted to the end of the sofa. He stared on with bewilderment as she fished around her cloak. Snaking something free, she leaned over the arm of the seat.

  The rhythmic click of a pencil striking the table echoed in the quiet. A moment later, she handed back the sheet.

  As Leo read her amendment, his eyebrows came together.

  “Specifically, a mastiff,” she clarified, as though he couldn’t read the words written there and needed further elucidation. Which, in fairness, he did.

  5. At my discretion and choosing, I shall be permitted the selection of a dog mastiff.

  He had stepped into some farcical play. There was nothing else accounting for what this morning had dissolved into. Leo scrubbed his hand over the day of growth on his face.

  Mistrust flickered in Chloe’s eyes. “Do you have a problem with dogs, my lord?”

  So she was “my lording” him… and her suspicion had been restored with force.

  “I have more problems with the two-legged type.”

  A startled laugh burst from Chloe’s perfectly bow-shaped lips. That mirthful sound was not the practiced, sultry ones affected by past lovers. It shook her slender frame and knocked her cloak further agape.

  He stared on, transfixed. With her twinkling saucer-round eyes and flushed cheeks, she was transformed from the original common English miss he’d taken her for into a siren.

  Her laughter abruptly faded. He grieved the loss of that oddly enticing innocent expression of joy. “What?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

  Leo dug around for some flippant, rake reply to earn another of the lady’s eye-rolls. But God help him, for the first time in twelve years, he who’d never been without a retort—even a cruel one—came up empty. “It is nothing,” he said in even tones, grateful for the diversion presented on her page.

  Hurrying through the remainder of the items drafted, he stored away each detail. “A dog, then,” he muttered.

  Her interest in those four-legged creatures provided another intimate detail. With every reveal, she became less a stranger and more a peculiar woman who wished for dogs and isolation and… control. Her list evidenced a woman desiring of control… but also one who naively believed that charitable works mattered.

  6. I am free to conduct my time at any charitable venture I deem important. I am also free to use my funds as donations to those unstated organizations.

  7. We shall maintain separate lives.

  Leo paused on item seven. Chloe wished for a separate life, wanted a dog—a mastiff, to be precise—and she preferred solitude.

  Nay, that wasn’t altogether true. He shifted his gaze to item two. Part of her demands included the freedom to maintain relationships with family and friends without interference from him. He tapped that telling item in her neatly scrawled hand.

  Again, his earlier wondering surfaced.

  “A broken heart?” An inexplicable curiosity pulled the question from him before he could call it back.

  She went still.

  Leo shook her list. “Was it some rogue who offered you pretty words and wrote poems to your beauty and then broke your heart?” It had been a role he’d played once with another woman. Only, it hadn’t begun as such. It had begun as more…

  The parchment crinkled noisily in his tightening grip.

  Something in thinking of Chloe so hurt by a bastard such as Leo roused a primal fury in him. Which was ironic, given that he, as a rule and in reality, no longer felt anything… for anyone.

  The lady wet her lips. Her expression guarded, her eyes unreadable, she proved him wrong in this instance. A lady who could dissemble in that coolly aloof manner could very well find her way in the Home Office. “Keep reading.” The clipped command only served as further proof.

  Leo resumed scanning the page and choked a bit on his swallow.

  Feeling Chloe’s eyes on him, he looked up slowly. With unhurried movements, he folded the sheet back into the neat little square she’d handed it over in.

  She grabbed it and drew it close.

  Coming to his feet, he yanked off his gloves and cast them aside. The soft leather landed with a thwack on the nearby console table.

  “Well?” she pressed, fiddling with her cane.

  “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. Yes. No. And nine?” He shrugged out of his jacket, tossing it on the sofa. It landed next to her. The midnight wool fabric crushed against her dark, muslin skirts. “Is an emphatic no.” Leo rolled his tense shoulders. “Ten, however, is a yes.” A peculiar one at that.

  The lady wanted the freedom to take employment should she desire. It was a wholly foreign concept to both Leo and Society, especially the privileged beauties Leo took as his lovers. They wanted baubles and fripperies and a life of ease. Who was the bizarre lady he’d stumbled upon in Waterson’s corridors?

  While he contemplated her even now, the spirited minx silently counted and then consulted her list.

  “No dogs,” he clarified. It was the easiest place to begin their negotiations. “I’ll not have one in my residence.”

  “Well, if I were in London when you are also in London, it would be our residence.” She favored him with a generous smile that dimpled her cheeks.

  Our residence. His palms went damp, and he scrubbed them on the sides of his pants. There was a permanency to their being melded as one, joined forever, until death did they part.

  Nonetheless, he glanced covetously at the drink she’d challenged him to put down, needing it more than ever, but refusing to relinquish that control.

  “No dog,” he repeated.

  “
Very well.” She grabbed her cane. “It appears our negotiations have broken down and—”

  “A bloody mastiff,” he snapped.

  Her smile widened all the more, meeting her eyes. “Splendid,” she said. With a pleased little nod, she settled back into her spot.

  Leo sharpened his gaze on her. If his career and the Cato case weren’t dependent upon his making a match with the lady, he’d have tossed her out on her delectably rounded arse. The minx was going to prove troublesome, and he had his own matters of trouble—ones that affected the whole of the bloody kingdom—to focus on that were vastly more important than an unbending Chloe Edgerton.

  “I remain a firm nay on items eight and nine.”

  “Those are nonnegotiable.” Another rush of color flooded her cheeks, turning them a deep crimson.

  He looped his arms at his back. “Then it seems we are at an impasse, Chloe.” He allowed those words to roll from his tongue, tempting her. For, her item nine—he was not to place his hands upon her, in any way—ran counter to every dark, carnal urge of his being.

  The lady struggled to her feet. “Th-then we are truly done.”

  He closed the distance between them in four long strides. Sliding himself into her path, he cut off her retreat.

  Five or six inches past five feet, she was taller than most women.

  With no more than a handbreadth between them, he saw all: the rapid rise and fall of her chest, her flushed cheeks, her quivering mouth. Whether she wished it or not, her body responded to him.

  Leo stroked his knuckles in an errant caress down her cheek. “Do you know the problem, Chloe?”

  “I was unaware I had one.” Her voice emerged breathless, the whisper of lemon and mint tantalizing in their innocence.

  “Oh, yes. You do.” He shifted his touch lower, along her slim jawline, dusting it across her delicate chin. “You’ve not yet discovered all the splendorous pleasures to be had from a man’s touch.” Her lashes fluttered wildly, and she leaned into him.

  He reveled in the evidence of her hungering. “I’ll show you all the pleasures you’ve not yet explored. I’ll open your body to a passion that will sear your soul and leave you hungry and craving the rhapsody to be found in my arms.”