He had even stopped drinking gin until the evening, instead having a morning drop or two of laudanum to carry him through to night. All because she had scented gin on his breath for one of his proposals. He had been particularly plagued by nightmares the night prior, and it had not been one of his finer moments.
Sometimes, he was weak. Mindlessness proved an excellent distraction in such times. He could inure himself to the demons nipping Cerberus-like at his heels best by getting tap-hackled. But Hattie, too, and his attraction to her, which only grew stronger by the moment, served much the same purpose.
And he had intended this ride as a means of furthering his cause, not suffering through her silence.
“It is a lovely day, is it not?” he asked, casting a sidelong glance in her direction.
Her dark hair was largely obscured by her bonnet today, but even as she sat stiffer than an ancestral bust at his side, she held undeniable allure. Was it his imagination, or had he just caught the scent of violets on the wind?
“The sun is not shining,” Hattie returned, her voice bearing the same edge of disapproval it always possessed.
Unless he was kissing the breath out of her, that was.
“But neither is the sky raining,” he could not help but to point out.
London had suffered a spate of dreary weather of late that—even for London—proved dreadfully morose. He had despaired over finding an hour during which the mists and rains would cease to fall. At last, fickle fortune’s wheel had given him a good turn.
“Hmm.” She made a noncommittal sound, then said nothing else.
Clearly, Hattie had no inclination to make this easier upon him. Had he expected anything less?
He kept his attention firmly on the road ahead of them as they proceeded to Rotten Row, where they might be seen.
“Did you enjoy the gifts I sent you?” he could not resist asking.
It was his pride, he supposed. He had never before made such an effort to woo a lady. With Hattie, it was different.
She was different.
“The flowers were quite pretty, Montrose. Thank you.” Her voice was soft. Tempered with an unknown emotion. She was less disapproving now, yet still guarded.
“It was my pleasure to send them.” He sent her another glance. “What of the books?”
“The books were from you?” she asked innocently. “There was no note accompanying them. I confess, I had assumed they had come from Lord Rearden.”
The devil she had. His fingers tightened on the reins. “They were from me, and you know it.” Misgiving swamped him, along with a possessive surge. “He is not still courting you, is he?”
“Of course he is.” Her tone was bright. Blithe.
He had warned the blighter to leave off. Perhaps Monty would need to pay him another call.
“The books were from me,” he gritted, nettled although he suspected she was intentionally misleading him. “I know how much you love to read.”
“You do?” she asked, a note of surprise entering her tone now.
“Of course.” He flicked her another look. “Your nose is forever betwixt the pages of something, Hattie.”
It was true. Though he had not often heeded her, he had seen her enough over the years of his friendship with Torrie to know she was a voracious reader. He did not recall ever having seen her without a book nearby, unless she was at a social event. Even in her chamber, there had been a neat stack of volumes on the table alongside her bed.
“I did not realize you had noticed me,” she said quietly.
Almost so quietly he did not hear.
But he had heard, and he did not miss the implications of what she had said. He needed to reassure her, he knew, that his motives were pure. Hattie was a proud woman, and she would not marry anyone—not even him—for the sake of settling a conscience.
He had to convey to her that his proposal was about more than that for him now. Indeed, mayhap it had always been.
“I noticed you, Hattie.” He glanced back at her. “How could a man fail to notice you?”
Her cheeks flushed, and she turned toward him, her gaze burning into his. “Many have failed. Legions, in fact. I shall not be duped by your flattery, Montrose. If you expect me to believe I am suddenly the most glorious woman you have ever beheld, or that you are this eager to marry me for any reason other than the guilt eating you alive, you shall have to do more than offer hollow encomiums.”
By the good Lord’s chemise, how could he convince her every word he uttered was true?
He clenched his jaw, returning his stare straight ahead. “You are a beautiful woman in your own right. Believe me when I tell you, no amount of guilt could coerce me into the parson’s mousetrap. I seek to be caught willingly.”
“Was that meant to reassure me, Montrose?” Her tone was tart. “If so, you failed quite miserably.”
The saucy wench.
He was making a muck of this, as usual. But curse it, did she not realize he had never courted a proper lady before? Had never considered the prospect of taking a lady to wife until his accident?
As he had lain there in the mangled wreckage of his phaeton in the wake of the crash, his ankle hurting like the devil, he had realized something—he had no heir. If something more serious than a broken bone had befallen him, and if he had died, his mother and sister would have been left with precious little aside from his mother’s dower and some property in Scotland.
Lying in bed, delirious with agony, laudanum, and whatever liquor he could find, he had settled upon a solution—marriage. And then, when he had considered the idea further, he had settled upon an even better one, marriage to Hattie. Thus, he would secure the future of his line and his family, repay the debt he owed Torrie for his recklessness, and also gain a beautiful, intelligent woman as his wife.
Of course, his sister Cat had since married the Earl of Rayne, making the necessity to consider the future on her behalf less of a concern. But all the rest of his motivations remained true, though they had been eclipsed by his carnal need to make Hattie his.
“I want to marry you, Hattie,” he said, his voice low. They would soon be near the fashionable crush of carriages, and he did not want to be overheard. “Because I want you in my bed. Is that so difficult to believe? Did you not feel how much I wanted you in your bedchamber the other night?”
“Montrose,” she hissed. “Do not dare speak of it.”
Ah, perhaps here, at last, was the means of persuading her. Certainly, it was a way to give voice to all the pent-up desire coiled within him, like a snake ready to strike.
“Do not speak of what?” he pressed. “The way you kissed me back as if you enjoyed every moment of the passion sizzling between us? Shall I not speak of the way you responded to my lips upon your breasts? Tell me, Hattie, how did you explain your rent night rail?”
She said nothing for a lengthy pause, and he wondered if he had finally shocked her into silence.
“I burned it in the fire grate.”
Again, she spoke so softly, he had to strain to hear her over the din of the horse’s tack and the familiar clop of hoofbeats. “Excellent thinking, my dear. I ought to have done so myself, to spare you the trouble.”
He had been reckless with her, he realized now. Reckless with her reputation.
A strange realization settled over him then, as they passed down Rotten Row along with the half of society. Hattie was important. Precious, even. The instinct to protect her rose within him, strong and undeniable. Along with shame that he had allowed himself to proceed as far with her as he had.
If he had been caught in her chamber, or if anyone had called into question the evidence he had left behind, he shuddered to think what the results would have been. Or, worse, if he had fallen from that blasted tree, she would have been blighted forever. He would have caused an irreparable stain upon her reputation.
And as he had an irreparable stain upon his soul, he had no wish to inflict a similar torture upon anyone else. Especial
ly not Hattie.
“The fault was mine every bit as much as yours,” she startled him by saying then. “I…welcomed your liberties, much to my shame.”
“Why shame?” he countered smoothly, maneuvering them through the crush with ease. “Are you embarrassed of me?”
He held himself stiffly as he awaited her answer. Here was yet another shock; he cared. Her opinion mattered to him. No one’s opinion—not even his mother’s or his sister’s—had mattered to him in as long as he could recall. He knew he drank far too much, that he had become reliant upon opium to carry him through the day. He knew he was damaged and bitter and jaded. He knew he would never be whole.
But somehow, some foolish part of him hoped Hattie did not see him in the same light. Oh, he knew she disapproved of him and his ways. That much was undeniable. But he could not help but feel she found some redeemable qualities in him.
“I am embarrassed of the way in which I so easily abandoned my morals,” she said. “You are a practiced and highly skilled seducer. But even so, I should have been able to resist you.”
And yet, she had not.
This, more than anything else, made his heart surge. Buoyed his spirits. Filled him with optimism, that most foolish bedfellow of all.
“There is far more to you, hiding beneath your prim exterior,” he observed. And God’s fichu, but he could not wait to discover it, if she but allowed him to. If she made her sultry lips say yes instead of no.
“There is nothing hiding beneath my exterior,” she countered. “A lack of common sense. A lapse in resistance. That is all. But with a man of your reputation, my weakness was only to have been expected.”
A man of your reputation.
What the devil was happening to him? Not long ago, he had taken great pride in his reputation as a dastardly rakehell, as the fastest of all London’s libertines. And now, Hattie’s mere allusion to his reputation nettled. Worse than nettled. It pricked him straight to his marrow.
He was not about to allow her to dismiss what had passed between them as his rakish prowess. There had been something else, something far deeper. Undeniable. The hunger they shared, the attraction, it was hotter than flame. He had never before wanted a woman in the way he wanted her. And that plain truth had nothing to do with his guilt over Torrie or his desire to secure the line or any other blasted sense of duty. It was purely Hattie.
Hattie and the way their bodies seemed to be in concert with each other.
He sent her a long, searching look. “You felt it, too.”
Her flush returned, deeper this time than before, just as telling, and she jerked her gaze from his to stare into the opposite direction. “No.”
She was persistent, his Hattie. But he was more persistent. His determination burned hotter than a thousand suns. He wanted her. In his mind, she was already his.
His desperate longing goaded him on. “Look me in the eyes and tell me you felt nothing when I touched you, Hattie, when I kissed you, when I sucked your sweet nipples.”
She gasped. “How dare you?”
“How dare I speak of your nipples?” he asked, taunting her now. “Or how dare I suck your nipples? How dare I notice the way you enjoyed it when I sucked them? I confess, darling, I am a bit confused what has distressed you.”
“Do hush! You have distressed me,” she said. “You, with your wrongheaded insistence you wish to marry me. You, sneaking into my chamber. Your kisses, your touch, your wicked words. Those books. How did you know I enjoy reading Mr. Wordsworth’s verse?”
“I did not know for certain,” he admitted, “but you had another of his volumes alongside your bed. I took note during the call I paid you.”
Hattie was distraught. Her voice shook. Her hands trembled in her lap, her gloved fingers twisting together. Damn it, upsetting her had never been his intention. He was meant to be wooing her with this curricle ride. He was meant to be reminding her of all the pleasure he could give her, all the reasons why she should agree to marry him in spite of all the common sense she possessed, which undoubtedly urged her to tell him no and to run like hell in the opposite direction.
“I had not realized you were so observant, Montrose,” she said.
That was all she could manage after the trouble he had taken to obtain reading material he thought would suit her? A whole bloody crate worth, at that.
“I can observe as well as the next man.” He was being curt with her now, and he knew it. But it was his sole defense.
A tense silence hung between them, permeated only by the steady plod of his horses. They reached the end of Rotten Row, and he turned them back in the direction of Hattie’s home.
“Forgive me,” she said suddenly, sounding torn.
He flicked her a surprised glance. She was looking at him, her lovely features framed by her bonnet. Her face was a study in pink and cream, innocent beauty, everything he coveted.
“I beg your pardon?” His voice sounded rusty, even to his own ears. Husky with suppressed emotion.
No one had ever apologized to him before. At least, not anyone who was not a servant already in his employ, required to adhere to a strict code of politeness. No one had ever cared enough, though there was any number of apologies he was owed, Christ knew.
“I hurt you,” she said, her gaze searching his. “That was not my intention, Montrose. As Torrie’s friend, you are almost another brother to me.”
He made an inarticulate sound of objection. Her revelation she cared about him had been overshadowed by her suggestion she considered him another brother. He could easily prove otherwise. But the suggestion still irked.
“You cannot hurt me, Miss Lethbridge,” he assured her, keeping his tone remarkably cool. Thoughts of the past inevitably filled him with misplaced rage. With a feeling of helplessness. With dread and shame. He had no wish to inhabit any of those emotions now, seated so very near to the woman he wanted to make his duchess.
He wanted Hattie to be his benediction.
His salvation.
The means by which he finally buried the past.
“The books pleased me, Montrose.”
Her words dragged him from the mire of his thoughts. He kept his stare trained on the road ahead, however. Because he was afraid of what he would do if he looked upon her countenance and read the need he swore he heard in her voice now. Holding himself back would prove impossible, he had no doubt.
And he could not very well ravish her in his curricle, in the out of doors. Before half of the peerage.
“They are all of interest to you?” he asked carefully, realizing her response mattered.
Realizing she mattered.
Far more than he could have ever supposed.
“They are,” she affirmed.
“Excellent.” He nodded as if they were discussing something of no greater import than the skies overhead. “I am glad I was not mistaken in my choices.”
A companionable silence fell between them as they neared Torrington House once more. Monty’s spirits were lifted yet again. He could not help but to feel, in spite of their clashing of wills and wits on this drive, they had reached a tentative understanding, of sorts.
It was only as they neared the front façade of her home when Hattie broke the silence. “Montrose?”
“Yes?”
“I still cannot marry you,” she said, stubborn to the last.
“You can,” he returned smoothly, equally stubborn, and more certain of her now than ever before. More certain of the both of them. “And you will.”
Chapter Six
Hattie was returning to the Whitley ball after a trip to the lady’s withdrawing room when there was suddenly an obstacle in her path.
A tall, handsome, sinful, all-too-familiar obstacle.
“Montrose,” she hissed at him, casting a frantic glance about the hall to ascertain they were alone.
Thankfully, they were. But for how long? That was the imperative question.
“Just the lady I was looking for.” He g
rinned his scoundrel’s grin at her, the one that inevitably made heat wash over her.
The one that made her weak for him.
Oh, so weak.
But she must be strong. She gathered her fortitude. All her disapproval. “You cannot accost me outside the lady’s withdrawing room at one of the biggest balls in London.”
He quirked a brow. “First, I am not accosting you. I just happened to cross paths with you. Secondly, if you do not want to risk being seen speaking to the scandalous Duke of Montrose, you can accompany me.”
And then, he held out his hand.
His big, beautiful hand. For yes, even his hand was somehow attractive—masculine, long-fingered, seductive. She stared at it and recalled how deliciously he had brought her body to life when he had touched her.
She swallowed. Stay strong, Hattie. Do not fall prey to the pretty duke with the bedchamber eyes.
“Anything you have to say to me, you can tell me now, here,” she told him, attempting her sternest voice.
But her sternest voice was terribly unimpressive, because ever since he had kissed her, he had been robbing her resistance one gesture, one look, one word at a time. In truth, the ballroom was a hot crush. She had no wish to resume her position on the periphery or to pretend enjoyment whilst she danced a country reel with the odd gentleman.
All she wanted stood before her.
More fool, she.
“Come with me,” he said, his hand still outstretched toward her.
Do not take his hand, warned her inner sense of practicality.
For surely, going anywhere with this man at a ball would be tantamount to the end of her reputation. She would be ruined. Hopelessly compromised and forced to marry him after all if they were caught. She should step around him. Bid him good evening. Forget they had crossed paths. Forget all about the maddeningly handsome, devilishly tempting Duke of Montrose.
She took his hand. And she went with him willingly, allowing him to pull her into a nearby chamber. The door clicked closed behind them, and by the illumination of a lamp on a desk at the opposite end of the room, she could see they were in a salon of sorts. Perhaps even a study. But too much of the chamber remained in shadows for her to tell.
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