by Evie Dunmore
“I have contemplated proposing to you for a while,” he said. “I want to take you on the excursion to the Peloponnese, and this would be the most expedient way of doing it.”
“Expedient,” she echoed.
He nodded. “Imagine the breach of propriety otherwise. And no chance in Hades would I take your Mrs. Forsyth along.”
“Professor . . .”
“Please,” he interjected, “hear me out. Miss, you are a rare find for a man like me. People are either intellectually capable or agreeable. They are hardly ever both. You are. You are the best assistant I’ve ever had. Furthermore, like myself, you don’t seem keen on children, when most women are. I’m aware my standards are unorthodox, which, I assure you, is the sole reason for my bachelorhood; I am otherwise perfectly capable of providing for a wife. And my name would shield you from this nonsense that is presently making life difficult for you; in fact, you could continue with your work as if nothing had happened.”
He looked at her now with an expression she had never seen on his face before. Hopeful.
She tried to imagine him as her husband, because she liked him and her future was hanging by a thread and both rash decisions and dithering could prove catastrophic at this point.
He was a good man, and he cared about her well-being. His looks, scent, and dress sense were perfectly agreeable, and she expected he had a housekeeper to do the housework, so she would have her head and hands free for assisting him. He was also not an easy man—he was wholly cerebral and irritable, and he’d spend most of his life in his books, but given that she was used to that, she’d deal with it well.
But could she imagine him coming home, and loosening his cravat, and sliding his shirt off his shoulders, and have him cover her with his bare body—
She felt herself flush. “You . . . you mentioned not wanting any children,” she said.
Jenkins sat up straighter, sensing they were moving into a negotiation. “I don’t mind them as a concept. But for us, well, they would be beside the point, would they not?”
“Most people would argue that the point of marriage is children.”
Jenkins made a face. “Most people are bleating fools. My wife would have to understand and assist my work. I am my work. And if you were a man, you’d already be making a name for yourself in our field, given how good you are, but the moment you began to breed, you would become utterly addlebrained, all your razor-sharp thinking blunted by the relentless demands of squalling brats. You would lose a few teeth, too; trust me, I have seen all of it happen to each of my six sisters.”
She should take offense. In the history of marriage proposals, this had to be the most shockingly unromantic one ever uttered. But then, as a near-felon, she was not much of a catch, and it was still more respectable than her other offer, the one for the position as a kept woman.
Her silence seemed to make Jenkins nervous. He fiddled with his pen. “Have I perhaps drawn the wrong conclusion?” he asked. “Since you seemed to be a spinster by choice, I didn’t think a family was your priority.”
She had to force herself to look him in the eye. “I just wondered whether you are proposing a marriage in name only.”
To his credit, he did not reply at once but seemed to weigh the question with the consideration it was due. “Is that what you would prefer?” he finally said. His eyes were unreadable behind his reflecting glasses, but his shoulders appeared tense.
Yes would have been the obvious answer to his question. Then again, on paper, he was more than what she could have ever hoped for: an academic, comfortable, and free to ignore the more petty social mores under the guise of brilliant eccentricity. Most important, she liked him. Liked, not loved. He’d never have the power to crush her heart. But if she refused him the marriage bed, would he respect her decision without growing surly over time?
“I would like some time to consider the proposal,” she heard herself say. “A week. If that is agreeable to you.”
Jenkins nodded after a brief pause. “A week. Perfectly agreeable.”
A week. A week to consider an alternative to going back to Gilbert’s house. To tell him that studying had been too much of a challenge for her female brain after all, and that she’d gladly be an unpaid drudge for the rest of her days, with no certain future. Perhaps it wouldn’t even come to the workhouse. Perhaps she’d end up in Bedlam, muttering to herself that she’d had dukes and Oxford dons vying for her attention in days gone by.
She left the office, thinking she should have just said yes.
* * *
A duke had no business attending an investment summit. Glances followed Sebastian around Greenfield’s town house, and he knew he would have raised less gossip trawling a low-class bordello. But men like Julien Greenfield wouldn’t pass insider information on to Sebastian’s investment manager, nor over a discreet dinner; officially grace my home, and receive first-class intelligence in return, that was the deal. Even business was never to be had without the politics, certainly not without the petty power plays.
Greenfield plucked two brandy tumblers from a tray floating past. “I suggest we proceed to the sitting room; these chaps are really keen to make your personal acquaintance,” he said, handing one glass to Sebastian and wrapping his plump hand around the other.
Sebastian carried his untouched drink down the corridor, listening to Greenfield’s assessment of the diamond mine of which Sebastian planned to become a shareholder. The two South African business partners in Greenfield’s sitting room could potentially add a million pounds to his accounts, depending on how trustworthy he found them.
His first impression was promising: firm handshakes, good eye contact. The younger of the two had started out as a mining engineer, so he knew the business inside out and his description of the current project status matched the information Sebastian’s man had compiled on the duo.
Disaster struck when he caught a familiar figure from the corner of his eye.
The businessman’s speech turned into meaningless noise.
Annabelle.
There on an easel, guarded by a footman, was a life-sized, breathtaking, glowing version of Annabelle.
Her green eyes stared back at him heavy-lidded with some private triumph. Her shoulders were thrown back, her hair whipping about her like the flame of a torch in a storm. From below the hem of her clinging white gown peeked a familiar pale foot.
A giant fist seemed to squeeze the air from his lungs.
Hell. He was in a peculiar sort of hell, where all paths always circled back to the same thing.
He drew closer to the painting as if in a dream, his gaze riveted on her face.
He had stroked these proud cheekbones; he had kissed the fine nose. He had felt this lush mouth on his cock.
Two men were at her feet, bare-chested and on their knees, one dark, one fair, their heads tilted back to glower at her with a rather too-familiar expression of awe and resentment and longing.
Helen of Troy, not as a prize, but as a vindicated puppet master.
“I see you’re admiring my daughter’s handiwork,” Greenfield remarked.
Sebastian grunted.
“Extraordinary, isn’t she?” Greenfield tipped his glass toward Annabelle. “Before my own daughter nagged me into letting her go up to Oxford, I was convinced all bluestockings sported beards and warts. Imagine my surprise when she introduced this young woman to us at your New Year’s Eve ball. I stood happily corrected.”
“I’d stand happily,” the engineer said. “I’d launch a thousand ships for that.”
“I say, she’d launch me,” drawled the older one, and they all sniggered.
“How much,” Sebastian said, his voice edged with such menace that the sniggering stopped abruptly. “How much for this?”
Greenfield’s bushy brows flew up. “Now, I don’t think it is considered for sale—”
“Come now, Greenfield,” Sebastian said, “everything has a price.”
The banker sobered. This language, he understood. “It is certainly negotiable,” he said. “I’m sure Harriet could be moved to part with it for ample compensation.”
“Excellent,” said Sebastian. He knocked back the brandy in one gulp and set his tumbler down hard on a sideboard. “Have it wrapped and sent to my house in Wiltshire. Good afternoon, gentlemen.”
He stalked from the house, leaving a trail of worried and bemused people in his wake who had accidentally been hit by his black stare. A murmur rose: Did you see the aloof Duke of Montgomery storming out of Greenfield’s place, looking dark and mercurial like Vulcan himself?
Meanwhile, the ducal landau was on course to Victoria Station at breakneck speed.
* * *
The back garden of Claremont smelled of mud and dead leaves.
“Your Grace!” Stevens looked pleasantly surprised to see Sebastian striding toward the stables in the fading evening light.
“Prepare my horse,” said Sebastian. “Only him. I’m going alone.”
Stevens’s eyes widened as he registered his employer’s mood, and a short time later, he led a saddled and haltered Apollo from the stable. The stallion released an accusing whinny when it spotted Sebastian, and he absently scrubbed the soft nose that was thrust at his chest.
“He missed his master,” Stevens supplied. “Bit McMahon on the behind the other day.”
Sebastian frowned. “Have you moved him at all?”
“Not too much, no. The weather was naught but rain for the past few days; fields are soft as mush. He might be a wee bit skittish, Your Grace.”
He contained Apollo on the ride down the drive. Tightly coiled tension vibrated in the animal’s muscle and sinew, a spring ready, oh so ready to be launched. One slight tap of his heels, an inch of give in the reins, and they would take off unstoppably like a shot.
He had avoided his country home lately, because everything in Claremont reminded him of her. The harder he tried to keep control, to keep the thoughts and emotions firmly buried, the more anarchical it all became, as if a lifetime of leashed passion had broken free and was coming for him with vengeance, as if he had only been spared the lunacy of love before because he had been destined to be brought down by this particular woman.
In another life, he would have made her his wife. She’d already be his wife.
They emerged from the drive and acres of fields opened to either side of them. The twilight leached the colors from the trees, the soil, the sky. Gray, gray, gray.
Enough, he vowed. Enough of this.
He’d leave London and return to Claremont. He’d return everything to normal; he always did.
He leaned forward in the saddle, and a jolt went through Apollo.
They galloped along the path, then veered off onto the field headlong to the distant forest. The wind bit his face like a blade. Cold tears streaked across his cheeks from the corners of his eyes as speed overran his senses, the rapid thud thud thud, the whistling in his ears, the landscape rushing at him. The mind became a blank; there was only focus, speed, the cold.
Enough, enough, enough.
He ran Apollo harder, faster, until the forest loomed at the edge of the field like a dark mass.
He pulled in the reins.
Something flashed, pale and low on the ground.
Apollo screamed and twisted sideways.
Instinctively, he threw himself forward, but he felt the horse’s rump go down, its hind legs breaking away, a horrible, uncontrolled motion that whipped the powerful body beneath him up, up, and over the tipping point.
They were going to flip.
For a blink, the world froze, clear and sharp like a shard of glass. An expanse of blank sky, a flutter of mane above him.
The horse would crush him.
He yanked his feet from the stirrups but the ground was hurtling toward him at brutal speed. The face he loved most in the world looked back at him before darkness fell like an axe.
* * *
Beneath the small desk, Annabelle’s feet had turned to lumps of ice in the draft. She should go to bed. It was nearing midnight, and the oil lamp was burning low. But she knew she would not sleep. If she only looked at her surroundings, she could have pretended she was still a student with a bright future ahead; the desk, the rickety chair, the narrow cot were much like her room at Lady Margaret Hall. But that was where the similarities ended. There were no books and folders on the desk. Only a sheet of paper with three lonely lines:
Go back to Chorleywood
Become a governess up north
Marry Jenkins
Her present options to keep a roof over her head all while staying on a morally upright path.
Of course, she had come up to Oxford to avoid any such fate: Chorleywood, underpaid and vulnerable, or married to a man she didn’t love.
Two weeks. Mrs. Forsyth had given her two weeks to find a new occupation. I’m a chaperone, she had said pointedly. I’m to keep women from getting into trouble, not associate with troubled women.
The future was a black maw, ready to swallow her whole.
She pressed her palms to her face, trying to shut out the ugly faces of her fears leering back at her. “I’m a soldier at heart,” she whispered. “I can do this . . .”
A sudden commotion in the hallway downstairs had her sit up straight. Agitated voices clashed as Mrs. Forsyth’s Maltese barked hysterically.
Alarmed, she came to her feet. It sounded as though a man was arguing with Mrs. Forsyth.
And then male boots stomped up the stairs, the force of it making the floorboards shiver.
She clutched her nightgown to her chest, reflexively casting her glance around the room for a weapon.
Bam bam bam.
The door shook as it was pounded with a fist.
It did not shock her half as much as the man’s voice.
“Annabelle!”
“Sir!” Mrs. Forsyth objected shrilly.
Sebastian. Sebastian was here.
Bam bam bam.
She moved toward the door on unsteady legs.
“Sir, desist,” Mrs. Forsyth shrieked, and then Sebastian burst into the room, sending the door flying back against the wall with a bang.
Everything stopped: the noise, time, her heart. The vital urgency radiating from his body had blasted the very air from the room. He stared at her wordlessly, and holy hell, he was pale.
With two long strides, he towered over her and pulled her into his arms.
The wintry cold still clung to his clothes; his thick coat was rough against her face.
She stood motionless in his embrace, hardly daring to trust that he was real. She hadn’t expected to see him again, certainly not to ever be in his arms once more.
“My love,” he said, his voice a rumble in his chest beneath her ear.
How cruel. Her fourth option, her most desired option, her everything, was right here, when all she was trying to do was the right thing, which was decidedly not option four.
“Miss Archer, who is this—?” Mrs. Forsyth appeared in the door and gave an outraged squawk when she saw the couple embracing. “I object, I most utterly object to this,” she cried. “No gentlemen are allowed in the house, I laid out that rule very clearly indeed, why, this is not to be borne—”
Sebastian half turned and slammed the door shut in Mrs. Forsyth’s enraged face while keeping one arm tightly around Annabelle.
She disentangled herself from his grip. “What is happening?” she asked, and then, “Oh God, is it your brother? Is he—”
“No,” he said. There was a hard, metallic look in his eyes that made her feel entirely off balance.
She took a small step back. “Montgomery, you worry me.”
A stern line appeared between his brows. “Don’t call me that.”
“Very well,” she said, and crossed her arms over her chest. “Sebastian. Surely there would be a more appropriate time—”
“I came to ask you to marry me.”
She looked at him blankly.
“Marry me,” he repeated, taking a step toward her.
She gave an uncertain laugh. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“You laugh,” he growled. He grabbed her hand and pressed it to his greatcoat, over his heart. “Put an end to this misery, Annabelle. Marry me.”
She tugged, and alarm tingled up her spine when he didn’t let go. “What has got into you?”
“I fell off the horse this eve.”
Her free hand flew to her mouth. “No.”
“There was a pheasant,” he said, “a small pheasant, hiding in a furrow. Apollo spooked and slipped. He is fine.”
Her gaze darted over him, searching for signs of injury. “What about yourself?”
There was a pause. “I thought I was going to die,” he said quietly.
The blood drained from her face as an icy hand reached for her heart.
“As you see, it was not yet my time,” he said. “The ground was softened from rain, and my hat took the brunt instead of my head.”
The feeling of terror that had kept her frozen to the spot subsided, and she flung her arms around his neck.
“Hush,” he said as his arms slid around her protectively, “I’m here now.”
She only clutched him harder and tried to burrow into him, wanting to tear the heavy topcoat off him, and all the layers of wool and cotton that kept her from feeling the pulsing warmth and strength of his body.
He pressed his mouth into her hair. “Marry me, Annabelle.”
Her head jerked back. “Please. Please, do not say such a thing.”
