Thane’s thoughts snagged. She meant before the war. Before he’d obtained a hideous face and an even more hideous disposition. Well, more of a hideous disposition. His good humor evaporated like a breath in the wind. “I don’t recall you,” he said ungraciously.
“I hardly supposed you would, Your Grace. I was the worst of the wallflowers.”
“Fishing for compliments, are we?” His tone was dry. “You won’t find them here, my lady. We are fresh out of flattery.”
“Of course not. How rude of you to suggest such a thing.”
Oh, he was just getting started. Thane lifted a brow. “One could argue, my lady—it is my lady, isn’t it?—that it’s rude to call one’s host ‘rude,’ especially since you were the one to barge in uninvited in the first place. Or has well-bred, ladylike behavior changed so drastically in the years of my self-imposed isolation?”
His emphasis on “ladylike” was not lost as she sucked in an affronted breath, flags of color bursting in her cheeks.
“Then I apologize,” she ground out, her eyes fairly sparking with indignation that she struggled to control, though control it she did. “It was a matter of—”
“Some urgency, yes, I’m quite aware. Enlighten me, then, Lady Astringent.”
Her eyelashes descended, her cheeks hollowing with obvious frustration. “I do beg your pardon, Your Grace, but my name is Lady Astrid. Perhaps you misheard.”
“Beg away, my lady. I’m quite at my leisure.”
Pale eyes flashed. “You, Your Grace, are…are…”
“Abominable? Appalling? Atrocious?” he supplied.
“I was going to say insufferable, but clearly your intelligence is limited to only the first letter of the alphabet.”
A bark of laughter burst from him. It was as clear as day that beneath that stony exterior, his guest had quite a temper. It made him want to rile her all the more, to make those brewing passions ignite in her eyes, anything to disrupt her ironclad control.
“So, Lady Ass-trid, come to suss out the beast, have you?” he drawled. “Did you not get a good enough look earlier? Duke en déshabillé?”
Her lips pursed as if she’d sucked on a lemon, and he wondered briefly—albeit insanely—what those perfect pink arches would taste like. Whether her nipples were the same shade or darker.
“This conversation is unseemly, sir.”
If she only knew the true debauched slant of his thoughts.
“That’s an understatement.” Thane leaned back in his chair. “Shall we trade insults all night, or will you eventually tell me what you’ve come here for?”
The lady swallowed what looked like it could have been a blistering response and sealed her lips. She leaned forward to pick up a green-flowered dish from the mantel with deceptive calm. “This is beautiful,” she said. “Fifteenth century Chinese?”
He arched a split brow. “Yes. My father collected the silly things.”
“Hardly silly, Your Grace.”
She examined the dish in her delicate, long-fingered hands. Thane was momentarily fascinated. Those delicate hands were at odds with the rest of her sharp angles and acerbic voice. For an instant, he wanted to be that bowl, being caressed by her palms. He imagined what those long, elegant fingers would feel like circling his hardened length, and his entire body throbbed with a surge of instant need. Lust roared through him.
Holy Christ.
Thane set the heel of his palm on the placket of his trousers hidden beneath his desk, willing the stiffness beneath it to dissipate as his gaze narrowed on the woman still inspecting the antique across the desk’s mahogany surface. With the plain clothing and her no-nonsense coiffure, she reminded him of a governess. Thane half expected to see a ruler in her hands, ready to crack down on his knuckles for any hint of misbehavior. She was not the sort of woman who heated his blood…and yet his blood was on fire.
Reverently, she placed the dish gently back in its place, her hands falling to her lap, thankfully out of sight, and found his silhouette with her eyes.
They were light, he guessed, but their exact color eluded him. Pale gray or green, perhaps. He didn’t recall meeting her, but before the war, he’d been surrounded by dozens of stunning fresh-faced debutantes and had been just as determined to avoid them all. He wouldn’t have forgotten her, though. She was lovely…until she opened her mouth. A stunning rose, sheathed in bloodthirsty thorns.
“What is it you want, Lady Astrid?” Distracted by the fire in his veins, his voice was gruffer than he’d intended. “Don’t keep us in suspense. Spit it out.”
Her delicate brows crashed together, but she cleared her throat, once more fighting for calm. Thane felt a smile creeping along his lips. “I have a proposition for you, Your Grace.”
“Proposition?”
“A business proposition,” she clarified, gesticulating in midair. Those graceful fingers fluttered, and his entire body hummed in response. “While I was waiting for you to…er…get dressed, I noticed some of the broken porcelain, and Mr. Fletcher mentioned earlier that you might be looking for someone to help you categorize your late father’s collection.”
He was still caught up in indecent proposals, her flirting fingers, and thinking with his rock-hard lower regions. “And?”
“And I can help. I’m familiar with the period as well as the worth of some of the pieces.”
Her matter-of-fact words pierced through his haze of desire. Thane’s sex-starved body spun between lust and confusion. He blinked. He wanted to fuck her voluptuous hands, suck her lips from pink to berry, and she wanted to take inventory of his father’s blasted antiques?
His dry mouth could form only one word. “What?”
“I can catalog the pieces for you,” she said patiently. “I’m familiar with the period and the history.”
“You’re a bluestocking?”
Those distracting pink lips puckered into a little moue of displeasure. “I prefer ‘scholar.’”
“Why?”
“Because ‘bluestocking’ is derogatory,” she said with a frown.
He gave a huff of mirth. The second time he’d laughed in ten minutes. It had to be a record. No doubt the eavesdropping Fletcher would toss it in his face later. Thane shook off the odd feeling. Somehow, instead of unsettling her, he’d only managed to unsettle himself.
A growling sound left his throat. “Why are you here? You barge in uninvited, see some smashed bowls, and decide to seek employment? Don’t insult my intelligence. State your business so we can both get on with our lives.”
There was no response to his sudden hostility. Rather, her eyes narrowed as she peered into the dimness, her pupils adjusting to the flickering light. It pricked him, the intensity he saw there, as if she were trying to figure out a puzzle. Trying to evaluate him like one did with a feral animal, waiting to see if it would bite. He wanted to snarl back at her, to get her to retreat. Run. Leave.
“Very well,” she said, her jaw firming with blunt resolve. “I need you, Your Grace.”
Surely he hadn’t heard that correctly. “I beg your pardon?”
A sardonic eyebrow lifted at his use of the word “beg,” but she clasped her hands together and sat up straight. “Specifically, the protection of your name in exchange for my assistance with your collection, other household matters, and of course, my…er…self, as well, in the production of heirs.”
“Heirs,” he echoed. He had no idea how they’d gone from porcelain to procreation.
She let out a breath. “Use of my body, Your Grace. As the daughter of a viscount, my bloodlines and background are quite…acceptable, I’m sure.” He didn’t miss the minute hesitation or the fact that her captive fingers were clutched so tightly that they were white. Likely, the prospect revolted her. “This will be an arrangement that will benefit us both.”
If Thane thought with the head
in his pants, his agreement would be instantaneous. But his brain was quite good when he did decide to use it. And now that her outrageously erotic hands didn’t distract him, he paused to gather his scattered thoughts.
“Are you proposing marriage, Lady Astrid?” he asked. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you that the gentleman is supposed to ask?”
“I prefer to take matters into my own hands when necessary, but let’s not be mistaken—this is purely a business proposition, Your Grace,” she stated, her composed expression back in place. “One to our mutual advantage.”
He couldn’t help it. He guffawed, the ugly sound like a choked gaggle of cawing crows. The lady recoiled, her eyes widening further when he rose, uncurling his large frame from the chair. He prowled soundlessly toward her, watching her carefully all the while until he stood directly in front of her. He turned toward the light and heard her indrawn gasp.
Thane didn’t release her eyes, reflective like translucent quartz in the firelight, taking in the transition from shock to fright to horror to pity. The darkness curled around him, took his cold, bitter heart into its fist. He felt nothing in the face of her emotions.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hold your naïveté against you,” he murmured. “You are free to leave, my lady, and we can pretend this unfortunate…situation never happened.”
To Thane’s eternal shock, she rose and moved to stand right in front of him, those pearlescent eyes now giving away nothing. Her breasts were nearly touching his chest, and Thane caught his breath at her nearness, scenting the barest sliver of fear. Her shoulders trembled, and her stern lips, so dangerously close, quivered at the corners. Her distress was a palpable thing, like a hare cornered by a wolf, though the hare tipped its head bravely.
“You need a wife, Your Grace.”
Thane had to admire her courage. “As you need a husband?”
“Not just any husband.” She swallowed hard, her slender throat working. “I need the Beast of Beswick.”
Chapter Three
Oh, sweet merciless Lord.
The duke was frighteningly huge. And his appearance at close range…
Despite all the gossip and the rumors, Astrid had not been prepared. The Lord Harte she’d met in passing years ago had been surrounded by eager admirers, most of them female. A second son and the duke’s spare, he’d been born into privilege and wealth and had been handsome and fit, if somewhat standoffish. He would have been sought after if he hadn’t secured himself a captain’s commission and hied off to war.
A war that had reduced him to this…shadow of himself.
Nothing could have readied her for the bleak vista of his face with its sutured lines and grisly lack of uniformity. A serrated tear ran diagonally from his upper right brow, across the bridge of his nose and cheek, down to his left jawline. It screamed of untold agonies, and the field surgeon’s hasty stitching over poor cautery had only made the end result doubly macabre. Like the novel of the modern Prometheus, Frankenstein.
Though this duke was wholly human as far as she could tell…his eyes burned with an unholy amber fire, holding her in a glower that seemed better suited to hell. Astrid couldn’t control the dread running through her body. His nostrils flared as if he could sense her unease, and suddenly, she felt like prey, well and truly snared by something far bigger and far more dangerous than she.
But fear wasn’t the sole cause of her body’s instant reaction to the man.
In the pit of her belly, she also felt a shock of pure heat, of raw physical awareness. Seeing a man naked, even in dim lighting, tended to skew one’s good sense, clearly. Her brain was split with mixed images—those of him in the altogether, stepping like some beautifully ruined demigod from a shimmering pool, and the foul-tempered, scarred duke standing before her, barely held together by the bonds of civility.
His scars, though terrifying, were the least of what frightened her in that moment.
Courage faltering, her gaze fell away, and then she thought of Isobel. She did not have the luxury to falter in her course. This man—this monstrous duke—was their only hope. She spared him a glance, skating over his marred face. He was waiting for her to do more, she realized. To flee. To scream. To swoon at his beastliness.
And he was, indeed, beastly. Heartbreakingly so. Except for the lower right side of his jaw and his lips. Those were intact. Full, unscarred, masculine. Odd that his mouth felt like the only safe space in the ragged landscape of his face. Even those demonic golden eyes didn’t seem so intense at the moment, inscrutable as they were. They’d lost their eerie hunter’s glow. Or perhaps she was fooling herself to make her goal more palatable.
Isobel. Beaumont. Safety.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he beat her to it.
“Tell me, my lady, do you still wish for marriage?” The smoky, sardonic snarl of his voice, filled with bitterness, curled around her. “Do you wish to marry into a waking nightmare? Do you hope to see this visage when you wake up each and every morning?” He drew a mocking hand down his person, his lip twisting with distaste. “Provide those heirs you offer without shuddering?”
Astrid did not shudder, at least not right then, even though her heart was thrashing like a captive animal in her chest. The very idea of waking in bed with him made her body burn and recoil in the same breath. When she’d been plastered against him in the room with the bathing pool, she’d felt everything. Every hard contour, every hollow, every ridge. She blushed, recalling the bulge she’d felt against her belly through the sensible wool of her dress.
Clearly, he was like any other normal, able-bodied man.
Maybe not exactly like any other man, she amended. Notwithstanding his ruined face, he was bigger and more intimidating than any gentleman of her acquaintance. On top of that, he exuded an air of unrestrained menace. An apex predator. Would he protect or would he destroy?
Astrid couldn’t quite suppress her shiver this time.
She felt his gaze narrow on her. “Don’t bother trying to lie, Lady Astrid, or hide your reactions. At least they’re honest. I shiver when I look into a mirror most days.”
“I’m not,” she began, her cheeks on fire. “That’s not why—”
“Enough,” he said. “Your loathing is as clear as day.”
“No, Your Grace, you misunderstand.”
He bared his teeth. “Now you seek to impugn my judgment.”
God, she was losing him. Beswick was the only one who could help her prevent Beaumont’s suit. Isobel was innocent, and she deserved better. Her sister was the only reason she was even here. Astrid shoved her chin up and gathered her brittle wits about her. She was no coward and would not back down now. She’d come here for one thing and one thing only.
“Yes, I do, Your Grace. I wish to marry you.”
An odd expression passed over his face then. Disbelief? Astonishment? Wonder? After an interminable moment, the duke shifted to resume his position behind the desk. He sat back in the shadows—king of his natural domain. A devil cloaked in perpetual darkness. Again, Astrid felt that lick of self-preservation skate across her senses.
She cleared her throat, focusing on the task at hand and falling to her usual directness. “What happened to you?”
His big body went motionless in his chair, and for a moment, Astrid thought she’d gone too far. Pushed him beyond the limits of genteel courtesy. But then he responded. “I took on a half-dozen bayonets face-first.”
The words held no inflection, though Astrid felt the lance of them deep in her soul. God, how he must have suffered. She held back another wince, but the duke was one to miss nothing.
“Don’t be ashamed of being revolted. It’s not for the faint of heart, is it?”
“No, Your Grace,” she said, knowing he would hate any pity. “But I was not revolted. I was thinking that perhaps you might have benefitted from someone with neater stitching skills
.”
A gasp came from somewhere near the entrance, but Astrid didn’t dare turn around. She could sense the duke’s astonishment from where he sat.
“Is that one of your skills you hope to bring to the proposed match, then?” Beswick said eventually. “Needlework?”
“I am a lady, Your Grace, and skilled in all manner of gently bred persuasions.”
“Is that so?”
She bristled at his tone, though she wasn’t sure whether he was mocking what constituted a lady’s education or whether he was mocking her. “Yes.” And then she added, “Among other things.”
“Like the study of ancient Chinese relics?”
Astrid sighed. Most men in her experience felt threatened by any females who knew anything at all. But she wasn’t here to demonstrate her intelligence or use it as a defense against unwanted suitors; she was here to land herself a husband who was a bigger predator than the one she and Isobel currently faced. “I enjoy learning, Your Grace.”
“Given your diverse range of feminine…talents, why hasn’t some society fop seduced you off your accomplished feet and filled your womb with broods upon broods of future aristocrats?”
A blush crept up her neck. Gracious, but he was coarse. She could hardly tell him that one lying man’s word against her own had well and truly barred that door. “Perhaps because I did not wish to be seduced.”
“Don’t all women wish for seduction?”
His eyes burned into hers, that sultry rasp doing unnatural things to her. A handful of words, and Astrid couldn’t tempt a puff of air to enter her shrinking lungs. A rush of prickling heat blazed over her skin. Her entire body felt tight as if the slightest pressure would make her shatter. Gracious, what was the matter with her?
“Not all women,” she choked out, her face hot, but her addled brain could not stop conjuring images of him naked, limned in fire and candlelight. A sliver of toweling that had barely hid his silhouetted masculine outline or the broad, muscular planes of his chest. She’d even gotten a brief glimpse of his swinging male part, and even that had sent a lightning bolt of heat to the base of her spine. The duke might be badly scarred, but he wasn’t disfigured there.
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