Page 42 of Nothing Compares to the Duke
“Rhys, this could benefit both of us.”
He stepped closer, limned in golden morning light. He looked achingly handsome with his windswept hair and bright blue eyes, but he also looked exhausted. He glanced back at the pile of ledgers, one brow arched. “You agreed to help me, so I should agree to help you?”
“It does seem a fair exchange.”
He still had the foil in his hand and dragged the tip across a leaf in the study’s carpet design. “Wentworth is still at Hillcrest, is he not?”
“I departed early this morning, but I suppose he is.”
“He seems the most bearable of the lot. Would you not consider a real proposal from him?” He laid the foil down, balanced atop two ledgers. Turning to face her, he rested his backside against the desk’s edge.
“I barely know him.” Even from across the room, the intensity of his perusal made her warm. Her pulse sped. Tapping her foot against the carpet, she willed herself to face him. To maintain the same confidence she’d felt when she walked through Edgecombe’s doors.
“He seems a decent sort of chap,” Rhys retorted.
“I don’t trust him.”
His mouth curved. “But do you trust me?”
“Yes.” The single syllable felt sharp and false on her tongue. Though she was proposing a deception, she hated lying. “No.”
“No,” he agreed. “Of course you don’t. As you know too well, I’m not a trustworthy man.”
There was such wounded bitterness in his tone that Bella felt an urge to reassure him, but she couldn’t. She didn’t trust him, at least not with her heart. But she could believe in him enough to enter into an agreement that benefited each of them.
“Isn’t making deals the sort of thing you do in the Duke’s Den?”
“No. Not like this.”
“I know you well,” she told him, trying to find a way to explain why it would have to be him and no one else. “We’re familiar with each other.”
His eyes glinted when she said the wordfamiliarand his mouth tipped in a mischievous slant.
“Wewerefriends once.” He lifted off the desk and approached. “But you said you didn’t think we could be again.”
“I never said that. Not exactly in those words anyway.” Parting from him last night had left her unsettled and miserable because she’d allowed that single glimpse of hurt to slip out.
“Ah yes, only the implication that we’d never share confidences.” There was an aching wistfulness in histone. “But if we do this, we’ll share quite a big secret between us.”
Bella clenched her teeth. He was making this far more difficult than she’d expected.
He stepped closer, arms braced across his chest. His gaze was intense, unrelenting. Somehow their positions had changed. She’d come to petition him and now all the questions were directed her way.
She blew out a breath and squared her shoulders. “My parents wish me to marry. I will not agree to that for expedience’s sake to a man I barely know and who does not...” She’d been on the verge of confessing all the foolish notions that still filled her head when it came to love and romance. “A man who does not appeal to me.”
“Ah.” His eyes lit up. “So I appeal to you?”
“You did once,” she admitted. “Not anymore.” Never would she let herself tread that path again.
His low chuckle shocked her and her pulse pounded in her ears when he stepped closer.
“That almost sounds like a challenge, Bella.”
“An impossibility, I promise you.” If there was one man in England she would never trust with her heart, it was the handsome scoundrel watching her with a knowing smirk.
“You shouldn’t underestimate me.”
She barely resisted rolling her eyes. He wasn’t simply bold. His confidence had reached epic proportions. Though he’d teased her plenty in the past, it had never been like this. With heat in his gaze.
