Page 8 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
“And the rest of this?” she asked.
“You may feed it to the fire with my blessing.”
Her lips pursed in consideration. Gradually she relaxed, straightening once more and lifting her free hand to tuck a tiny, frizzy curl that had escaped its pins back behind her ear. “I will not surrender my career,” she said.
Ian hadn’t planned on asking that concession of her, but it suited his purposes to have her state it so plainly and open herself up to further bargaining. “I’ll agree to that,” he said, “in return for an additional concession of you.” And his brain was already whirling through its paces, considering those most important, most necessary. “It’s not so very much when weighed against what I might have asked.”
“What youdidask,” she said with resentful sibilance.
It would have served no purpose to remind her that her opinion of him could hardly have sunk any lower than already it had been. He’d become the villain of her story years ago. She could not blame him for acting the role she’d assigned to him. “Is that a yes or a no?” he asked. “There’s twenty minutes before we are due at the church. I’d suggest you decide quickly.”
“Four concessions,” she said almost to herself as she glanced down at the folio pressed beneath her palm, and he knew she was thinking of how many of them he was surrendering the right to, how many hours she had spent evening last poring over the documents he’d given her, how much fury they had incited.“Justfour?”
“Just four.”
“And you will never try to—to exercise what authority the law might bestow upon you?”
“No.”
“And what binds you to that, then?”
“My honor. And yours. I don’t doubt that you’ll find new and inventive ways to make me suffer should I fail to hold up my end of our bargain.” He flicked his gaze to the clock. “There’s not time enough to draw up another contract presently,” he said, and extended his hand to her. “A handshake will do for the moment. At least until I can have my solicitor draw up a revised document, which will prove considerably shorter.”
Another long moment, and finally she lifted her hand from where it was planted atop the folio, and extended it toward him. Her fingers brushed his—stopped. Curled into a fist. “Are you having me followed?” she asked.
“Followed?” Ian felt his brows knit. “What do you mean?”
“I noticed a great hulking behemoth of a man following me,” she said, in tones of faint exasperation, as if she suspected he only pretended ignorance. “Did you set him upon me?”
“I haven’t set anyone upon you. Someone is following you? Have you any idea why?”
A muscle jumped in her cheek. “No,” she said, but the word was offered tightly, her voice strained. She’d lied to him, and she wasn’t even any good at it. But her fingers uncurled and her hand slid into his, clasping his own, and he decided it would be best to let the matter pass for now. Now, when her hand was in his. When she’d touched him of her own accord for the first time in a decade.
When she’d agreed to marry him.
Reluctantly he released her hand to take up his pen once again. As he dipped the nib in the inkwell, he said, “First, you will reside in my house.” It hadn’t been a given; he knew of more than a few married couples who lived apart by choice or otherwise. He’d sacrificed a concession for it, but he would not have put it past her to take herself straight back off to her school if he hadn’t.
“Second,” he said, scrawling out his name upon the page before him, “you will sleep in my bed.”
Felicity rolled her eyes, folding her arms over her chest. She had to have expected it, though—it had been written into those fifty-four pages. And still, above all other things, she had chosen to safeguard her career first.
Ian flipped a page, scrawled another signature. “Third. I want one hour of your time every evening,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed once again to slits. “For what purpose?”
Just to be near her, but she would not welcome that comment. “Conversation,” he said. “Or perhaps dinner, or the occasional event for which I am engaged. Nothing you would find untoward or unsavory, I promise you.”
Another flip of the page. The last line there awaiting his signature. His pen hovered over it. She was going to balk; he knew she was. But he’d been forced to cede so much already that he needed to make those four concessions count. “Fourth,” he said. “I will require a kiss from you—just one—every day. Beginning now, before I make my mark upon this last page.”
“A kiss!” she seethed, exactly as he had expected. “Why?”
Because he could not stomach the thought that the last time she would ever touch him would be some minutes from now when the reverend called her to set her hand in his. “Because it is what I require of you,” he said. And then to needle her into action, he added, “I’ve surrendered a great many things. Surely you can manage only this.”
With a muted sound of fury, she reached across his desk, seized his cravat in her fist, and dragged him closer. It could hardly have been called anything close to affectionate, but she mashed her lips against his cheek in a bizarre mockery of a kiss.
“I trust that will satisfy your condition,” she said acidly as she released his cravat, now hopelessly wrinkled.
“It does,” he said as she blinked in surprise. And he scrawled his name to the last line, set down his pen, and pushed himself out of his chair. “Butler will collect the pages and deliver them to Mr. Grantham,” he said as he rounded the desk. “And we have got an appointment with the reverend.”
