Page 15 of The Marquess' Wicked Wager
"It's a beautiful day, is it not?" The Marquess noted, his eyes on the clear blue heavens. “I pray the sun is being kind to that delicate skin of yours.”
“My delicate skin is no concern of yours,” she responded coolly though the innocence of the topic he chose caught her off-guard. Did scoundrels often speak of the weather?
“I’m concerned about it, nevertheless.” The Marquess glanced over his shoulder at his uncle and her godmother. A soft smile she hadn’t yet seen touched his cheeks then he chuckled and shook his head. “Can you believe those two? Like a couple of springtime sweethearts.”
Edna, too, glanced back at Violet and the Earl. Her godmother had a coy smile up until she burst out in a fit of giggles. Giggles! Edna suppressed a smile of her own and shook her head. “For all she warned me of your family, she seems ready to join it quite willingly.”
“And for all my Uncle whined about not being able to speak to the woman, he seems to be holding his own just fine.” He almost looked proud. “You know, a family is a rather large thing to paint with such broad strokes.”
Edna’s smile fell as memories from earlier that day flooded in. She tightened her grip on the parasol. “It only takes one errant stroke to ruin a painting, My Lord.”
“I suppose you’re equally proud of every member of your household?” He smirched his lips. “Gamblers included.”
She snapped her eyes, as green as the summer grass around them, to his. “If you think so little of my family, why are you so keen on joining it, hm?”
“I’m not especially. Your family has quite a storied reputation for the lower gentry. Gamblers, drunks, gossips. I’m not keen on any of them. I’m only keen on you.”
Anger boiled up inside her, fighting with the fleeting urge she had to smile. She snapped her parasol shut and poked the end into his chest. “If you think you can flatter me by insulting my family after you, yourself, gambled for my hand like I was a common horse, you are sorely mistaken, Sir. I will not be talked down to so.”
“No, I’m getting that impression.” He glanced down at his chest where she poked him then up at her eyes. “I genuinely didn’t call on you today to inspire your anger with me once again. You persist in distracting me.”
“I persist in nothing of the sort. You came to see me, may I remind you? Not the other way around. It was you who bet on my hand. And it was you who… who caught me in the hallway completely unawares.” She stumbled through the final words, heat searing on her cheeks and not from the sun.
“Unawares? You seemed quite cognizant to me.”
“And you seem quite brazen.” She stared into his eyes until she could take it no more. He matched her gaze for gaze and wit for wit, and she found it utterly infuriating. “What did you want to speak to me about, My Lord? I wish to stroll no longer.”
“Marriage, of course. What else is there to speak of when one finds oneself in a rose garden with a respectable young lady?”
“Ha!” Edna barked out in a most unladylike fashion. “Surely you jest?”
“I wouldn’t dare, Miss Worthington.” He smiled, his eyes catching the light that twinkled on a nearby fountain. “I couldn’t help but notice you’ve had a number of suitors come to call since last we spoke. A duke, no less.”
“I did indeed have that monster of a duke come to call.” She bristled at the mention of the Duke of Crass—the scoundrel who happened to be the father of the man standing before her. She did not understand the game he was playing, and that stoked the fire inside her all the more. “It is how I learned that I was not wrong about the apple and the tree.”
His eye twitched. “May I ask you a candid question?”
“Does it come at the price of being inappropriately accosted?”
“On the contrary, it is in the interest of keeping you from being furtherly accosted.”
They rounded a corner into a cozy thicket of pink and yellow blooms. The full blooms and glossy leaves shielded them from the prying eyes of a good portion of the park and cut her off from Violet’s purview. Edna stopped walking and shoved her parasol out in front of him. “And what could a man who kissed an innocent young lady in a hallway know about preventing unwanted advances? I was warned it was you I should never be alone with from the very start.”
He sighed then took a long slow breath, glancing down at the ground. “You must know by now that my father has set his sights on you rather fixedly. So, though you may be receiving dozens of suitors and piles of roses and chocolates and hastily scrawled poetry that should only ever be seen by a fireplace, the question you should be asking yourself is if there is a single man amongst the rabble that could possibly protect you from the needful gaze of the queen’s own nephew.”
Edna blanched, the sun suddenly feeling far too hot for her skin. She took great time and care to open her parasol back up and lift it above her head. “If you’re suggesting the only way to find safety from one rake is to run to another, then why run at all?”
His eyes snapped back to hers, and he took a quick step closer. “You expect me to believe that you don’t find me marginally preferable to my father?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but a gentle breeze blew between them, coating her in his scent of sweet grass and peppermint with just a hint of tobacco. A memory of that fuzziness she felt at the ball returned, and she dropped her eyes to the ground. “I should think it does not matter one wit, My Lord, for you made it clear that you would not win your wife in a hand of cards, and I assure you, I feel the same way.”
“Good.” He took another step closer until she could feel the heat of his body. “No woman of any quality would allow herself to be won in such a crass way. But that is not what I’m speaking of.”
Edna parted her lips, hoping to catch a breath that didn’t make her feel strangely giddy and light-headed. “So, you do not…” Her bottom lip threatened to wobble again, but she forced it still. “You do not wish to marry me, then.”
“And if I did? What then? You say one rake is as good as another. I wonder…” He brushed the back of one finger gently over her neck. “Do you flush when he touches you? Or do you shiver?”
Her breath caught at his touch, and she had to stop herself from leaning in. “Neither would make either of you a gentleman,” she breathed out heavily. “So…” She swallowed again as his finger brushed just below her ear and sent the very shivers he asked of down across her body. “It does not matter.”
