Night of Pleasure (13 page)

Her pale face slowly flushed.

He grinned, watching that flush. “A woman only ever blushes when she realizes she can’t hide the truth.” He adjusted his coat, trying not to boast too much and gestured toward her gown. “Since we’re on the subject, allow me to say you’ve become
incredibly
ravishing. Though I will admit that your…uh…décolletage is rather disappointing. It gives me nothing to look at. I’m assuming that you’re entertaining American fashion, because even the most respectable women here in London show more cleavage.” He cleared his throat and pushed on. “And since you wouldn’t let me kiss you, and we still have a few hours ahead of us, do you think you could…” He whistled and pretended to tug the air downward.

Her eyes widened. “Are you insinuating that I lower my décolletage?”

“Just by a touch. I’m not asking to see nipples.”

She gasped and rigidly pointed at him with her cheroot, causing a few ashes to scatter. “You haven’t changed
a bit
. All that talk in your letters about being a refined gentleman, indeed. You’re still the same seventeen-year-old trying to lure me into the library to do things.”

He smirked. “You make it sound like such a bad thing.”

“And you make it sound like it’s a normal thing.”

“You’re flattered by my advances and you damn well know it.” He pointed at her half-finished cheroot. “Are you done? I want to show you the rest of the house.” He caught her gaze. “How about I show you my bedchamber and its rooms next? Are you wanting to see it? We can sneak over.”

She pressed a hand against her throat. “No, I don’t…I’m not—” She winced and quickly brought her cheroot to her lips, dragging in a breath and letting it out. Twice. “You and I have quite a bit to discuss, Derek. So if you don’t mind, I plan to smoke at least one more. I need to.”

The little devil. “Absolutely not. I’m being incredibly generous by allowing this much. Smoking not only bloody stinks everything up, but ruins the wallpaper. You should have seen this room before it was redone. It was disgusting. The layer of soot from my father’s cigars on the ceiling were almost a quarter of an inch thick. Which is why…the one you are smoking is your last. In fact, I want you to hand over whatever you have in your reticule right now.” He held out his hand and wagged his fingers toward her. “Be a dear. Your husband commands it.”

“Commands it?” Her features turned incredibly serious. “You obviously think I am yours to command, and I am informing you, my lord, that you are very mistaken.”

He shifted his jaw. This woman was dangerous. She acted like a wide-eyed prim and proper miss, but at heart, she only followed her own orders. Leaning forward and toward her, he announced, “You are
not
smoking another one in my presence.”

She fingered her cheroot. “I wouldn’t worry about my smoking if I were you. You and I have other things to talk about.” Her voice was decisive and firm.

He fell back against the seat. It was obvious he needed to stop pushing and start impressing. Because he wasn’t all push. He had some give. “Fine. How about we take this outside the cigar room? Because I actually wanted to show you the music room. I had this rather brilliant idea, when we were talking earlier, as to what we should do with it. No one makes use of it anymore, and given that you love to paint and that my mother is moving out, we should turn it into your own personal gallery. A place where you can paint and have your own space. There is more than enough room in there to display at least several dozen paintings on the walls alone. What do you think? Is that something that would please you? Do you want to go see it?”

She was quiet for a moment. She closed her eyes, then opened them. Her voice softened. “That is very kind of you, Derek, but I would rather we stay in here and talk.” She glanced around. “I don’t see a clock. How much time do we have?”

It was obvious she was counting down to the minute of when her father would return. Was he really that boring? Digging into his waistcoat pocket, he yanked at the fob and pulled out the gold watch attached to it. He glanced at the instrument. “It’s after two o’clock. Which means we still have a few hours.” He tucked the watch back into his pocket.

“I see.” She was quiet for a moment then blurted, “Might I ask how your brother is?”

His stomach dropped at the mention of Andrew. He honestly didn’t know how his brother was fairing. His mother, who visited his brother every week, offered only superficial information. Like what Andrew was wearing and what they had for supper. “I imagine he is well.”

She paused. “You imagine? Don’t you know? I thought you and he were close.”

He shrugged. “We are, but it’s complicated.” For all he knew his brother had already married his birch mistress but was keeping it a secret so their mother wouldn’t find out. “We had a falling out. A bad one. He and I always have our arguments, as brothers do, but it usually rolls away in minutes. And this…I haven’t seen him in almost two months.” It hurt.

“I’m sorry.” She tilted her head of pinned black curls and quietly observed him. “I remember him always writing. Did he ever publish a book?”

“One. But given its violent content, no publisher on Paternoster Row was willing to touch it. So he hired a printer and published it himself. Only it turned out to be far more expensive than he anticipated.”

“Is it any good? Did you read it?”

Derek cringed. His brother, God love him, wrote books no human ought to read. Just like Derek’s own paintings that needed to be incinerated from existence for lack of creativity and talent, so did his brother’s books. The Banfields were known for their good-looks, wit, and charms, but not their artistic talents. No one could be good at everything. “In all honesty, and I never had the heart to tell him, the book isn’t any good. He used to write romantic books that were actually quite decent but after his horrid luck with women, he started slathering blood into it. It’s stupid and violent. Lopped heads everywhere with no real purpose other than to showcase blood.”

She lowered her cheroot to the arm of the chair, her dark arched brows going up. “People’s tastes in reading varies. He might have an audience he simply hasn’t found.”

He snorted. “Yes, well, his audience is probably hiding in prison or in hell, because in my opinion, the content was created to entertain savage men bordering on insanity. I couldn’t finish it.”

She sat up and took another long breath of smoke before letting it drift from her lips. “Oh, now I
have
to read it. What is the title? I’ll buy a copy later today. I have some shopping to do and will be about anyway.”

He pointed. “I am
not
telling you the title or the name he is writing under. I wouldn’t be much of a gentleman if I allowed you to read a book slathered with more gore than one finds in a mortuary after a city riot. Hell, I couldn’t sleep for a week after I read it.
A week
. And I’m a man. You would faint and break a bracelet or an earring or something.”

Her lips parted. “Break a…” She averted her gaze and stiffly rose. “Yes. I…thank you for gallantly pointing out that my sex is too weak to consume anything worthy of a man. I needed to be reminded of that.” Walking over to the ash pan, she extinguished the small tip of what remained of her tobacco and sighed. “Derek, I think it’s time we admit that you and I have never been well-suited. You have incredibly strong opinions toward everything, as do I, and I am only referring to the simplest of our conversations, which have thus far only included books and smoking. We haven’t even gotten around to weightier topics. Such as children or…life. We simply don’t have anything in common. We never did.”

He sat up. “What do you mean?” He swiped the tips of his fingers against his chin, trying not to get agitated. “I disagree with you on a few random subjects and all of a sudden we’re not well-suited?” He set his hands on his knees. “I can assure you, heiress, on our wedding night, you won’t have
any
complaints.”

Her eyes flashed imperiously, but as always, the rest of her façade remained cool and calm. “I don’t appreciate you teasing me, Derek. I’m being very serious. And I am asking you to be serious for once.” Her blue eyes returned once again to its full composure. “We deserve better than what our parents wanted for us. We deserve to take paths that serve who we are as people so we may honor our character and in turn, our lives.”

Why did he sense their conversation had suddenly veered into a dark forest with cackling goblins? “So what are you insinuating? Exactly?”

She sighed. “Wouldn’t you have wanted the sort of life you could create and mold on your own? One you’d be able to better understand because the choices you made were your own? As opposed to the choices our parents agreed on and pushed us into when we were mere youths?”

What the hell was this? It was as if she was trying to brush aside what they shared. “I
am
creating the life I want. Having strong opposing opinions within a marriage is necessary to create anything worth holding onto. If we agree on everything, what would we be teaching each other and our children? Absolutely nothing. We’d be bored three minutes into the marriage.”

Her brows flickered. “You clearly don’t understand. What I’m saying is…wouldn’t you have wanted to choose the bride you were going to marry?”

“I did choose you.”

She stared. “You did not.”

“I most certainly did.” His entire body was obnoxiously warm just thinking about it. “Did our first meeting not prove that? Hell, I wanted you well before I even knew we were engaged. Are you telling me that doesn’t count for anything in your eyes?”

Her cheeks flushed. “Derek, I’m asking that you please listen to what I’m about to say.”

That tone was flat. Uncompromising. He didn’t like it. At all.

She averted her gaze. “I almost didn’t come to England. I almost went to Persia with a friend, but I didn’t think it was fair to disappear into the night without telling you about it in person. Not after everything we shared and all the letters we exchanged.” She hesitated. “I came to London to break off our engagement and announce that I am leaving to Persia and I hope you will understand and accept it.”

His gaze snapped to her in disbelief, those words pummeling him through the chest like a newly sharpened saber. It was as if he had been sending all of himself into a void for seven years. He’d always thought, given the ten weeks they spent together in their youth and the countless genuine letters they had exchanged over the years that she had grown to feel
something
for him. Only it was obvious she didn’t feel
anything
for him.

He felt like heaving up his chair and smashing it into mere splinters at the nearest wall. The only thing that kept him from actually doing it was the fact that the chair belonged to his grandmother. “Are you telling me there is someone else? Is that why you’re going to Persia?” Bloody hell, he couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t he breathe? “Are you physically involved with another man? Is that what you’re saying?”

She pursed her lips, clearly offended. “I don’t do kisses, Derek. I’m a respectable lady.”

A respectable lady who had betrayed his heart. He’d dedicated seven years to the idea of her and them.
Seven
. She was all he’d ever known and all he’d ever wanted to know and she was going to—

He curled his hands into fists to keep himself from altogether standing up into her face and roaring. “The contracts are all signed, Clementine. My mother sent out over three hundred goddamn invitations weeks ago. The wedding takes place in six days.
Six
. What the hell are you doing waiting until six days before the wedding to tell me we’re not well suited?”

She was quiet.

Did she honestly think she could do this to him? After pulling the wagon along for seven whole years? “I’m sorry to say you’re already mine. This is done. I signed my name on the line. Eight different times.”

Her gaze cooled but her façade, as always remained the same. Regal. “Don’t you dare to speak to me as if I were an object you signed for.”

He narrowed his gaze, his pulse thundering. “Begging your pardon,
Miss Grey
, but an object stays wherever I put it. And obviously, I can’t say that about you, can I?”

She angled toward him. “Neither of our parents had a right to make such a life-altering decision for us. This wasn’t the path either of us would have ever taken. Do you not see that?”

He stared in a quaking attempt to stay calm. “I only see a woman making excuses to be with someone else. So who is he? Some goddamn American boy from your Broadway Society?”

She sighed. “It isn’t what you think. He is my dearest and closest friend.”

“
Really
? And this so-called
friend
is now taking you to Persia for the rest of your life? Is that how he sold all of this to you? Are you really that naïve? Or do you also think I’m stupid?”

She gave him a withering look. “Not all men require a woman to lower their décolletage and offer up a kiss. He is a very respectable man. In fact, he is royalty. And to a select few who are privileged enough to stand in his presence, he is known as Prince Nasser.”

Oh now, shite. How was he to compete with that? He gripped the sides of the chair until his fingers pulsed. He tried to keep his voice polite but it stayed rough. “So how the devil did you meet this prince? While you were traveling abroad? While you were— Christ, that certainly explains why it took so goddamn long for you to answer any of the letters I sent to you week after week. Because you and your special
friend
were too busy—”