He had never felt like this: dizzy with raw lust, hungry to take her and prove—
With an oath, he released her and backed away, as if that would save him from the hunger that had him wanting to throw her on a bed, any bed, and tuck her body beneath his own.
She turned around slowly. Pale gold ribbons of hair fell around her neck and curled against the drab fabric of her gown. It sent another shock through him.
“Your mother was not a whore,” she repeated, as fierce as ever. “She was in love with my father. It’s not fair to brand her that way!”
“She may not have been, but her son will be. After all, you’re buying my services, are you not? The market price for one duke, in fairly good physical condition, seems to be an incriminatory letter. Perhaps you should search your father’s belongings. Just think what you could do with two such letters. Two noblemen, in the same bed, at the same time.”
“That is a loathsome thing to say,” she said, her voice shaking for the first time.
He plowed his hands through his hair, frustration mixing with his lust. “I’ll give you a dowry, if that’s the problem.” He was grasping at straws, he knew. “I can make you rich enough that you can attract a man by conventional means. You needn’t do this, Miss Carrington. We can forget it ever happened.”
Her eyes narrowed at him, her chin back up in the air. “You think I couldn’t possibly attract a husband without a large dowry?”
Vander eyed her truly awful gown. “If you bought some reasonably fashionable frocks, I’m sure that you could find someone,” he offered. “Hell, I could help there too. I know several gentlemen who—”
“Who are desperate enough to marry someone like me if a duke paid them enough?” she cut in.
He eyed her, then shrugged.
She went stiff all over, like a Greek statue sculpted by the hand of a master. But she likely had a lushly feminine grace when unclothed, a figure that those stalk-thin Greek goddesses would envy. Put it together with lips of deep rose, and those eyes . . . she could certainly have a man at her feet. Maybe a whole crowd.
He wouldn’t be one of them.
“Unfortunately for your scheme, I already have a dowry,” she said. “It is sufficiently large. Moreover, I have . . . I have money of my own.”
He narrowed his eyes. “In that case, why in the bloody hell are you forcing this? You say it isn’t revenge. Or lust. God knows our marriage would be a disaster.” And then it sank in, well and truly seeping in like a stinging poison. “Miss Carrington, you have to trust that there’s someone out there who would fall in love with you in return. You don’t really love me. You don’t even know me.”
“I don’t—”
“Look, my closest friend Thorn—Tobias Dautry—never thought to marry. He fell in love just this last year, as unexpectedly as if he’d been hit on the head by a cannon ball.”
“Love is like being hit in the head?”
He nodded, warming to the subject. “What if that were to happen to you? When it happens to you,” he amended. “When you meet the man of your dreams, you will be desolate if you and I are already married.”
The sensual, plump curve of her lips tightened into a thin line, suggesting he was making an impression. “There’s no possible way that our marriage will thrive,” he continued. “Not under any circumstances. Hell, I courted Lady Xenobia last year. One of the most beautiful women in all London, perhaps in all Britain. And the daughter of a marquess.”
She didn’t say anything.
“India is tall and willowy,” he said, forcing the issue. “Exquisitely beautiful, with the bearing of a goddess.” Never mind the fact that he’d decided India was a bit too tall for him.