Splendid

Alex’s unflappable demeanor sent Emma’s rage spiraling out of control. She picked up a vase and raised it over her head, getting ready to launch it at him.

“Please,” he choked. “Not the Ming vase.”

Emma lowered her arms, inspected the artifact with a discerning eye, and then placed it back down on the table. She picked up a snuffbox. “How about this?”

Alex grimaced. “Well, if you really must…”

The snuff box missed his ear by a hair’s breadth.

“Destroying my belongings isn’t going to solve anything,” Alex said, bounding off the bed, completely unconcerned with his nakedness. “You will marry me.”

“Has it ever occurred to you to ask for something rather than demand it?” she burst out furiously, trying to pull up her undergarments without dropping the coverlet. Her anger only grew when Alex’s lips quirked with amusement at her predicament. “Oh, I beg your forgiveness, your grace,” she said, her voice dripping with ice cold sarcasm. “I forgot. A duke doesn’t have to ask for anything. He doesn’t have to earn anything. He can have whatever he wants. It’s his due.” Emma whipped her head around as she said the last words, and she was stunned by the seething expression on Alex’s face. Horrified, she took a step backwards, still clutching nervously to the blanket which shielded her from his furious gaze.

“Emma,” he said very tightly, “will you marry me?”

“No!” She could barely believe she had said it, but the word actually came out rather forcefully.

“That is it!” Alex exploded. He crossed the room in swift, angry strides and snatched the coverlet away from Emma. She desperately tried to cover herself but soon found that that wasn’t really necessary, for Alex seemed intent on shoving her into her clothes. “I have had enough of your petty tantrums,” he bit out, pulling the chemise over her head. “If you wanted to prove to me that you are not a shrinking miss who can be ordered about, you can rest assured. You have done so. Now stop acting like a child and accept the inevitable. You will marry me, and you will do it with a smile on your face.”

Emma flashed him a sickeningly sweet grin. “Is that good enough, your grace? We wouldn’t want it to get out that the great duke of Ashbourne had to force a woman to marry him.” She regretted the words the minute they flew out of her mouth, instantly aware that she had gone too far. Alex’s face was a mask of barely concealed rage, and his grip on her upper arms tightened until Emma was sure she would be bruised. “I’m sorry,” she said in a strangled voice, unable to look him in the eye.

Disgusted, Alex let go of her and crossed the room to the chair on which he had left his evening clothes a few hours earlier before crawling into bed next to Emma. With sharp, savage movements he dressed himself, and all Emma could do was stare, awed into silence by his rigid control of his temper.

When Alex finished dressing, he tossed Emma her overcoat and crossed the room to the door, giving it a vicious yank. It didn’t budge, and Alex swore viciously as he remembered that he had locked it the night before.

“The key,” Emma whispered in horror. “You threw it out the window.”

He ignored her as he strode into his dressing room and disappeared. Within seconds the door to the room opened from the outside. Alex’s broad shoulders nearly filled the entire doorway. “Let’s go,” he said tersely.

Emma wisely chose not to rage at him about his letting her think they’d been trapped in the room the previous evening, and she lost no time in following his bidding, half afraid of his obvious, although tightly leashed, fury, half figuring that she wanted to go home anyway, so wasn’t she getting what she wanted? She scrambled down the stairs and waited in the front hall while Alex woke up one of his footmen and asked that a carriage be made ready. “It will take a few minutes,” he said when he returned, silently daring her to protest the delay. “I’m afraid my household isn’t used to activity at this time in the morning.”

Emma gulped and nodded, keeping her gaze fixed on the floor. She was starting to feel a little ashamed of her tantrum. It was probably very natural for Alex to assume that they would get married now that they had slept together. But nothing seemed to provoke her ire like his highhanded manner, and something within her had snapped when he simply announced their forthcoming nuptials. Now, as she looked hesitantly at his still-furious visage, she quickly realized that for all her outspokenness, she wasn’t brave enough to venture a word.

Ten minutes later she was hustled into a carriage, and with dismay she noticed that the first streaks of dawn were beginning to light the sky. The servants at the Blydon household would already have begun their morning chores. They would notice her unconventional arrival and tell their friends who worked in other households, who in turn would tell their employers. Emma sighed wearily. There would be no avoiding a scandal.

It wasn’t a long ride home, but by the time the carriage pulled up in front of the Blydon mansion the sun had risen, and London was beginning to wake up. Alex quickly jumped down, practically dragging Emma along with him.

“There is no need to be so rough, your grace,” Emma said indignantly as she stumbled up the steps behind him.

Alex whirled around and took her chin in his hand, holding her face up so that she could not avoid looking him straight in the eye. “My name is Alex,” he said sharply. “Since we will be married this weekend, I would appreciate it if you would remember that.”