“Aunt Mabel, Lady Ashley, if you’ll excuse me, it seems I have some business to cover with Sir Thornton. Fletcher, if you’ll accompany Lady Isobel to her room.” He did not acknowledge Beaumont, the viscount, or his odious wife.
Thane reached for Astrid’s hand and lifted it to his lips. “My lady,” he murmured.
Unreadable ice-blue eyes met his, though she did not remove her hand from his.
On the way past, Fletcher shot him a gratified look, an aggravating grin gracing the man’s mouth. “Do you require a blanket, Your Grace? Perhaps a scarf or muff?”
“No.” He stared quizzically at the valet. “Why do you ask?”
Fletcher’s grin widened. “Heard it’s been snowing rather heavily in hell.”
His future duchess made a strangled noise at his side that sounded like she was trying not to laugh and failing miserably. Thane shook his head, the sound of her muffled laughter a balm to his damaged soul, and he chuckled, too. He’d never hear the end of it now.
Winter had come in hell—the Beast of Beswick was to be married.
Chapter Twelve
Over the next fortnight, Thane had reservations about leaving for London to procure an expedient marriage license, if only because Beaumont still lurked in Southend. Though the time had passed without incident, Thane would not put it past him to try something sly with Lady Isobel. Most overindulged aristocrats, when denied anything, only made them more determined to have it. And Beaumont was no exception.
Although Thane was not a pauper by any means, he’d been shocked when he’d learned of the astronomical size of Astrid’s and Isobel’s dowries. No wonder the viscount had been so desperate to get his hands on part of them. Sir Thornton had reported that the viscount was in debt up to his ears, and he had also discovered from Jenkins & Jenkins that the money had remained untouched because of the ironclad terms surrounding it.
Astrid, too, had been convinced that her uncle would not give up without a fight.
“I’m certain my uncle would have found a way to take both mine and Isobel’s,” she had told Thane. “As a woman, my rights are restricted without a man breathing down my neck like a dragon hoarding its treasure.” He had not missed her bitter tone. “My only goal was to make sure Isobel had a proper Season, but then Beaumont came sniffing around.”
“Why did he? As much as I despise the man, he is not strapped for coin. With his title, fortune, and looks, he’d be a desirable catch.”
Her glare had nearly set him on fire.
“Then, you marry him. Beaumont is a toad. Perhaps you can kiss him and live happily ever after.”
Thane had laughed, but she wasn’t wrong that the man was a toad. “Turns out I’m partial to saucy-mouthed harpies, not toads.”
He’d been hard pressed not to kiss the tartness off her tongue.
In the past weeks, they’d seemed to come to some sort of unacknowledged truce, and despite her moratorium on physical contact, Thane found himself enjoying spending time with her.
He’d discovered that one of her favorite collections of stories was The Thousand and One Nights. He’d contended that Scheherazade had willfully entrapped the king with her storytelling gifts, and she’d countered with the argument that women throughout history had always had to use any tools at their disposal to survive.
Granted, the king in the tale of Scheherazade had killed his queen and all his concubines and subsequently every maiden he married thereafter. Subtlety, Astrid had claimed, was the key to overthrowing the patriarchy. Dukes included, she’d added with a sly look. Thane had laughed at her utter irreverence.
He appreciated the way her mind worked and how she viewed the world. Her ideas on education and female empowerment intrigued him. And while he liked challenging her, he especially loved when she took him to task. Her quick mouth and shrewd brain might deter a lesser man, but not him—he’d come to esteem their verbal duels.
But most of all, he liked figuring out what made her tick. Loyalty. Learning. Passion. And she was passionate. About her sister and her interests. About her beliefs. It made Thane want to discover if that passion extended elsewhere.
In bed, particularly. That desire he squashed firmly.
Thane’s bottled-up physical wants didn’t stop him from seeking out her company in the warmth of the conservatory, where they’d taken to walking after dinner, her with a book and him a nip of brandy, before retiring for the evening.
As such, after finishing up with his estate business, Thane found her curled on her usual bench, her shoes discarded and her feet tucked beneath her, a book in her lap. He handed her a glass and filled it with a flask from his pocket.
“Thank you,” she told him with a soft smile.
“How is Isobel?” he asked, checking on a few of the flowering plants.
Astrid shrugged. “She has gone to bed after a very full afternoon. Patrick has been teaching her how to ride. And Fletcher has been teaching her how to shoot.”
“Has he?” Thane arched an eyebrow at that information. Fletcher had taught him to shoot when he was a boy. The man had annoyingly good aim. “What about you? Did you not wish to learn as well?”
“I have a job to do, Your Grace, if you recall, of categorizing your father’s antiques,” she replied. “Which I am very close to finishing, I might add. However, my eyes were so tired that I was afraid I would hit the wrong target.”
“Good thing I wasn’t out there,” he joked.
“If you had been, Your Grace, then I would have insisted on my turn.”
Thane grinned at her teasing. “An untrained woman, deep-rooted dislike, and a pistol do not a good combination make.”
“I am not untrained,” she said as she took a sip of her brandy, licking a drop off her bottom lip, and he fought back a hiss of breath. “My father taught me how to shoot. Isobel was not inclined to learn anything outside the normal realm for girls, but me…I wanted to know everything that boys did.”
“He indulged you.”
Intractable eyes met his. “I prefer to think that he gave me a fighting chance to stand up on equal footing with other men.”
“You are a lady, Astrid, not a man.”
Her eyes flashed and her chin rose, both signs that she was ready to do battle. “And that gives me the right to be inferiorly educated? To be treated as the weaker sex? To be discounted at every turn? To excel at waltzing and whimsy?” She said the last three words with so much heated contempt, it was a wonder they did not cinder the nearest shrubs.
“That’s the way the world works.”
Not that Thane agreed. Women in other communities across the globe had different roles, fought as hard as their men, and were treated on near-equal footing. His own mother had not been a weakling. She wouldn’t have survived, not with a father like his. The Duchess of Beswick had understood her role, but she had not let society’s rules govern her. Much like his aunt Mabel. Thane smiled inside. Female revolutionaries surrounded him, it seemed.
“Wollstonecraft would disagree,” Astrid countered. “She contended that the value of a woman extends beyond the value of her womb and that education is the only thing that separates our sexes.”
For a moment, his mind blanked at the sound of the word “sex” on her tongue. Her eyes shone with indignant passion, lips parted, breasts heaving. Suddenly, Thane was overtaken by a slew of lewd images that left him breathless. He blinked and shook himself. He’d gone to half-mast in his trousers. Hell. Hurriedly, he turned to check on one of the pipes that fed the irrigation system.
“Is that why you’re hell-bent on learning?” he said over his shoulder. “You want to be like a man?”
Astrid threw back her head and laughed, and Thane went full tilt at the uninhibited sound, swelling against the placket of his breeches. Hell, she fired his blood like nothing else. He sat on the bench beside her, hands folded over his lap to
disguise the bulge in his pants.
“No, of course not,” she said, her tone amused, “but I do want to be valued. I want to be a partner, a companion, instead of a broodmare whose only worth is to procreate. Women are not property to be traded like chattel, Your Grace.”
God, but she had passion in spades.
“I, for one, am glad you’re not a man,” he said.
Her attention fell back to the book in her hand, but the movement did not hide the rosy tint seeping into her cheeks. Good. Thane counted that as a victory.
“What are you reading tonight?” he asked, examining the volume she held in her elegant fingers. The sight of her hands made his insides clench as they always did. It baffled him that he’d be so tied up in knots over a woman’s fingers. Who knew he’d be such a quixotic fool? Peering down, he read the title on the book’s embossed cover. “Byron?” He chortled out loud. “You surprise me. Wollstonecraft is quite a shift to the prince of poets.”
With a blush, Astrid mumbled that she loathed the poet as a man but enjoyed his poetry from time to time.
“If you dislike him, why read his work?”
“It’s interesting to compare the man with his poems. He was terribly indiscreet about his lovers.” She paused. “Men can get away with so much, but shame if it’s a woman. Then, she’s vilified for life. Like Wollstonecraft.”
Thane nodded. “One of Byron’s mistresses was linked to Wellington.”
“My point exactly. Lady Annesley inspired ‘When We Two Parted.’ Beautifully composed, but honestly, love isn’t found in haste, is it? Although,” she remarked cynically, “it can be lost just as quickly.”
He stared at her. “What do you know of it?”
Throat working, her face contorted with something like pain as she ducked her head, hiding her face from view. Was she speaking from experience? Had she fancied herself in love with Cain?
“Nothing,” she said.
“How many poems and novels have been written as a result of broken hearts?” Thane said, shifting closer on the bench. “Complete drivel, I say. Love is for fools.”
“You don’t believe in love?” The question was soft, almost inaudible.
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
Thane was intrigued at her firm assertion and the undercurrent of raw pain in her voice. “What happened with Cain, Astrid? Why did he cry off?”
Crystal-blue eyes fastened to his, buried hurt visible for a stark moment before it was banished. She’d alluded to it in his study after they were discovered, but he had never asked her about it outright, to hear it from her lips. “You know why. Beaumont called off the engagement when rumors of my indiscretions surfaced,” she replied in a dispassionate tone, shutters descending over those expressive eyes.
“Did he compromise you?”
It didn’t seem like she was going to answer, but then she nodded as if to herself.
“He tried,” she said. “He thought because he was my fiancé he was entitled to”—she glanced at him, flushing—“his marital rights. Even though I knew he was to be my husband, I said no.” She exhaled and closed her eyes for an interminable moment. “I felt ill when he touched me, and it was then that I realized I had made a mistake in accepting his offer—we simply weren’t suited—and I suggested that we end the engagement amicably.”
A puff of deprecating laughter left her lips. “Amicably. It’s such a mild word, isn’t it? It makes you think everything is going to be fine. God, I was so naive. Edmund agreed, only to turn around the next day spreading vicious lies about my character and that he was forced to cry off the engagement. No one believed me. He destroyed any hope of a future I had without a qualm. Because he felt scorned. Because a woman had the gall to tell him no.”
“He ruined any chance you had for another match,” Thane discerned.
“Yes. The Everleighs had suddenly become outcasts. Friends abandoned us; invitations were withdrawn. We were shunned and cast aside.” Astrid stared down at the book in her hands. “Poor Isobel…to be caught in the sights of the same man who destroyed me. I fear it’s history repeating itself, and I’ll lose my sister for it.”
Thane felt a muscle start to tick in his jaw and saw her eyes flick to it. Her eyes hardened as though she expected him to doubt her account. But he couldn’t begin to articulate the feelings crowding his chest—the sympathy for what she’d been through, the fact that all he could see in her eyes was pain and the fear of being hurt yet again.
Thane wanted nothing more than to gather her into his arms and soothe away the hurts she’d suffered. But he sensed Astrid would not welcome the overture. She was anything if not proud. Proud and strong and unbelievably resilient. Most women would have crumbled in the face of her past. She hadn’t.
“None of it matters anyway,” she said quickly. “People will believe what they want to believe.”
“Beaumont is a snake.”
“Perhaps, but he wasn’t alone in the ton’s vilification of me. Everyone loves a good scandal, no matter who gets incinerated in its wake.” A hint of a smile ghosted her lips. “Don’t worry—he didn’t quite get away unscathed. I believe I called him a grasping, oversexed gutter rat in front of the entire assembly.”
Thane barked a laugh. “The least of what he deserved.”
She lifted a shoulder in a half shrug, though he could still see the old injury in her eyes. “Beaumont is just an overindulged, entitled prick.” She blew out a breath. “My story is not so different from other women who have been silenced. That’s why I’m so fond of Wollstonecraft’s essays. If women were treated equally, I would have been allowed to plead my case. To tell the truth. Instead of having to live with the assumptions and sentencing of others.” She smiled ruefully. “But you said it yourself—that’s the way the world works.”
“It shouldn’t be,” he said quietly. “Beaumont took something from you. It might not have been your virginity, but the truth is, he stole something valuable just the same. Part of you.”
A look of vulnerability crossed her face that she quickly hid. She set the volume of poetry aside and reached down for her slippers. “If you will excuse me, Your Grace, I am for bed.”
He leaped up and knelt at her feet, taking the shoes before she could grasp them. “Allow me. And it’s Thane.”
A blush rose to her cheeks. “What are you doing?”
“If we are to be married, it’s the…”
But Thane lost his ability to speak at the sight of her bare toes and the pale, high arch of her instep. She wasn’t wearing stockings beneath her skirts, and fucking hell, her slender feet were just like her hands—fine-boned and elegant, as though carved by some master sculptor.
“It’s the what?” she asked, breathless.
He blinked. “Chivalrous thing to do.”
Thane’s greedy hands engulfed her narrow foot, a wild current bursting between them. He expected her to jerk away, but she didn’t move, as caught up as he was in the fragile, beautiful intimacy of it. Time stood still, a soft gasp escaping her lips when he slid one slipper on, followed by the next.
He couldn’t trust himself to speak as he rose and held out a hand, his skin aching and on fire. Mute and trembling, she took it, rising to meet him. Her breasts were almost grazing his chest with every inhale. Thane wanted to touch her so badly, his body vibrated with it.
She wanted him, too. He could see it in her fluttering pulse, feel it in the shallow breaths breaking from her lungs. Her slim body swayed toward his, caught in the same magnetic pull that held him in thrall. He wanted to sweep her into his arms, kiss her until neither of them could breathe. Hold her close and tell her over and over again that she was worthy.
“Astrid,” he whispered. “May I kiss you?”
His whisper broke whatever spell had held them together.
Her eyes widened as she pulled a
way with a harsh sound. “Please don’t. I can’t.”
And with that, she turned and ran from the greenhouse.
…
Astrid flew back to the house, past a stupefied Culbert and an even more astonished Lady Mabel, and slammed the door of her bedchamber shut behind her. She caught her breath in fits and starts, clutching at her quivering belly. Heat from her tingling feet speared up her limbs into her abdomen and settled low in the cradle between her legs where a warm, insistent ache throbbed. The look in Beswick’s golden eyes had made her feel unhinged, as if she would come apart at the seams if he didn’t touch her.
Astrid blinked, breathing deeply. During the last two weeks, what had simmered between them had gone well beyond attraction. This was all-consuming, heart-fracturing need, the force of which terrified her. One touch and she’d been ready to ignite, fall at his feet, and plead for those warm, clever fingers to continue their wicked path up her leg.
It would have been so easy to say yes.
What are you so afraid of?
She’d asked herself the question almost every night. Beswick wasn’t making her do anything. He wasn’t Beaumont, trying to force his unwelcome attentions on her. The duke had simply asked for a kiss, and the truth was, she liked kissing him. Maybe that was it—she wasn’t afraid of Beswick. She was afraid of herself…afraid of what kissing him would mean for her. Hence, the no kissing rule she’d insisted upon.
But being afraid did not line up with her basic ideals of living life on her own terms. It made her a coward. Astrid walked over to the mirror in her chamber and stared at herself in the reflection—eyes glowing, hair askew out of her bun, cheeks aflame.
She touched her fingers to her lips, imagining Beswick’s there.
You are a strong, enlightened female…a modern woman who can choose to embrace her own desires. You want him, you daft chit, and he wants you. What would one kiss hurt?
One kiss had the power to ruin lives—she knew that well enough. But Beswick was not Beaumont.
Hauling a breath into her lungs, Astrid marched back downstairs.
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