The Duchess’ Replacement (Unrelenting Lords #2)

Chapter 3

Helen lay flat on her back in bed, counting her breaths as she stared at nothing in the dark room. One, two, three. It was the only thing stopping her from devolving into a flat-out panic. Four, five, six .

This changed everything .

Helen had never properly planned to let herself be married off to her cousin. What she’d truly planned was to spend the Season helping Patricia find a husband who wouldn’t squash her little sister’s tender nature. A decent man was what Helen had hoped to find for Patricia, not someone with wealth or a title. After all, Patricia would likely be happier with a gentleman farmer with a large country estate than the most esteemed Parliamentarian. There were far more animals on farms, after all.

Once Helen had found Patricia, her match (and, she assumed, helped them escape to Scotland to elope before George could ruin everything), Helen herself would be free. She’d take her modest inheritance and go…anywhere else. Maybe Patricia’s kindhearted husband wouldn’t mind a spinster sister hanging around the place. Helen would happily help with any children that came, after all. If he didn’t want Helen cluttering up the place, she would return to her original plan. She would take her portion and set up a small household. She’d find work. She would get by using whatever means she could.

But Patricia couldn’t flee without a match, and she didn’t have one yet. Helen had been counting on George to keep his attention away from the younger Fletcher sister while Helen had schemed. He could ooze his disgusting intent all over Helen if he wanted, so long as it kept him away from worrying about Patricia.

If George now thought of Patricia as his future bride…

No, that plan would no longer work. George had her at sword point, and, worse, he knew it.

She had tried, after all, to argue for a return to the previous plan, something that had made her stomach churn.

“Come now, cousin,” she’d said wheedlingly. “We both know that, of the two of us, Patricia is likely to make the better match. Shouldn’t we give her time to try to find someone who will bring the most benefit to the family?”

“No,” he’d said flatly, and she had seen how much it delighted him to not have to explain himself to her.

“We had a deal,” she pleaded. She hated, hated debasing herself before him, hated that he clearly loved the feeling of being able to control her. But there was no choice, not if the option was her pride or her sister. “Give me a chance to make good on it.”

“No,” he repeated.

“But George?—”

“Go to bed, Helen,” he said. “I’ll leave it to you to apprise Patricia of the change in our circumstances tomorrow.”

And that was perhaps the worst torture he could devise. He wasn’t even going to take ownership of his own misdeeds. Instead, he was going to force Helen to be the one to break her sister’s heart.

She supposed it was too much to ask that George get himself killed by a footpad coming home from his club one night or murdered in a duel. Goodness knew he was the kind of man who inspired violence. Contracting a swift and wretched illness would also be acceptable. George’s heir at present was another distant cousin, a man called Aloysius, who was eighty-seven years old, and his wife eighty-two. They hadn’t been blessed with children. Helen could present herself as an unpaid nurse in their dotage. Surely, they wouldn’t want to pack her off. All George had to do was die in a timely manner!

But no, such misfortune only ever befell the kind of person you would hope to stay alive. She couldn’t count on that.

With her luck, George would live to be a hundred and eight and wouldn’t contract so much as a sniffle in that time.

She couldn’t count on anyone; that was the problem. She had no allies in this great big city where people heard her accent and hid their laughter, where they looked upon her unfashionably plump figure with disdain.

Londoners looked at her and saw all the things Helen wasn’t. She was no great beauty; she wasn’t an heiress. She had the wrong accent. She was old .

Her chances of finding herself a husband before George’s deadline were alarmingly bleak.

Even so, she wracked her brain. The staff couldn’t help her—and likely wouldn’t risk offending their employer even if they could. Patricia was a dear, but she was not a natural schemer; Helen needed to be the one to come up with a plan to save them both.

She knew nobody else.

Nobody, except…

The Duke of Godwin’s words came back to her. “Come find me if you ever need anything, eh, lass? Anything at all.”

She couldn’t. She couldn’t .

He was a rake and a duke. He was a near stranger who had been flirting with her just for the sport of the thing. He had doubtlessly charmed half a dozen other women in the scant hours since their encounter.

He hadn’t meant the offer. He had likely forgotten that he had made it.

She got out of bed and began pulling on a simple dress over her chemise.

“This is a mistake,” she muttered as she donned a fresh pair of stockings.

“He’s going to send you packing. He’ll probably laugh at you on the way out the door,” she told herself as she slipped into her boots and pulled a dark cloak around her shoulders.

“You’re making a fool of yourself,” she said sharply as she hailed a hired hack, paying the driver with her extremely limited pin money. The journey home would likely leave her entirely penniless.

All of her warnings to herself were true. But they were still not enough to deter her because… Well, what other option did she have? This was her last chance at an ally, her last hope at saving her sister.

She’d risk humiliation a thousand times for Patricia. She’d do it without thinking.

Even so, her hands were trembling as her carriage pulled up in front of the grand house that George had pointed out earlier. She had to take several steadying breaths before she lifted her hand to knock. She’d not even dared the front door—which was as much a matter of its intimidating grandeur as it was due to the inadvisability of being caught knocking at an unmarried man’s door in the wee hours of the morning. She’d gone around to the kitchens instead. Maybe she’d get a sympathetic housemaid who understood the burdens of being a woman in the world without a protector. Or, even better, maybe she’d get the housekeeper, who would give her some useful wisdom that saved Helen from the necessity of this mortifying errant.

Despite these hopes, when she did finally knock, it was the butler who opened the door; his identity was unmistakable from the sharp lines of his attire, neat even at this highly unconventional hour.

He looked curious but not shocked to see a young woman arriving unexpectedly in the dead of night. This, Helen thought wryly, rather confirmed her suspicions about the Duke of Godwin.

“How may I help you, miss?” he asked, perfectly polite.

She, too, tried to act as though nothing was amiss.

“Good, er, morning, sir,” she said. “I apologize if I roused you. I am here to speak with His Grace.”

The butler paused only briefly. “I see. And no, miss, you didn’t rouse me; I was polishing the silver. Sometimes these old bones don’t seem to want to settle at night.” He said it kindly, which Helen felt was probably more than she deserved. As far as this man knew, she was some woman of low character come skulking about.

“My nurse often advised a cordial of valerian and lavender,” she offered since she felt she ought to give the man something. “I always found it tasted rather like biting a piece of grass, but it did help.”

At this, the man cracked a smile.

“I shall have to try that sometime,” he said, voice even more gentle. “Well, do come in, though… Are you certain you wish to meet with His Grace?”

Helen noticed a very un-butler-like note of censure in his voice. Whatever nonsense the Duke of Godwin got himself into, it seemed that the head of his staff did not entirely approve.

Helen reluctantly admitted that she was rather charmed by that. After all, if this butler would show this faint disapproval to any strange woman who came knocking in the night, no doubt it was not entirely hidden from his employer. She hated to note that she rather admired the duke for not firing a servant the moment that servant showed any sign of having a mind of their own.

She would try to remember this detail when speaking with the duke. Perhaps it would help her keep her temper and thereby increase her likelihood (however small it was) of securing his aid.

“I’m certain,” she told the butler, letting her own reservations about this mission creep into her tone.

The corner of his mouth tipped up briefly. Helen let out a slow, suggestive breath.

I agree with you , she did not say. This is a highly foolish endeavor. I credit you for recognizing it.

“Very well, miss,” he said. “Come along, then. The duke is in his study, I believe.”

Awake and in his study! Did no one sleep in this house? Perhaps it was better not to question it, not when it was working in her favor.

She followed the butler up the back stairs, oddly grateful that he’d taken her through the servant’s staircase. The few peeks of the main house that she’d gotten as they exited the kitchens had shown the place to be just as grand inside as it was on its exterior, and she didn’t need to be reminded of her lesser place in the world before she asked the duke for a massive favor. She was already very keenly aware of the gap between them, and she was not finding it at all helpful to her current purpose.

She tried her best to ignore the splendor that faced her as they exited the staircase and began walking down the upstairs hallway. She was not as successful as she might have hoped.

“His Grace’s study,” the butler said, nodding toward a solid oak door. Was it…larger than other doors? Certainly, this was just her imagination getting away from her.

“Thank you,” Helen said, offering the man a polite nod. She wanted to dither as she had at the kitchen door, but she had a witness now. It would be far too embarrassing to show her nerves at this point of things.

So she permitted herself only one steadying breath before lifting her hand and rapping firmly on the study door.

Who in the hell was knocking at Xander’s door at—he glanced over at the clock above the fireplace—four o’clock in the morning?

Everyone should be asleep. Hell, he should be asleep, preferably with a merry widow or the newest star of the stage in the sheets beside him. If he was going to spend an evening away from his manifold responsibilities to attend one of the gaudy events that the ton persisted on treating like entertainment, he might as well have made the whole thing worth his while. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t had options, hadn’t had offers.

But he hadn’t taken any of those flirtatious offers, hadn’t even truly tried. He’d gone to the bloody event, flirted a little, but still come home alone. Instead, he was poring over the proposal from one of his cousin’s business ventures because, no matter what titles they all held, he was the head of this family, and that was not a responsibility he took lightly.

He'd been trained for this since birth, after all. He was the eldest son of an eldest son, and he was the custodian of the Lightholder name. He didn’t much care that the majority of his seemingly endless list of cousins were not technically Lightholders. They were family, and family was more important than anything. Hadn’t his father told him that enough times? Drilled it into him until it lived in his bones?

So Xander was checking up on his cousin’ Aaron’s newest investment…without Aaron’s knowledge. Aaron might now be the Duke of Redcliff, but Xander would always see him, at least in part, as his younger cousin—and therefore, someone to whom Xander considered himself beholden. After all, Aaron was not like Xander; he’d not expected to find himself ruling a dukedom. He’d only inherited after his brother, Peter, had died of a sudden, brutal illness that had left the family reeling. Xander, as the head of the family, was responsible for making sure everyone made it through that loss.

Therefore, he was not asleep, and neither, it seemed, was his intrepid visitor.

“Enter,” he called imperiously, expecting one of his sisters. Catherine was more likely to come chide him about getting some proper rest, but Ariadne could often be found wandering about late at night. She’d never outright said that she was plagued by nightmares, and Xander had no intention of forcing her to speak on the matter until she was ready, but he thought it likely that memories of the fire still haunted her.

It haunted all of them, after all. Just in different ways.

He was surprised, therefore, when the door creaked open not to reveal either of his sisters, nor his younger brother Jeremy, nor even any of the staff, but instead the short, lush little Northern girl from that evening.

A smile curled at the corner of his mouth.

Well, well, well. Wasn’t that interesting, indeed?

He let his rakish persona settle over him like a blanket; he pushed the reports of Aaron’s business dealings aside. Then he steepled his fingers and waited for her to speak.

“Um,” she said. Then she paused, cleared her throat, and squared her shoulders. “Good evening.”

She seemed nervous. He supposed that wasn’t unusual. Despite any comments he might have made about women from her region, she did not have the air of an accomplished seductress about her.

“Good evening,” he repeated drolly. “How very pleasant to see you again.” He let his tone drip with irony and was delighted to see that flicker of spirit cross her face again.

When she’d slunk into the room, she’d had a vastly different demeanor than what she’d possessed when she was berating him mere hours prior. Perhaps it made sense, given that she was clearly coming here for…something. But it was nice to see that that intriguing backbone was still there. How charming that she planned to fight him even as she came to him for a favor.

She was a pretty little handful, the Northern lass. She was rounded in the kind of ways Xander liked a woman to be round, and she had the most ridiculous set of freckles covering her cheeks, far too many to count. She looked…pastoral in a way that put Xander pleasantly in mind of the milkmaids he’d flirted with when he was a lad first discovering the pleasures of consorting with women. She was the kind of woman who reminded him of a simpler time, the kind of woman who was entirely out of place in his current existence.

Not that he objected to taking a little holiday to the past version of himself every now and again, so long as it didn’t ever bleed into his real life.

“Ah, yes,” she said, eyes nervously darting to his face and then away several times in rapid succession. “You, as well. I mean. It’s nice to see you again. Also.”

Precious , he thought to himself, like a cat who had got the cream…or perhaps even more like a cat stalking a mouse, certain of its victory. She really was remarkably precious when she wasn’t trying to be stern.

“I should think so,” he said in a low, purring voice. “After all, you wasted no time at all, did you, dear girl?” She flinched at the nickname, which was not the response he wished to garner from her. He distracted her by waving a hand down his person.

He might not be asleep, but he was dressed for bed, though all she would be able to see was his dressing gown. It didn’t reveal very much, but he suspected that the suggestion would be enough to discomfit the little Northerner.

He watched in delight as she flicked her eyes over him before quickly moving away.

“Were you really so tempted?” he teased. “So intrigued that you couldn’t keep away for even one night?”

Whatever had bothered her vanished from her expression; her eyes went wide. He preferred her surprise and even her anger to her dismay.

“No!” she insisted. “No, that’s not why I came here at all!”

He raised one eyebrow. She sounded as though she were being truthful enough, but why else would she come to him so soon after their first acquaintance, not to mention alone and at an hour that could only mean one thing?

“No?” he asked. He rose to his feet, deeply enjoying the way she kept trying not to look at him and just as reliably kept failing. He approached until he was just out of arm’s reach, making his presence known but not looming over her. He’d done that earlier, and it had clearly affected her—he’d known that even before she’d showed back up here. But a game of cat and mouse was only fun if you let the mouse think she had a chance of getting away.

“No,” she repeated. “I—You told me to come see you if I ever needed anything. Well, I need something. Tremendously so.”

His smile was filthy, and he knew it. “I’m sure you do,” he said. He tugged at the tie to his dressing gown, not enough to open the garment but enough to make a suggestion of it. He was wearing trousers beneath—he didn’t make a habit of strolling around nearly naked, given that his sisters lived in this house—but the little Northern girl didn’t know that. All she could see was the vee of his chest, which was not covered by anything more than the gown. Another tug and another few inches of his bare skin came into view.

“No!” she exclaimed again, holding out a hand as if prepared to physically hold back any potential glimpse of his masculine form. “No, I’m here because I—I need to get married.”

Xander froze for a moment, then let out a laugh, sharp, bitter, and cruel. Well, he couldn’t fault her for her audacity, though it had been some time since he’d faced such a brazen, desperate approach from a young lady.

Her method didn’t much matter, however. He needed to put a stop to this immediately.

“If this is your scheme, I must tell you that you mistake me, miss,” he said icily. “I am not the kind of man who will fall for traps and tricks. You should see yourself out now and know that if you are ruined because of your own foolish actions, I will not come to your aid. I will not offer you my name. I will not be manipulated into matrimony.”

“What?” she said. Then, “No! Oh, God, no, not you . I’m not trying to marry you . Goodness. No.” She blushed so brightly that the freckles all but disappeared, apparently completely horrified by the notion.

He might have been offended by her vehemence if he weren’t quite so curious.

“Then what?” he demanded, tone still a touch rough. “If you’re not here for a tumble and you’re not here for marriage, what the hell are you here for?”

Her mouth dropped open on the word tumble . She had the kind of mouth that gave a man ideas, all pouty lower lips surrounded by round, soft cheeks.

“I am here seeking a marriage,” she corrected. “Just not to you .”

She said it like marriage to the Duke of Godwin was as distasteful to her as marriage to a sheep. Not the shepherd, mind. The sheep itself.

Damn him for finding her snappishness amusing. Still. There wasn’t much he could do for her…unless she changed her mind about the tumble. It seemed unlikely, but it wasn’t impossible.

“In that case,” he said briskly, “you are in the wrong house entirely. You might have thought about that before you came barging in here.”

“Being escorted by your butler is hardly ‘barging,’” she returned.

She seemed to have forgotten her dismay over his state of undress. Perfect. He would remind her of it when the time was right.

She went on, looking wonderfully exasperated. “And I don’t know anyone else; that’s the problem. As you have so tactfully observed, my accent indicates that I was raised in the North. I know little of London; I know little of its ways. I am not beautiful, and I am not rich. I don’t have connections. I am old. I need a husband quickly, and I have no way of procuring one for myself. Thus, I turn to you.”

She muttered something else under her breath. Xander did not catch any part of it except the phrase “terrible idea.”

He considered her words. “Are you with child?” he asked bluntly.

“What? No!” She looked aghast, perhaps even offended.

He shrugged. Such things happened, and Catherine, merciless little do-gooder that she was, would likely have words for him if he dumped an expectant mother out on her rear, no matter whether the woman had gotten herself into such a state through nothing more than her own foolishness.

“Then your need cannot be so very urgent,” he offered. “Ask someone else.”

“I don’t have anyone else! I just said that!”

“What about your parents?”

“They’re dead.” She didn’t sound wretched about it. An old wound, then, though he knew perfectly well that such injuries never quite healed over.

He thought further. “Then who brought you to London in the first place, if you dislike it so?”

“My cousin.”

“Ask him, then.”

“He’s the one I need to get away from!”

Xander paused. He’d started circling her at some point in his inquisition, and he stood off to the side of her now, nearly behind her but not quite. From this angle, he could see the soft slope where her neck met her shoulder. Her head had dropped. Did she look defeated? He disliked that.

He blamed his sister. Clearly, Catherine was rubbing off on him. He would have to quash that posthaste.

But he supposed he could quash it after he helped the trembling little rabbit that stood before him.

It was her bravery, he thought, that really drew him in. After all, the girl was plainly half overwrought with nerves. He could see it in the way she kept forcing firmness back into her stance, in the way she clenched her hands at her side. It made him want to poke at her to see how far he could nudge her until she snapped. It made him want to know if that snapping would come in the form of a fight or a surrender.

She would surrender beautifully, he thought. An idea started to grow. It was a good idea, or perhaps a very bad one. Maybe both.

If he was going to help the little rabbit—and he was considering it, alas—he was going to get something in return. That was just good business.

It was not a charitable thought, he allowed, but while dukes were required to be many things, nobody had ever said they were required to be good . Xander knew he was very likely not a good man, though he spent precious little time worrying over the limits of his own morality.

Good and evil were vague concepts for children’s stories. Family and duty were real. And he cared for those very well.

“You must understand,” he said at long last, “that I am no matchmaker.”

She’d been looking at the floor, but her eyes snapped up to his. He’d thought them an unremarkable brown, much like her hair, but from close up, they were more of a multifaceted amber. Attractive. He thought of her comment that she was not beautiful.

She was perhaps not the kind of woman who got named a diamond of the first water, but she did hold a certain kind of appeal. Few men, he thought, would be displeased to have her in their beds. Most would welcome her eagerly.

“I know,” she said. “If I knew a matchmaker, I’d have gone to them first. If I had anyone else, I would have gone to them first.”

Her eyes darted back to the floor as if she were taken aback by her own audacity. Xander let himself grin. Oh yes, she was intriguing indeed.

“That is to say,” he went on, taking a step closer, “that I cannot merely abandon my responsibilities to find you some unwitting gentleman to marry.” Her posture slumped. He still disliked it.

“Therefore,” he went on, prowling ever closer, “if I aid you, you shall have to do something for me in return.”

Her head whipped up. “Anything,” she said.

Xander was a competitive man, a possessive man, the kind of man who liked to win. It was a quality, he supposed, that had been bred into him by centuries of noble lineage. He’d been born to that role, as had his father and his father’s father before him.

Offering anything was very dangerous to a man like him. It was all the more dangerous because he would take her offer without a single flicker of conscience.

He didn’t want merely anything , however. He had something very specific in mind for this woman. A clear price for his aid.

“Your accusations this evening at the ball were rude,” he said, reaching out a single finger to curl around a lock of her hair that had fallen loose from the careless plait in which she wore it. He wound, wound, wound, then tugged sharply, just once, his hand disentangled before she’d even finished jolting in surprise. “I cannot say they were inaccurate, however.”

“You’re a rake,” she breathed.

He shrugged. “Call it what you will. I’m a man with appetites, like any other. Some just hide those appetites better than others. I am unlike other men, however, in that I have a great many duties to attend to at any given time. Despite what you might think, much of my time is not my own. You are asking me to spare what little freedom I have.”

He’d circled in front of her now. She stood still, watching him carefully, waiting for any sudden movements. She was cautious prey, the kind that sometimes slipped its way to freedom. Not, of course, that he intended to let her get away.

Oh, goodness, he was going to have such fun with this little Northern lass of his.

“In that time, I could be pursuing my other…interests. I daresay I do not have to spell out to you what those interests might be.”

She didn’t respond, just watched and watched. Clever little rabbit. Not that it would save her from the snare.

“If I am to help you,” he concluded, coming face-to-face with her, clicking his heels together sharply as any red-clad soldier, “you shall have to be the one to satisfy me.”

Watching her face as his meaning hit her was its own form of satisfaction. Her eyes went wide, her lips parted slightly. Her breath grew shallow.

Remarkable. It was the most pleasant suggestion of what she might look like when he drove her wild with his touches. He could not wait to unwrap her like his very own gift. This night was turning itself around, after all.

She cleared her throat, a nervous little sound. “If I do this— if ,” she emphasized. What a keen little negotiator! He waited patiently. “If I do this, won’t it damage my chances at finding a husband?”

He scoffed. As if he were some kind of novice, fumbling through his first affair de coeur !

“Believe it or not, lass, but I do not intend to publicize it around down that I am bedding my new Northern protégé. Unless you plan on indiscretion, it should not harm your reputation. And if it does,” he reminded her again, as it bore repeating, “I shan’t save you. So don’t think you can go about snaring yourself a duke in that manner.”

It might be harsh, but it bore repeating. He didn’t want her getting ideas.

She scowled. “I heard you the first time. Though apparently you did not hear me when I said that I have no interest at all in marrying you.” She propped a hand on her hip, which emphasized her curves. “What I meant to say was, isn’t a woman meant to be a virgin when she goes to her marital bed?”

God above, she was adorable .

“Of course she’s meant to be,” he said, rolling his eyes at her na?veté. “But the reality of the thing doesn’t matter. It’s the appearance that matters. I have no intention of getting a bastard on you, so you will be fine, so long as you act appropriately skittish on your wedding night.”

“You want me to lie to my husband?” she asked incredulously. She looked scandalized. How amusing that this was the thing that shocked her the most. “You want me to—to pretend I’m… I’m…”

“A virgin?” he supplied. “Yes, that would be advisable.”

Her mouth opened and closed. “You can—you can pretend that sort of thing?”

She was so precious.

“Do you truly believe that every Society daughter goes to her wedding night untouched?” he asked incredulously. “That each and every one of them is as pure as the driven snow?”

“I—” she said, indicating that she believed precisely that, as it happened. “I just?—”

Xander spread his hands wide. “Welcome to the ton , darling,” he said. She did not flinch at this term of endearment. Good. “It’s all trades and favors and appearance. There are no true friends here. Either you are truly willing to do everything it takes to get out of your little situation—” He realized that he didn’t truly know what her situation was , but also, he did not need to know, so he brushed the thought aside. “—or you are not. Which is it?”

She paused, considering. Maybe having her be level-headed and sensible wasn’t to his advantage, but he still found that he admired it. From what she’d said, she had nothing working in her favor, but she was still fighting to the bitter end. It was the kind of quality his father had always praised in a person.

“Yes, I am,” she said definitively after thinking it through. And then, because she was apparently the boldest thing on two legs in all of London, she added, “But if we are to do this, you cannot consort with other women. Not while our deal is…ongoing.”

He let out a sharp bark of laughter. “Darling, do you really feel that you are in any position to make further demands?”

She truly wasn’t, and her narrowed gaze said so, but she didn’t back down.

“If this scheme is going to work for me, I must be able to convincingly play the role of—” She hesitated. “—of a virgin on my wedding night, as you said. That won’t work if I’ve gotten some kind of French disease because you’re…spreading your favors.”

Wasn’t she the most entertaining bundle of contradictions? She flinched at the word virgin but made reference to the kind of diseases that spread around bawdyhouses. He probably should have been offended that she thought he frequented those kinds of establishments. He didn’t need to pursue professionals, after all. He had more than enough offers.

He must have been going soft because instead of quibbling over this point, he merely inclined his head.

“I suppose I will do my best to agree to your request, though I promise nothing.”

“But—”

“You will not contract any diseases,” he said, fighting to keep laughter from his voice. “You will not, to the best of my ability, suffer from our liaison. Now, is that good enough for you, or should I call out my solicitor to draw us up a formal contract?”

She narrowed her eyes even further, but only for a moment before she nodded.

“Very well,” she said. “It is a bargain.”

And then she stuck out her hand.

He looked at her narrow wrist and her ungloved fingers, which were far from the lily-soft hands of most of the city’s noblewomen, then up at her serious, intent expression. He let out another peal of laughter.

“Oh my little Northern lass,” he said, voice lilting with just enough mockery to make her blush. She did blush ever so prettily. “This is not the kind of bargain you seal with a handshake. No, this shall be sealed with a kiss—or not at all.”

He needed to push her, just a little, and not only for his own satisfaction. He knew the risk to her was far greater than the risk to him in this little transaction—he’d be a poor businessman if he allowed for anything else—but there still was some risk to him. If she ran off to tell tales, or if she proved too timid to follow through, it would be more of an annoyance than a real problem, but Xander quite frankly had enough annoying things pass before him each day. He did not need one more—\especially not when the little Northerner was meant to bring pleasure, not discomfort.

He needed to know that she would not balk when things progressed beyond talk. He needed to know that she was truly in this deal with him.

Just a little push. He just needed to give her a little push to be sure.

He waited to see which way she fell.

“Fine,” she said flatly, which was not precisely the attitude he wanted from the women he took to his bed, but her attitude said what her words did not. Her eyes were wide, her gaze darting all over his form before returning, time and again, to his lips. This was not a woman who found her end of the bargain a dreadful burden. She might have qualms, certainly, but soon enough, he would show her why those qualms were foolish.

After all, shouldn’t she enjoy some pleasure before he found her a boring younger son with whom she could be summarily packed off? She’d likely thank him for this in the end.

That was unlikely to happen today, however.

For, as he moved closer and closer to her, her chest heaving more dramatically with each step he took into her space, she simultaneously held herself more and more rigidly, as though she were bracing herself for a blow.

That would not do at all.

But Xander had never been an impatient hunter, no matter his prey. And so he waited patiently, waited until she’d screwed her eyes tight, puckered out her lips like she thought she was about to kiss her least beloved great-aunt, and then held her breath.

And then he swooped in and gave her the briefest, most glancing kiss—right on her sweet, round cheek.

Her eyes popped open, all amber astonishment, then gave him a glare that he thought might wither a lesser man but which only made him laugh out loud.

“That was what you meant?” she demanded, sounding perfectly outraged.

He shrugged one shoulder. “Were you hoping for more, darling?”

She made a furious little sound in the back of her throat, then whirled on her heel and stalked toward the door.

“Don’t be sour, little rabbit,” he called after her, amusement thick in his voice. “There’s no rush. This is going to be fun.”

She paused to glower at him some more.

“This is my life, not some game,” she scolded. “And don’t call me ‘little rabbit’ or ‘darling’ or any of the other foolish names you are no doubt capable of dreaming up. Call me by my name or not at all.”

“Happily,” he said slyly. “Just as soon as you tell me what that name is, of course.”

The look on her face as she realized she’d struck a carnal bargain with a man who did not even know her name was positively delightful. Xander would cherish it always.

“I—it’s Helen,” she said, sounding positively furious about it. “Miss Helen Fletcher. Good day, sir.”

And then she stormed out, putting in a good effort at slamming the door behind her. It wasn’t her fault that her efforts were stymied by the plush carpeting on his study floor.

As his newest conquest stormed angrily away, Xander lowered himself contemplatively back into his chair. Helen. The name of the woman so tempting, she’d driven Greece to its knees. How fitting.

But this was not history, and Xander was not some warrior of legend. He’d not go to his knees for anyone. This was his battle to win, his game to control.

And he planned to have a very good time with it, indeed.