Chapter 7
Hector absolutely hated bloody London, but he supposed that this library was not too bad, all things considered.
Oh, it was completely ridiculous for one man to have so many books, especially when that man was Matthew, who did not seem precisely the literary type.
Additionally, most of the books had the most dreadfully boring titles, like Agricultural Advancements of the Ottoman Empire and A Compendium of English Insects.
Was a nice adventure novel too much to ask for?
But the chair in the library was comfortable, and there was enough room for Hector to extend his bad leg, which provided no small measure of relief. And it looked out a window, which gave him something to gaze upon while he mused over the problem of Lady Clio Warson.
This was, of course, stupid. Lady Clio might be a problem–most clearly to her brother, who had seemed to be at his wits’ end, but likely also to London Society at large, not that it was any less than they deserved–but she was not his problem.
So why couldn't he stop thinking about her?
It wasn’t her irritated brother.
“Are you entirely lacking in honor?” Redcliff had demanded, with a kind of somber outrage that said he was angry but also presented his anger in a very calculated way designed to get Hector to do what he wanted.
Sadly for Redcliff, at least, Hector was the kind of stubborn bastard who wanted to resist that manipulation just for the sake of resistance.
He’d crossed his arms and leaned casually against the doorjamb.
“Maybe I just have the kind of honor that says it is stupid to trap two people for the rest of their lives just because someone was cheap when it came to buying carriage wheels,” he ventured.
Redcliff had looked as though he was chewing on glass.
He had given a few further variations of the same argument, which Hector had rebuffed in kind. Redcliff had left unsatisfied.
And that should have been that. So why was Hector still thinking about it?
Unfortunately, he knew. It was Lady Clio.
But then that would have denied you the chance to put the princess in her place, right?
Her words echoed in his mind.
I won’t annoy you with my pending ruin any longer. Enjoy hiding in the north.
He rubbed harshly at the back of his neck, kneading the muscles out of habit more than anything else. His shoulders and neck didn’t bother him at the end of the day, not when he no longer spent long hours hunched over a forge.
If Redcliff’s blustering had left Hector unmoved, Lady Clio’s resignation gnawed at him.
It wasn’t only that she’d accused him of hiding—something that echoed Matthew’s accusation in a way he couldn’t ignore—or that she’d picked up on his petty satisfaction at refusing one of London’s aristocratic elite.
It was that word. Ruin.
How often had that word been applied to him? His ruined leg. His family’s ruined pride.
He’d spent his life showing that he was worth something. He planned to keep doing so, to show his brother that he couldn’t be chased from London and his birthright. If he were going to leave, he would do it on his own terms.
And he didn’t like the idea that others would try to do the same thing to Lady Clio.
Hector fixed things. He could fix this.
And damn him if he didn’t like the idea of fixing Lady Clio … at least once.
Well, that thought did not serve him. He had enough problems in his life without having to deal with completely inappropriate thoughts about some tight-laced Society woman.
She wasn’t one of the lasses he’d known in his remote Northern village, one of the girls who knew that a quick liaison after a village fete didn’t need to turn into anything more.
Lady Clio was sheltered. She would likely faint dead away at the mere thought of a man out of his clothing.
He shoved to his feet, determined to convince himself of this, as he strode to his study. He needed a change of scenery, and he needed to not think about how Lady Clio hadn’t seemed very much like a shrinking violet at all. She hadn’t seemed like she’d faint over … almost anything.
Hector focused very hard on not thinking about Lady Clio. He thought about it so hard, in fact, that when he walked into his study and found her standing right there, he drew up short and had to blink two or three times before his brain caught up.
“Good afternoon,” she said.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he replied.
She’d been trying some sort of polite smile—a trap, no doubt, to trick less suspicious men into thinking she was one of those demure, milquetoast young misses.
But at his brusque question, that smile dropped, and the stubborn, pain-in-the-arse expression he’d already come to associate with her returned.
“Charming,” she said flatly.
He scoffed. “I don’t have to be charming when someone is trespassing,” he returned.
She rolled her eyes and dropped into a chair. She had not been invited to do that. He hated himself for even thinking it. These aristocrats were rubbing off on him already.
She rolled her eyes at him again.
“I’m not trespassing,” she said, somehow managing to make the word sound ridiculous, even if she’d done such a thing in the village where he’d grown up, she’d be lucky not to find herself at rifle point. “Your butler let me in.”
Damn. Having servants was a right inconvenience, no matter what anyone tried to say about it.
Still, Hector was not about to give up so easily.
“And yet, you show up here alone,” he observed acidly. “Even though, according to your Society’s standards, you have very little left in the way of dignity.”
She bared her teeth in his direction. She had bite, this mischievous little princess, didn’t she?
“I understand that you think yourself to be rather above the rest of us,” she said.
“But it is the utmost hypocrisy to separate yourself from the Society into which you were born, and from which you derive all your privilege. You fancy yourself Mr. Nobody from nowhere, but ask yourself: Where would you be right now, after fighting Lord Gwanton, if you were not a duke?”
She didn’t need to say what they both knew. If he’d been a commoner and he’d punched an earl, he would currently be enjoying Newgate’s dubious hospitality.
His irritation flared brighter.
“You think you have me all figured out, then?” he sniped.
She let out a humorless laugh. “No matter your protestations, you are a gentleman. And you are all, at the end of the day, the same.”
She pursed her lips as if this proclamation left a bad taste in her mouth, but she didn’t take the words back.
God help him, but she was impertinent. And that plump little mouth of hers—too bloody expressive for her own good.
He ought to wipe that smugness right off her face.
It would be as easy as taking her face between his hands—hands that were far too rough for the likes of her—and kiss her until she—
No. No, he was not thinking that. Absolutely, positively, not thinking that.
“What,” he repeated, determined to banish any inappropriate thoughts from his mind, “are you doing here?”
She sighed and dropped her head back against the back of the settee.
It was a very casual pose, and, again, Hector was furious with himself for being shocked at how casual she was acting.
A few weeks prior, and a few hundred miles further north, he wouldn’t have spared such an action a second thought.
Today, though, and here, he found himself looking at the long curve of her throat like it was the most fascinating thing in the world.
“I am here,” she told his ceiling, “because my brother is being irksomely recalcitrant. He keeps insisting that he will ‘get you to see sense.’” She tilted her head to give him a suspicious look. “But you do not strike me as a sensible kind of man.”
Despite himself, a chuckle bubbled up in his throat. He quickly swallowed it.
“I’ll admit that I’ve heard that before,” he allowed.
She smiled, but it was weak.
“Well, then,” she said, turning back to stare at the ceiling. “This is not good.”
Again, some completely absurd part of Hector decided to take control. Because he could have simply sent her on her way. It would have been very easy.
But instead, he asked, “Are you certain that people will talk?”
The next look was sardonic.
“In a word: Yes. It’s London Society. If people stopped talking, the whole system would collapse.” She sighed. “But in more detail, people are already talking. Phoebe, my brother’s wife, has already heard from her sister that someone said something to her husband’s mother.”
Hector quickly gave up trying to chase down that trail of pronouns and people who had nothing better to do than gossip.
“So, people are talking.”
Clio sounded defeated, and Hector found that he very much did not like it. “People are talking.”
“And nothing short of marriage will quiet them?”
He hadn’t wanted to raise the issue of marriage, but that seemed like a pointless avoidance. Besides, he told himself, it got Lady Clio to haul herself to her feet, which was the first step to leaving his house.
Which he wanted. Definitely.
“Marriage, or fleeing the country,” she said wearily. “And I won’t be passed off to some man old enough to be my grandfather just because he is willing to take a soiled dove to wife. So, I suppose I should begin packing my valise.”
Hector had taken a step forward before he had decided to do so. Because a very, very bad idea was starting to take form in his mind.
Because Lady Clio needed a husband, and Hector needed a wife.
She paused, regarding him warily … but not with an unpleasant sort of wariness. It almost seemed like …
Anticipation.
He took a step forward. She took a step back, but a smaller one.
“Do you want to know what I think?” he asked, looking her over. She really was frustratingly pretty.