Chapter 8
Jolting from her place, the book on her lap almost clattered to the floor when Dorian strode in. His eyes flashed to the kitchen, but he didn’t break his stride.
“We need to talk,” he uttered. “Now.”
Alarmed, she sat up and fixed her skirts. “What—what is making you so frenetic?”
“Carrington,” Dorian replied, shucking his jacket and damned well nearly ripping his neckcloth from his throat. “He is not going to stop looking for you. Not as long as he is alive, anyway.”
Wrapping her arms around her middle, Ellie swallowed. “What do you suppose we do? How am I to go on if I keep to hiding for the rest of my days?”
He pinned her with a firm look and the golden fire in his gaze entranced her. “We’ll marry.”
She blinked. Then blinked three more times. “Pardon?”
“That is the only way you can be untouchable from his shadowy fingers,” Dorian replied. “He will never dare touch the wife of a Duke.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No.”
“Well, you are either foxed or a candidate for bedlam,” she spluttered. “I wouldn’t marry you—much less consider it! Not if we were the last two people on this earth! It is utterly—”
“Do you not want to live?”
Jarred off her tirade, Ellie frowned, “Of course, I do.”
“You will not have a moment’s peace if you do not marry me,” Dorian said, removing the rest of his cravat. “Believe me, I am not agog about this either, but I need you alive.”
Confused, Ellie shook her head, “But how are you going to get leverage over Carrington if I am to marry you? Were you not saving me just to hand me over like a trading piece?”
“I was,” he said callously.
“So, what is going to happen if I am not your pawn?”
Dorian rubbed his jaw, “I do not know… yet. But I will figure it out in time.”
She slumped into her seat. “We fight like cats and dogs. We have nothing in common, and I have no interest in giving up who I am to be your wedded ornament.”
He tilted his head. “Let me guess, you will only marry for love.”
“Precisely,” she narrowed her eyes. “What of it?”
“Love does not exist,” he scoffed.
She gasped. “It does! How dare you!”
“Sure, in those sordid novels your sex reads,” he continued, “maybe princes do exist, sweetheart, but none of them will be the hero you envision riding in on a white horse to save you. In your case, you’ll have to do with a villain with his bag of tricks and shadows.”
Ellie held onto the fraying edge of her temper. “I wouldn’t expect a man like you to know anything about love and romance if it smacked you in the face.”
“I’d rather it not bruise my jaw,” Dorian replied matter-of-factly. “It is my best asset. But back to the topic at hand. I may not know about this love you speak of, but I do know human nature, and it is a far cry from the tender-hearted notion you expect.”
“What is it then?”
“There's no trust, no faith, no honesty in men; all perjured, all forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.”
Her lips parted in shock while her eyes flickered between his two. “You know Romeo and Juliet. I thought you didn’t give such things your attention.”
“I said I was a brute, not a savage.” Dorian stood and moved to the kitchen.
She followed him to the stove, where the four flaky, round pies sat cooling. He quirked a brow at her. “Did you bake those or did you sneak away and buy them?”
Ellie dropped her lids to half-mast. “Is my hair still attached to my head?”
“It is,” he fished for a fork.
“You warned me if I did sneak away, your men would drag me back, so no, I did not go out and buy them,” she rolled her eyes. “I made them all.”
Sinking the tines into the middle of one, a corner of Dorian’s lips curled when it came out clean. He lifted a forkful and ate. “This is done well. I am surprised.”
“That it is edible? I am too,” Ellie replied. “But I still object to your marriage offer.”
He let out a grunt. “You are so stubborn.” Placing the fork down, he strode out of the room, and Ellie followed him as he went to a room she’d never set foot in yet. “You want to negotiate? Let’s do it.”
From the large desk near a window and the leather furniture dotted around the room, she deduced it was his study. Dorian rounded his escritoire, flipped open a book, and ripped a page out of it. He then dumped a quill into an inkpot and pushed both to her.
“Write out your demands for this marriage,” he said, both palms flat on the table. “What I can assure you is that by simply having my name, you will have the freedom and protection to do whatever you please.
“Aside from the things we will show as a married couple, I have no interest in what you do, but I am telling you, you will not be safe alone as long as Carrington is alive.”
When he’d said marriage, a part of her had been sure he’d been jesting, but the set of his brow and the hard jut of his jaw told her he was not. “You’re… serious.”
“I am.”
Her eyes dropped to the paper, but then back to him. “There is no other way?”
“Not as far as I see it.” He nudged the paper.
She swallowed, then looked around. “My first demand is that you find the boy who used to live here.”
“This Ash,” he parroted. “The boy you hardly knew a decade ago.”
“Yes,” Ellie replied. “I do not know how you can set about finding him, but I do need you to find him.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Agreed. I will find this Ash of yours. Now, I am going to eat that pie as I’ve been starving all day.”
Collecting the paper and pen, Ellie followed him, and while he shucked his waistcoat and rolled up his sleeves to eat, she thought about what she wanted from this agreement.
Twiddling the pen, she cast some ideas over; she was not paying attention to Dorian until he removed his boots and cocked a leg up to the chaise. She watched as he ate. “Are you always so… casual?”
He looked up. “If that is euphemistic for me looking like a troglodyte, yes. I apologize if I am offending your gentle sensibilities. I’ll practice my curtsy when I’m finished.”
The level of casualness made Ellie blush and drop her head to the paper. Something odd was twisting in her chest.
“Is this only for me?” She asked. “What do you want?”
He paused eating. Chuckling, Dorian set the decimated pie to the side and cocked his arm over his bent leg. “Sweetheart, the things I want shall make a gentle-bred innocent like you swoon into a dead faint.”
Fire raced up her neck. “Something other than… scandalous things?”
Drumming his fingers on his knee, he replied, “I’ll request the special license, and after we are married and make the required appearances, I will have you relocated to a country estate and you will be free to live as you wish there, without any restrictions and as if we never married.
I have an estate that is being renovated, and my steward estimates it is almost complete. ”
“How many homes do you have?”
His smirk was wicked. “More than you can expect.”
“I do not want to relocate to the countryside,” she said. “I’d prefer to stay here. And I would like to see my friend, Lady Victoria Rothwell.”
His eyes sharpened. “No.”
“Why not?”
“You do not have any reason to believe me, but that family is not to be trusted,” Dorian said coldly.
“Her brother was implicit in allowing one of my relatives to steal from me, and I have no doubt your friend, if she shares the same blood, will not hesitate to tattle back to your family that tried to sell you off in the first place.”
“Victoria would not do that to me!” She squawked. “How dare you!”
“You do not know the seditious Rothwells,” Dorian said fiercely. “I do.”
She crossed her arms. “I do not care.”
Dropping his casual pose, he planted his foot on the floor, leaned in, and rested his forearms on his thighs. The indulgent light vanished from his eyes. “You will not see the Rothwells. Do you hear me? I forbid it.”
“She is the only friend I have in this world,” Evelina defended herself. “Is that what you want? To imprison those that you profess you want to protect?”
“I know you are a na?f, but surely there must be a speck of self-sufficiency inside you. I am telling you that the Rothwells are not to be trusted,” Dorian muttered stiffly.
She glared. “I have known Victoria for over a decade,” she said. “As a matter of fact, that day at the church when I wanted to run, she gave me a full purse to make sure I did so. Would a traitor do such a thing?”
“Yes,” he replied bluntly. “Let me assume this, she told you to come to her after you got away?”
Regretfully, Evelina admitted, “Yes, she did.”
“Then it’s called giving you enough rope to hang yourself,” Dorian said. “Your relatives would have swarmed her home in days because they would have suspected that is where you would have gone.”
Sullenly, she had to agree.
“Back to the sticking point, being the next Duchess of Wolfthorne is all the protection you need. You will have one of the most coveted positions in society. I cannot count how many ladies would have scratched another’s eyes out to get this position.”
“Then why have you not married one of them?” she asked, quirking a brow.
“That is not important,” he continued. “After you agree to this marriage and we marry, there will be more schedules in your future.”
“Why?” She frowned.
“I have to keep you occupied to stop you from running around and sticking your nose into things that are not your business,” he said. “After we wed, do not address me as ‘Your Grace’, or my lord, or any honorific. You are to call me Dorian.”
Ellie flipped the paper over and wrote that down. “If we marry, we are to sleep in separate bedchambers.”
He shrugged again. “Fine. You will have your pick of rooms. Next?”
“We will share all meals together—”
“No,” he cut off. “Three per week at most.”
“Why not?” She asked. “What is more important?”
“Almost everything,” he murmured drily. “I have a business to run and other personal interests to cater to. And it will not be one set meal—depending on what time I am available, it will be breakfast, luncheon, or supper.”
She let out a huff. “Are we to attend balls?”
“Only those I deem sufficient to keep gossip away and only in the houses I feel most beneficial to my needs.”
Ellie stared at him. “Most… beneficial to your needs. And what needs would those be?”
“Three estates exactly—Nathan Wellington, Marquess of Salem, Drake Holt, Viscount Porstmouth, and of course, Carrington. I know he’ll be incensed seeing us married, but that is what I am counting on.”
She felt as if she were repeating herself incessantly. “Why?”
“He’ll be so blinded by trying to remind me of my place that he’ll make mistakes and lead me to exactly where I need,” Dorian replied.
Setting the paper aside, she went to get her pie and took a nibble. “The more you talk about Carrington, the less you reveal. Why do you two have this cordially hateful relationship? What has he done to you?”
“When I was in the streets, he took me under his wing and made me his protégé,” Dorian began.
“But as I grew and wriggled out of his snake-like grip, he began to see me as competition. He abhors that I took everything he taught me and spun it into something more productive than he can ever be. He hates me and admires me in the same breath.”
Pausing to chew over his revelation, she said, “That sounds very… unhealthy.”
“Carrington is poisonous, but at the moment, his fangs are retracted,” Dorian replied. “But can we get off this tangent and get back to the issue at hand. What more do you demand from our marriage?
“I believe in fidelity.”
“Agreed. Next.”
Her fork slipped from her hand. “Wait—that’s it? Don’t you want to discuss the issue?”
“What is there to discuss?” He cocked a brow. “When I give my word, I keep it, and so it will be with my vows. Besides, I don’t have time for anyone else.”
She gave him a soft smile. “What else do you want?”
“My reputation is not the… best,” he offered. “As a matter of truth, I am very rough around the edges—”
“Or is it that you are a rake?”
“That, too. I believe being married will reform that situation,” he inclined his head. “Those of the le beau ton have varied opinions of me, but from what I gather, they think I am not charismatic enough, I am not social enough, I do not host—I am an enigma, unknown, and therefore untrustworthy.”
Finishing her pie, Ellie nodded sagely. “You are très dr?le.”
“I’d prefer to finish my meal without an after-dash of sarcasm,” Dorian chided gently, getting up and crossing into the kitchen. “And, I’d prefer some wine.”
As he left the room, she considered his position. What was he leading into?
Firm footsteps had her look up; Dorian quietly handed her a glass. “Sip it slowly. Spanish wine is very potent.”
Gazing at the rich red depths, she asked, “What exactly are you asking of me?”
Swirling his wine, he said, “I need you to help me reconstruct my position in the ton. The balls that I will approve of you attending, have ladies, matriarchs, dowagers, what have you, who uphold the swing of the social narrative. You’ll need to sway them into more favorable views of me.”
She arched a brow. “And what redeeming quality should I tell them? Have you rescued drowning puppies? Do you have a school charity fund set up, or are you sponsoring young men to trade school? Should I tell them about your incandescent personality?”
“Whatever you wish,” he grinned wolfishly.
“Or, maybe you should actually create either of them?” Ellie suggested, tapping the quill against her hand. “Altruism is a very positive thing to sway people to your side.”
“I’ll take that into advisement,” he said. “So far, your rules are to find this Ash, feast together, and to not take your innocence. Is that all you want?”
She looked down at her scant list. “What more can there be?”
“A monthly allowance, funds to buy whatever gown, shoe, ribbon, or whatever frippery your sex falls head over heels for,” Dorian offered, swirling his drink.
The fire was dying down, and the shadows began to creep over his face, concealing half of it. “A carriage or four, maybe a townhome of your own? I have more than a few.”
Knowing that this marriage was not real, his suggestion sparked the practical side of her. “I’d like two, one to live in and the other to let for income.”
His dark chuckle sent shivers over her skin, “Such a na?f. You’ll have more than enough income, but whatever you wish. You will have two and a sensible carriage.”
“You’ll open an orphanage,” she said.
His repartee was quick, “You’ll let me kiss you.”
“Thank y—” Evelina broke off with a gasp as his words finally landed. “What?”