Chapter One #4
Once he followed her into the study—a wood-paneled room smelling of leather, parchment, and woodsmoke—she shut the door behind them and sat behind the desk like the master of the house addressing an inferior and gestured to the smaller chair opposite.
There was something powerful in the action when, coupled with the displeased tilt of her enticing mouth, it demonstrated how unnerved she was by his unexpected appearance.
Rather than accept her offer of a chair, Dorian approached the sideboard and began preparing a drink for himself.
He did not offer one to Amelia.
“You don’t plan on tossing me out on my arse, do you?
” He held up the decanter of scotch as if to ask permission to sample it, but he’d already poured two fingers of the rich amber liquid into a cut crystal glass.
He took her tight lips as a begrudging assent and chose to stand near the crackling hearth and warm his bones rather than accept the seat across from her.
He’d been too uncomfortable locked up in the carriage and had chosen to ride through the last leg of their journey across the Scottish border.
The heat permeating his traveling clothes was far more pleasant than any chair.
He took his opportunity to size Amelia up as she was doing to him.
She still possessed a wealth of intelligence in her eyes, but there was also a new, unfamiliar spark there.
Again, he appreciated how she’d rounded out at certain angles, and a long-buried part of him knew those curves would feel so sweet against him.
Dorian took a careful sip of the liquid fire in his glass. It would do him no good to fall back into bad ways and toss back one drink after another; he had to keep his head about him if this was going to work.
Amelia surprised him when she finally responded. “Clara will be in good hands beneath my roof. As a widow, I am a perfectly suitable chaperone, and you need not remain for her stay.”
“You act as if you are a stuffy dowager.”
“Aren’t I, though?”
She was a dowager; he couldn’t argue against that. Instead, he changed the topic. “I do not appreciate your encouraging Clara to lie and sneak about. That can only lead to worse things.”
Her eyes flashed. “If Clara did so, it would have been her own prerogative. I never disguised the fact that our friendship continued after…”
“After you threw away our future.”
“After our engagement was dissolved.” There was a steely silence. “If Clara deceived you, then it was purely out of self-preservation.”
“You act as if I’m some sort of tyrant!” Amelia’s beast of a dog lifted her head at the volume of his voice and eyed him warily.
Reading the animal’s displeasure, Dorian lowered his tone; he didn’t relish the possibility of losing his bollocks to a guard dog.
“As her guardian, I need to know where she is and with whom she is associating.”
“As I said, she is in good hands. You may return to London, and you may collect her when she is ready to return, whenever that may be. I have told her she is welcome to remain as long as she would like.”
“If you think I am leaving her alone in your care, then you’re sorely mistaken.”
“I am not the one who has displayed questionable moral behaviors,” she bit back.
Dorian’s hand tightened dangerously on the glass in his hand. He had to set it on the oversized mantle before he shattered it in his grip or tossed it back in one great gulp…followed by countless others. He should have known Amelia would not make this easy. Well, he could play at that game, too.
“I will not be leaving Clara here alone,” he said, his tone dangerously low. “If you wish for her to stay, then I will remain as well. If you wish for me to leave your home, then…we should hope Clara’s maid has not yet unpacked all of her things.”
“You would have her travel all this way only to turn around and return to London? Do you think that is fair to her? After she has been looking forward to this visit for so long?” Dorian did not miss the white-knuckled way in which Amelia gripped her arms as they crossed over her chest. It told him, even as she spoke coolly and evenly, that she wasn’t unmoved or unshaken by his presence.
In fact, it may very well have been the opposite.
Good.
“Yes,” he answered simply. “So, if you do not wish to disappoint Clara—the girl who has refused to remove you from such a revered place in her heart—then I must stay as well. The decision is yours.” He needed her to agree.
Was it somewhat abhorrent to use his sister as a bargaining chip to coerce his way into Amelia’s home?
More than likely. But, faced with the opportunity to finally move on with his life, he cared not one bit.
He tried not to become entranced by the way she caught her lower lip between her teeth in indecision.
Amelia had always had a tender heart when it came to Clara, so the thought of having to set her out purely because Dorian had come as her chaperone was obviously creating a war inside of her.
He could see it in the stiffness of her posture, her pensive silence, the quiet tapping of her foot on the stone floor beneath the desk.
Finally, when she met his eyes, Dorian could read in the verdant pools that he’d won the first battle even before she made a resigned nod of her head.