Almost Heaven (48 page)

Duncan eyed Ian with one gray eyebrow lifted and said sardonically, “Very clever of you to ingratiate yourself so well with Elizabeth’s servants.”

The group in the drawing room reacted with diverse emotions to Bentner’s announcement that “Thornton is here and forced his way into the house.” The dowager duchess looked fascinated, Julius looked both relieved and dismayed, Alexandra looked wary, and Elizabeth, who was still preoccupied with her uncle’s unstated purpose for his visit, looked nonplussed. Only Lucinda showed no expression at all, but she laid her needlework aside and lifted her face attentively toward the doorway.

“Show him in here, Bentner,” her uncle said, his voice unnaturally loud in the emotionally charged silence.

Elizabeth felt a shock at seeing Duncan walk into the room beside Ian, and a greater one when Ian ignored everyone else and came directly to her, his gaze searching her face. “I trust you’re suffering no ill effects from the ordeal last night?” he said in a gentle tone as he took her hand and lifted her fingertips to his lips.

Elizabeth thought he looked breathtakingly handsome in a coat and waistcoat of rust superfine that set off his wide shoulders, biscuit trousers that hugged his long legs, and a cream silk shirt that emphasized the tan of his face and throat. “Very well, thank you,” she answered, trying to ignore the warmth tingling up her arm as he kept her hand for a long moment before he reluctantly released it and allowed her to handle the introductions.

Despite her grave concern over her uncle, Elizabeth chuckled inwardly as she introduced Duncan. Everyone exhibited the same stunned reaction she had when she’d discovered Ian Thornton’s uncle was a cleric. Her uncle gaped, Alex stared, and the dowager duchess glowered at Ian in disbelief as Duncan politely bent over her hand. “Am I to understand, Kensington,” she demanded of Ian, “that you are related to a man of the cloth?”

Ian’s reply was a mocking bow and a sardonic lift of his brows, but Duncan, who was desperate to put a light face on things, tried ineffectually to joke about it. “The news always has a peculiar effect on people,” he told her.

“One needn’t think too hard to discover why,” she replied gruffly.

Ian opened his mouth to give the outrageous harridan a richly deserved setdown, but Julius Cameron’s presence was worrying him; a moment later it was infuriating him as the man strode to the center of the room and said in a bluff voice, “Now that we’re all together, there’s no reason to dissemble. Bentner, bring champagne. Elizabeth, congratulations. I trust you’ll conduct yourself properly as a wife and not spend the man out of what money he has left.”

In the deafening silence no one moved, except it seemed to Elizabeth that the entire room was beginning to move. “What?” she breathed finally.

“You’re betrothed.”

Anger rose up like flames licking inside her, spreading up her limbs. “Really?” she said in a voice of deadly calm, thinking of Sir Francis and John Marchman. “To whom?”

To her disbelief, Uncle Julius turned expectantly to Ian, who was looking at him with murder in his eyes. “To me,” he clipped, his icy gaze still on her uncle.

“It’s final,” Julius warned her, and then, because he assumed she’d be as pleased as he to discover she had monetary value, he added, “He paid a fortune for the privilege. I didn’t have to give him a shilling.”  

Elizabeth, who had no idea the two men had ever met before, looked at Ian in wild confusion and mounting anger. “What does he mean?” she demanded in a strangled whisper.

“He means,” Ian began tautly, unable to believe all his romantic plans were being demolished, “we are betrothed. The papers have been signed.”

“Why, you-you arrogant, overbearing” – She choked back the tears that were cutting off her voice – “you couldn’t even be bothered to
ask
me?”

Dragging his gaze from his prey with an effort, Ian turned to Elizabeth, and his heart wrenched at the way she was looking at him. “Why don’t we go somewhere private where we can discuss this?” he said gently, walking forward and taking her elbow.

She twisted free, scorched by his touch. “Oh, no!” she exploded, her body shaking with wrath. “Why guard my sensibilities now? You’ve made a laughingstock of me since the day I set eyes on you. Why stop now?”

“Elizabeth,” Duncan put in gently, “Ian is only trying to do the right thing by you, now that he realizes what a sad state you –”

“Shut up.
Duncan!” Ian commanded furiously, but it was too late; Elizabeth’s eyes had widened with horror at being pitied.

“And just what sort of ‘sad state’,” she demanded, her magnificent eyes shining with tears of humiliation and wrath, “do you think I’m in?”

Ian caught her elbow. “Come with me, or I’ll carry you out of here.”

He meant it, and Elizabeth jerked her elbow free, but she nodded. “By all means,” she said furiously.

Shoving open the door of the first room he came to, Ian drew Elizabeth inside and closed it behind them. She walked to the center of the little salon and whirled on him, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “You monster!” she hissed. “How
dare
you pity me!”

It was exactly the conclusion Ian knew she’d draw, and exactly the reaction he would have expected from the proud beauty who’d let him believe in Scotland that her life was a frivolous social whirl, her home a virtual palace. Hoping to diffuse some of her anger, he tried to divert her with a logical debate over her choice of words. “There’s a great difference between regretting one’s actions and pitying the person who suffered for them.”

“Don’t you
dare
play word games with me!” she said, her voice trembling with fury.

Inwardly, Ian smiled with pride at her perspicacity; even in a state of shock, Elizabeth knew when she was being gulled. “I apologize,” he conceded quietly. He walked forward, and Elizabeth retreated until her back touched a chair, then she held her ground, glaring at him. “Nothing but the truth will do in a situation like this,” he agreed, putting his hands on her rigid shoulders. Knowing she’d laugh in his face if he tried to convince her now that he loved her, he told her something she should believe; “The truth is that I want you. I have
always
wanted you, and you know that.”

“I
hate
that word,” she burst out, trying unsuccessfully to break free of his grasp.

“I don’t think you know what it means.”

“I know you say it every time you force yourself on me.”

“And every time I do, you melt in my arms.”

“I will not marry you,” Elizabeth said furiously, mentally circling for some way out. “I don’t know you. I don’t trust you.”

“But you
do
want me,” he told her with a knowing smile.

“Stop
saying
that, damn you! I
want
an old husband, I told you that,” she cried, mindlessly saying anything she could think of to put him off. “I want my life to be mine. I told you that, too. And you came dashing to England and-and
bought
me.” That brought her up short, and her eyes began to blaze.

“No,” he stated firmly, though it was splitting hairs, “I made a settlement on your uncle.”

The tears she’d been fighting valiantly to hide began to spill over her lashes. “I am not a pauper,” she cried. “I am not a p-pauper,” she repeated, her voice choking with tears. “I have – had – a dowry, damn you. And if you were so stu-stupid you let him swindle you out of it, it serves you right!”

Ian was torn between laughing, kissing her, and murdering her heartless uncle.

“How dare you make bargains I didn’t agree to?” she blazed while tears spilled from her wondrous eyes. “I’m not a piece of chattel, no matter what my uncle thi-thinks. I’d have found some way out of marrying Belhaven. I
would
have,” she cried fiercely. “I would have found a way to keep Havenhurst myself without my uncle. You had no right, no
right
to bargain with my uncle. You’re no better than Belhaven!”

“You’re right,” Ian admitted grimly, longing to draw her into his arms and absorb some of her pain, and then it hit him – a possible way to neutralize some of her humiliation and opposition. Recalling how proud she’d been of her own bargaining ability with tradesmen when she’d spoken of it in Scotland, he tried to enlist her participation now. “As you said, you’re perfectly capable of bargaining for yourself.” Coaxingly, he said, “Will you bargain with
me.
Elizabeth?”

“Certainly,” she flung back. “The agreement is off; I refuse the terms. The bargaining is over.”

His lips twitched, but his voice was filled with finality “Your uncle means to unload you and the expense of that house you love, and nothing is going to stop him. Without him, you cannot keep Havenhurst. He explained the situation to me in detail.”

Despite the fact that she shook her head, Elizabeth knew it was true, and the sense of impending doom she’d been struggling with for weeks began to overwhelm her. A husband is the only possible solution to your problems.”

“Don’t you dare suggest a man as the solution for my troubles,” she cried. “You’re all the cause of them! My father gambled away the entire family fortune and left me in debt; my brother disappeared after getting me deeper in debt; you kissed me and destroyed my reputation; my fiancé left me at the first breath of a scandal
you
caused; and my uncle is trying to sell me! As far as I’m concerned,” she finished, spitting fire, “men make excellent dancing partners, but beyond that I have no use for the lot of you. You’re all quite detestable, actually, when one takes time to ponder it, which of course one rarely does, for it would only cause depression.”

“Unfortunately, we’re the only alternative,” Ian pointed out. And because he would not give her up no matter what he had to do to keep her, he added, “In this case, I’m
your
only alternative. Your uncle and I have signed the betrothal contract, and the money has already changed hands. I am, however, willing to bargain with you on the terms.”

“Why should you?” she said scornfully.  Ian recognized in her answer the same hostility he found whenever he negotiated with any proud man who was being forced by circumstances, not by Ian, to sell something he wanted to keep. Like those men, Elizabeth felt powerless; and, like them, her pride alone would force her to retaliate by making the whole ordeal as difficult as possible for Ian.

In a business matter, Ian certainly wouldn’t have ruined his own negotiating position by helping his opponent to see the value of what he held and the advantageous terms he might wring from Ian because of it. In Elizabeth’s case, however, Ian sought to do exactly that. “I’m willing to bargain with you,” he said gently, “for the same reason anyone tries to bargain – you have something I want.” Desperately trying to prove to her she wasn’t powerless or empty-handed, he added, “I want it badly, Elizabeth.”

“What is it?” she asked warily, but much of the resentment in her lovely face was already being replaced by surprise.

“This,” he whispered huskily. His hands tightened on her shoulders, pulling her close as he bent his head and took her soft mouth in a slow, compelling kiss, sensually molding and shaping her lips to his. Although she stubbornly refused to respond, he felt the rigidity leaving her; and as soon as it did, Ian showed her just how badly he wanted it. His arms went around her, crushing her to him, his mouth moving against hers with hungry urgency, his hands shifting possessively over her spine and hips, fitting her to his hardened length. Dragging his mouth from hers, he drew an unsteady breath.
“Very
badly,” he whispered.

Lifting his head, he gazed down at her, noting the telltale flush on her cheeks, the soft confusion in her searching green gaze, and the delicate hand she’d forgotten was resting against his chest.  Keeping his own hand splayed against her lower back, he held her pressed to his rigid erection, torturing himself as he slid his knuckles against her cheek and quietly said, “For that privilege, and the others that follow it, I’m willing to agree to any reasonable terms you state. And I’ll even forewarn you,” he said with a tender smile at her upturned face, “I’m not a miserly man, nor a poor one.”

Elizabeth swallowed, trying to keep her voice from shaking in reaction to his kiss. “What other privileges that follow kissing?” she asked suspiciously.

The question left him nonplussed. “Those that involve the creation of children,” he said, studying her face curiously. “I want several of them – with your complete cooperation, of course,” he added, suppressing a smile.

“Of course,” she conceded without a second’s hesitation. “I like children, too, very much.”

Ian stopped while he was ahead, deciding it was wiser not to question his good fortune. Evidently Elizabeth had a very frank attitude toward marital sex – rather an unusual thing for a sheltered, well-bred English girl.

“What are your terms?” he asked, and he made a final effort to tip the balance of power into her hands and out of his by adding, “I’m scarcely in a position to argue.”

Elizabeth hesitated and then slowly began stating her terms: “I want to be allowed to look after Havenhurst without interference or criticism.”