Elizabeth Beacon - A Regency Rebel's Seduction

‘How do you know I’m glaring at you?’ she asked haughtily.

‘Instinct,’ he told her succinctly. ‘I can’t promise you much, but I will promise not to treat you as shabbily as your father did your mother,’ he added gruffly.

‘That would be nice of you, if I had the least intention of marrying you.’

‘You will have to, my girl, since I refuse to spend the next three months or so not meeting your brother’s eyes or hiding from Ben Shaw’s mighty wrath while we wait for you to decide if I’ve just got you pregnant or not. Consider it the wages of sin and take that guilt on your shoulders if you must, but at least let’s have no more Cheltenham tragedies while you wait it out as my wife instead.’

‘So far I hear only what you want and nothing about me, but the answer to your question about the disguise is that I don’t really know. I can’t go back to Kit’s house because my enemies will be looking for me by now, and I wanted to get you away from the man who’s trying to trap you until we could defeat him somehow, which was all very stupid of me, I suppose.’

‘Undoubtedly it was,’ he agreed gruffly.

‘You could probably go back there safely yourself,’ she encouraged him and felt his suspicion on the heavy air as clearly as if she could actually see his frown.

‘While you do what in the meantime?’

‘I have plenty of plans for my future. It’s you I don’t know what to do with.’

‘I think we just demonstrated that you know exactly what to do with me,’ he said, sounding as silkily lethal as he must when examining any of his crew brought in front of him to explain their sins.

‘And you dislike being thought fit for only one purpose as much as I do?’

‘When did I imply any such thing, woman?’

‘With every word you drawl at me as if you’re right and everything I say proves how bird-witted I am.’

‘Only when you’re talking rubbish,’ he muttered impatiently, as if driven to the edge of reason by addle-pated arguments, when she ought to accept his words as proven fact, then do as she was bid.

‘It’s hardly rubbish to say we’re both unsuited to marriage and even more so to marrying one another.’

‘Yes, it is. We’ll do very well in our marriage bed, something we just proved to each other beyond all reasonable doubt.’

‘So my doubts are unreasonable and that’s all there is to marriage?’ she asked with a theatrical wave at the coffee stacks she was quite glad he couldn’t see. The very thought of them made her blush now they were discussing seduction and his peculiar idea that it automatically led to marriage.

‘Ah, now I can see why you were truly so unsuited to the ton nish ideals of marriage à la mode . You, Miss Alstone, destined as you are not to be a miss for very much longer, are a romantic.’

Stung by the accusation, when she’d always thought herself such a cynic, Louisa was about to loudly dispute such a slur when she made the mistake of wondering if he could be right.

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