But with her protest, the viscount’s eyes were once again on her. And the uncomfortable heat that brewed within her at his presence stirred.
“There is every need,” he said softly, frowning at her. “Why are you carrying a valise?”
“Because it contains my possessions.” Her voice was husky, not her own.
Curse her traitorous body for the effect he had on her.
“I shall leave the two of you to your chat,” the Duchess of Montrose intruded with politic calm, giving the cat’s fluffy head a scratch.
To Elizabeth’s dismay, the duchess took her leave. She watched with a sinking heart and an ever heavier weight of dread lodged behind her breastbone. The door to the salon closed behind her, leaving Elizabeth well and truly alone with Viscount Torrington.
“Put the valise down, if you please.”
His voice was deep and sinful and rich, and far too near for comfort. She gave a start as she realized he had moved closer to her during the duchess’s escape. His scent of leather, bay, and citrus mocked her.
She didn’t obey his request. “Forgive me, my lord, but I fail to understand the need for another meeting between us. Why have you come?”
His brow furrowed, knitting a small line in his forehead. “Is it not apparent?”
“No, my lord. It is not.”
Perhaps honesty was the best course. She had no notion of what he was playing at, but she very much desired to be free of his company and the restless yearning that inevitably accompanied it. Why did he insist on further torment?
He came closer, his long-legged strides a trifle stiff, and stopped before her, his countenance stern and yet so sinfully handsome she wished, for a wild moment, to run her fingers through his hair and leave it mussed. Anything to cause an imperfection. To render him less compelling.
“Miss Brown,” he said earnestly, “if you would do me the honor of becoming my wife, I would be…pleased.”
For the second time in as many days, Viscount Torrington had completely and utterly shocked her. She stared at him, speechless, thinking that she must have misheard. That perhaps she was dreaming, and she would awake in her narrow, uncomfortable bed at the Worthing town house.
She blinked, and no. She was startlingly awake, and Lord Torrington was watching her with the same intent look. He had asked her to marry him. She could not have been more stunned.
Elizabeth had, in the height of her foolish infatuation with the viscount, imagined Lord Torrington offering for her hand many times, and in at least a dozen different ways. But none of them had been in this fashion, the words halting, as if they were poison on his tongue, as he forgot her very surname.
“It is Miss Brooke,” she said coldly, astounding herself with her capacity for speech after such a crushing affront.
“Ah, yes, of course.” He cleared his throat, twin patches of color painting the sculpted, aristocratic ridges of his cheekbones. “Pray forgive me for misspeaking. Will you marry me, Miss Brooke?”
How desperately she wanted to tell him yes. It was astonishing. Impossible, really, that any lord, let alone this one, would offer for her. Would be willing to marry the governess he had unintentionally compromised the night before. But he did not want to marry her. He hadn’t even known her name until she had corrected him.
She was beneath his notice. Beneath his recollection.
“No.”
The word fled her lips so swiftly, it surprised him. Elizabeth could see as much in the shift of his expression, the change from awkward, formal invitation—a man resigned to his unwanted fate—to incredulity.
“No?”
“No,” she repeated.
Even if it was a mistake, denying him, and even if she was forced to endure some fate beyond her ken, surely anything would be better than forcing this dreadful specter from her past to marry her. To condemn the both of them to a loveless, unhappy union founded on a mistake. He would resent her eternally, and he would find pleasure in the arms of other women, and she would hate him for it.
“You have no home,” he said. “No situation. After last night, you will never have another situation. I know the Countess of Worthing well enough to believe she intends to follow through with her threats.”
His words were stark. Ominous.
Bitterness rose within her, but she tamped it down, refusing to allow that emotion free rein. “Nonetheless, I will find another situation, my lord. There is no need to offer for me in pity. Even a poor, plain governess such as I must be allowed her pride.”
His frown intensified, his entire, august personage rendered austere and forbidding. “No man would ever look upon you and call you plain.”
