“I am quite serious. Lady Penelope is to be my bride. You will treat her with the respect she is due.”
He was going to marry the ordinary creature.
Her mouth dropped in surprise. “You are engaged?”
“Not yet. But it is a mere matter of formality at this point.”
She supposed it was right that he be matched with such a perfect English bride.
Except it seemed so wrong.
“I confess, I have never heard anyone speak so blandly about marriage.”
He crossed his arms against the cold, the wool of his black formal coat pulling taut across his shoulders, emphasizing his broadness. “What is there to say? We suit well enough.”
She blinked. “Well enough.”
He nodded once. “Quite.”
“How very impassioned.”
He did not rise to her sarcasm. “It’s a matter of business. There is no room for passion in a good English marriage.”
It was a joke. It must be.
“How do you expect to live your life without passion?”
He sniffed, and she wondered if he could smell his pompousness. “The emotion is overrated.”
She gave a little laugh. “Well, that might possibly be the most British thing I have ever heard anyone say.”
“It is a bad thing to be British?”
She smiled slowly. “Your words, not mine.” She continued, knowing she was irritating him. “We all need passion. You could do with a heavy dose of it in all areas of your life.”
He raised a brow. “I am to take this advice from you?” When she nodded, he pressed on. “So, let me be clear. You think my life requires passion—an emotion that propels you into darkened gardens and into strange carriages and onto balconies and forces you to risk your reputation with alarming frequency.”
She lifted her chin. “I do.”
“That may work for you, Miss Fiori, but I am different. I have a title, a family, and a reputation to protect. Not to mention the fact that I am far above such base and . . . common desires.”
The arrogance that poured off of him was suffocating.
“You are a duke,” she said, sarcasm in her tone.
He ignored it. “Precisely. And you are . . .”
“I am far less than that.”
He raised one golden eyebrow. “Your words, not mine.”
Her breath whooshed out of her as though she had been struck.
He deserved a powerful, wicked set down. The kind that would ruin a man for good. The kind only a woman could give.
The kind she desperately wanted to give him.
“You . . . asino.” His lips pressed into a thin line at the insult, and she dropped into a deep, mocking curtsy. “I apologize, Your Grace, for the use of such base language.” She looked up at him through dark lashes. “You will permit me to repeat it in your superior English. You are an ass.”
He spoke to her through his teeth. “Rise.”
She did, swallowing back her anger as he reached for her, his strong fingers digging into her elbow, turning her back to the ballroom. When he continued, his voice was low and graveled at her ear. “You think your precious passion shows that you are better than us, when all it shows is your selfishness. You have a family who is endeavoring to garner society’s acceptance for you, and still nothing matters to you but your own excitement.”
She hated him then. “It is not true. I care deeply for them. I would never do anything to—” She stopped. I would never do anything to damage them.
The words were not precisely true. Here she was, after all, on a darkened terrace with him.
He seemed to understand her thoughts. “Your recklessness will ruin you . . . and likely them. If you cared even a little, you would attempt to behave in the manner of a lady and not a common—”
He stopped before the insult was spoken.
She heard it anyway.
A calm settled deep within her.
She wanted this perfect, arrogant man brought to his knees.
If he imagined her reckless, that’s what she would be.
Slowly, she removed her arm from his grasp. “You think you are above passion? You think your perfect world needs nothing more than rigid rules and emotionless experience?”
He stepped back at the challenge in her soft words. “I do not think it. I know it.”
She nodded once. “Prove it.” His brows drew together, but he did not speak. “Let me show you that not even a frigid duke can live without heat.”
He did not move. “No.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Disinterested.”
“I doubt that.”
“You really give no thought to reputations, do you?”
“If you are concerned for your reputation, Your Grace, by all means, bring a chaperone.”
“And if I resist your tempestuous life?”
“Then you marry the grape and all is well.”
He blinked. “The grape?”
“Lady Penelope.” There was a long pause. “But . . . if you cannot resist . . .” She stepped close, his warmth a temptation in the crisp October air.
“Then what?” he asked, his voice low and dark.
She had him now. She would bring him down.
And his perfect world with him.
She smiled. “Then your reputation is in serious danger.”
He was silent, the only movement the slow twitch of a muscle in his jaw. After several moments, she thought he might leave her there, her threat hovering in the cold air.
And then he spoke.
“I shall give you two weeks.” She did not have time to revel in her victory. “But it shall be you who learns the lesson, Miss Fiori.”