“I told you there weren’t twenty.”
“Who the devil needs sixteen pillows? A man only has one head.”
“But he has two eyes.”
“Which are shut when he sleeps.”
Clio sighed. “Perhaps you’ve been residing in a storehouse, but I know you weren’t raised in a barn.”
Crossing to the opposite side of the bed, she began replacing the cushions in their proper order. “The pillows,” she said, “serve a decorative purpose. The symmetry is pleasing.”
“Right. Everyone knows that’s what a gentleman finds most pleasing in a bed. Symmetrical pillows.”
She felt her cheeks going from pink to scarlet. “Lord Rafe—”
“That’s another thing.” He’d moved on to the washstand now. No doubt to find fault with the basin, or question why there were two—heaven forfend, two!—cakes of soap. “I don’t answer to that title anymore. There will be no ‘my lord’-ing. Not from you, not from the servants.”
“Lord Rafe.” Her voice frayed at the edges as she reached for another cushion. “I am trying to be accommodating. But this is my home, not a Southwark warehouse. And I am—for the moment, anyhow—still engaged to Lord Granville. Unless you mean to dissolve the engagement by signing those papers tonight—”
“I don’t.”
“Then I suggest that for once, you comport yourself in a manner that honors the family name. The very name you are urging me to take.”
“That’s what I’m doing.” He turned his head, checking the closeness of his shave in the small mirror. “The best honor I can do the family name is to distance myself from it.”
Clio paused.
Surely he didn’t think that. Prizefighting might be illegal and scandalous, but it was a sport revered by every Englishman. He would no doubt cause an uproar at Almack’s, but any evening he wished, Rafe might stroll into London’s most exclusive gentlemen’s clubs and walk among the members as a demigod.
And yet . . .
There was a hard, jaded quality to his baritone.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Once you’ve married my brother, I’ll keep my distance from you, too.”
“Lord Rafe . . .”
He snapped his fingers, drifting on to the closet. “Just Rafe. Or Brandon, if you prefer. Since I turned twenty-one, I only use the titles I’ve earned.”
The titles he’d earned?
Right now, in Clio’s estimation, he was earning the title Lord Pain-upon-Arse. Goodness, the man was exhausting.
“I suppose you mean the title of champion,” she said, feeling peevish as she resettled a pillow in its row. “But that’s Jack Dubose’s title now. Isn’t it?”
He turned to face her, and for the first time since he’d entered the castle, there were no restless motions. His gaze ceased wandering and focused, dark and intent, on her.
She squared her shoulders, refusing to look cowed.
Meanwhile, the back of her neck prickled like mad. And her heart skipped around her chest.
He spoke three simple, solemn words. “Not for long.”
The room vibrated with an unbearable tension.
Desperate to resolve it somehow, Clio tucked the last pillow back in its place. “There.”
He looked at the pillow. Then at her. “You are so perfect for my brother.”
The words did something strange to her.
Perfect, he said.
Perfect for Piers.
Rafe could have no idea how that statement affected her. All those years of language tutors and etiquette lessons and . . . and worse. Much worse. Her mother’s efforts to mold her to the role of Lady Granville had made Clio sick, quite literally.
But she’d endured it all without complaint, desperate to be deemed satisfactory, let alone perfect. When she had been seventeen—or nineteen, or even twenty-three—Clio would have given anything to hear those words.
And now, when she’d made up her mind to stop chasing perfection . . . Here came Rafe and all his trunks full of dangerous, arrogant nerve.
You are so perfect for my brother.
Witty responses eluded her. All she could say was, “Don’t.”
“Rafe.” A breathless Montague burst into the room, carrying something in his hands. He didn’t seem to notice Clio where she stood at the head of the bed. “Rafe, these rooms are unbelievable. You have to see this chamber pot. I’ve eaten from plates that weren’t this clean.”
“Montague . . .”
“I’m in earnest. I’d lick this.” He turned the glazed pot over in his hands. “Dare me to?”
“No.”
“Because I’ll do it.”
“Don’t.”
Rafe and Clio spoke the word in unison. A mutual, primal cry of desperation.
Montague froze—tongue out, eyebrows up—finally taking note of Clio’s presence. He spoke without retracting his tongue. “Ah. Mih Wih-muh.”
“Mr. Montague.”
Montague thrust the chamber pot behind his back. “I was . . . just remarking to Lord Rafe on the exceptional thoroughness of your housekeeping.”
“Quite.”
Clio didn’t know what was going on with this Montague character, but she sensed that it gave her an edge with Rafe. And she needed any advantage she could get.
“I’ll leave you both to settle in,” she said, plumping the final pillow. “Dinner is at seven.”