Desired

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Authors: Nicola Cornick
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ailing. The charm of handsome men generally left her utterly cold.
    Rothbury leaned back against the library doors, arms crossed, broad shoulders resting against the panels, another barrier to her escape.
    “I am at your service,” he murmured, “whenever you are ready to acquaint me with this business proposition you have.”
    Tess’s throat dried. “I wanted…” She groped for the words that had scattered like petals in the breeze. “That is, I thought…”
    One dark brow rose quizzically as Rothbury surveyed her confusion.
    “I came here—” Gracious, she had lost all her town bronze. This would never do.
    “I came here to ask you to marry me,” she finished, with all the finesse of a tongue-tied schoolgirl. “In name only, that is. I wish for a marriage of convenience.”
    Mortified, she stood pinned to the spot whilst a burning blush seemed to creep up from her toes to engulf her entire body. It was difficult to see how matters could have gone more painfully awry. She hadwanted to be so cool, so composed. She had wanted to be herself, Teresa, Dowager Marchioness of Darent, poised and self-assured. Instead, this man had taken all her confidence and turned it inside out. She should have known not to engage in this dangerous game of using Rothbury for his name and his protection, because any moment now he would call her bluff, accuse her of sedition and very likely have her thrown in the Tower of London.
    Rothbury was silent for a very long moment. Finally, when Tess was about to stammer an apology and climb out of the window in her desperation to escape, his shoulders came away from the door and he started to move towards her. Panic gripped her by the throat as he drew closer to her. There was something about his physical presence that was so powerful, so authoritative, that it made her supremely uncomfortable. She did not feel threatened by him in the same way as she had by Brokeby, with that terrible fear that had made her skin crawl. Rothbury, she knew instinctively, was not a man who would ever hurt a woman. Even so his physical proximity filled her with unease.
    Rothbury took her chin in his hand and turned her face to the faint light that penetrated the room from the long windows. Tess tried to remain still beneath his touch although the impulse to break away from him was strong. No one touched her. Ever.
    “An extraordinary suggestion,” he murmured. “A marriage in name only. Why would you wish for that?”He allowed his hand to fall and Tess felt the relief swamp her, heady as wine, enough to turn her dizzy for a brief moment. Rothbury took a step away from her and then turned sharply back on his heel.
    “It was not a rhetorical question,” he said.
    Tess jumped. “Oh!” Her mind was a blank. Why had she not anticipated that Rothbury might ask that question—and a great many more difficult questions besides? She had hurried off to proposition him without laying the groundwork first. She should have realised that he was not the kind of man, like Darent before him, to accept such an arrangement without debate.
    Rothbury was still watching her with one eyebrow raised in an odiously quizzical manner. And her mind was still blanker than a blank canvas.
    “No doubt you will share your reasons with me before too long,” he said, still in the same gentle drawl. “Meanwhile, I have another question. This may seem impertinent, Lady Darent—vulgar, even—but I have to ask it.” He smiled. “What exactly is in this for me?”
     
    O WEN HAD HAD A VERY entertaining ten minutes, possibly one of the most unexpected and interesting ten minutes that he had experienced in his entire life. He had received a number of marriage proposals over the course of his thirty-two years. Some had been from enterprising courtesans on the make, others from respectable young ladies seeking to escape the tedium of life in the schoolroom. One had been from a fabulously wealthy princess wanting to run away from an

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