She squeaked but otherwise made no movement.
"I have half a mind to strangle you." He felt his jaw clench in frustration.
"But, your grace?" Katherine turned her deep blue eyes toward him and whispered, "Then you would no longer be able to kiss me, and you do enjoy that, don't you?"
Before he could speak, she shushed him. "No, no, you've had quite the ordeal tonight, your grace. Pray, do not exert yourself any further. Besides, you've kissed a woman, lived through a fight and apparently a terrible bout with dust. You deserve your rest. Just remember this one thing."
"What's that?" Curse his voice for being hoarse with need.
"This round goes to me."
"Minx."
"Rogue."
"Flirt."
"Devil."
He sighed. "Agreed. I have been bested."
"Why, your grace!" Her eyelashes fluttered. He couldn't take his eyes away from her face if he wanted to. "How sporting of you."
And then, the woman, the very same one who had threatened his life so many years before, managed the impossible.
She didn't sneak, but rather stomped right into his heart, threatening something much more dangerous than his life.
His absolute and utter devotion.
Devil take him, he'd be shocked if he lasted the two weeks without his heart, soul, life, and everything else he possessed on a platter before the girl.
The whole idea that she could enter into his life so quickly and steal his very small heart made him deuced uncomfortable. She was more than a pretty face, and despite his desire to bed her, he found himself wanting to wed her. Perhaps he was going mad? It may be the only explanation as to why he continued to stop himself from fully ruining her, from making her his. Though his body ached with need, for the first time in his life, he was putting another human being ahead of himself. It was such an odd feeling that he found he almost needed to sit before his knees buckled beneath him sending him to the floor.
What was this foreign feeling? Would it ever go away? Or was the only cure the very same girl that both provoked and inflamed him?
He wasn't going to last a week.
Then again, she wasn't sure she was going to last the carriage ride home. The man was altogether too large to fit in that stifling carriage.
After his aunt accidently tread on her father's foot with her cane, well, he'd felt a bruised foot as well as a bruised ego, no doubt.
Meaning, her parents had left the opera early.
Thanking the heavens that she still had Benedict's fire-breathing aunt with them, Katherine soon realized her joy would be short-lived. When the very dragon toppled over in her chair.
"Oh, you two stay, stay! After all, you are betrothed."
"I will see that Lady Katherine reaches her home this evening," Benedict had drawled, his smirk giving way to the utter satisfaction he most likely felt with Katherine in his clutches again.
"Well, if you insist." The dowager looked to Katherine.
"I would be delighted to stay and watch the remainder of the opera with his grace."
"Well, that's settled!" The dowager nodded her head slowly. The poor thing did look quite put out; perhaps she was coming down with a cold? Which is exactly what she had suggested to Benedict.
He laughed, and stated that she was known for having a list of ailments, all of which were nonexistent but always helpful in her manipulations and strategies.
They were silent during the rest of the opera.
And in the carriage.
Until, all of a sudden Benedict stopped the carriage a block from her house. "You cannot be silent!"
"Why ever not?" she near shouted.
"It isn't like you!"
"Pardon?"
"Silence? Beauty? Intelligence? Devil take me, it isn't at all like you! Be disagreeable. Saints alive, help a man out! It would be so much easier to marry a woman who was… was…"
She must have hit him harder than she thought.
"Let me see if I understand you correctly. You desire for me to be undesirable."
"Bloody hell, yes!" He lifted his eyes heavenward and sighed happily. "Do you not understand? I was just getting used to the idea of being married, of being forced — nay, coerced, perhaps manipulated is a better word? Yes, manipulated — into marrying you! At least then, I knew I could keep my distance. After all, you'd probably send me to an early grave, and then I wouldn't have to suffer alongside you in holy matrimony."
"How romantic."
He shrugged. He would shrug at a time like this. Devil take him.
"But now, don't you see how much more difficult it is going to be for me to be… Well, to be…" He bit his lip and scowled.
"Selfish?" she offered.
"Yes!" he roared. "Now wait one minute, I wouldn't necessarily say it's selfish for a man to want to live his life without the irritation of a woman by his side."
"Your words are like poetry," she gushed mockingly.