‘You must do as you please, my lord,’ she made herself say as distantly as she could manage when he was so close that every sense seemed on edge.
Apparently he expected her to behave like some passive maiden in a story, waiting for the prince to slay her dragons and retrieve her when he wasn’t busy. She told herself this hollow feeling she was fighting wasn’t caused by the disappointment that he could misread her so radically, or want her to be so different from the real Persephone Seaborne under her fine lady gloss.
‘While you do exactly the same?’ he asked as if he’d like to shake her.
‘I must,’ she said quietly.
‘From where I stand, you absolutely must not.’
‘Ah, but you’ve got your feet firmly planted in those trusty male Hessians of yours, haven’t you, Lord Calvercombe? Standing in them, I doubt I’d see how anyone could go their own way without your interference, either.’
‘Nonsense,’ he said gruffly, with a look that told her he knew she was right, under all that temper and frustration, and it only made things worse.
Something inside her shifted, almost softened, and since that would cause all sorts of chaos if she let it, she refused to consider the notion they might do better together than they would apart. ‘How is it that men always accuse us women of speaking rubbish whenever we’re in danger of winning an argument?’ she mused, doing her best to guard her inner thoughts and fears from him with a superior smile.
‘I don’t know,’ he said after what looked like a mighty struggle. ‘Could it be because you talk such illogical claptrap we can’t help but be driven half mad? Maybe it’s because when a woman risks having to admit a man could be right, she deploys every weapon she can lay hands on to avoid doing so?’
‘What a very odd opinion you do have of my sex, my lord,’ she said sweetly, deciding that since she wasn’t going to find peace today, perhaps she ought to leave him to his instead.
‘I’ll admit I find many ladies empty-headed and silly, but that’s mostly the fault of unequal upbringing and low expectations. In your case it can only be wilful stupidity though, since your family seems to expect a great deal of both its male and female members. Your little sisters behave themselves with grace and intelligence, after all, so I can hardly blame your parents for your own lack of manners, can I?’
‘Penelope and Helen are good, dear girls, my lord. You’ll not succeed in driving a wedge between us by praising them and slighting me. You clearly never had a brother or sister you would walk to the end of the world for if you had to, so I can only feel sorry for you for that lack,’ she said, hoping he would see steady purpose in her eyes when they met his, rather than a fear they were both up against a force hellbent on making sure his family never set eyes on Rich again this side of the grave.
‘It won’t do Rich a mite of good if you sacrifice your peace of mind, personal safety and reputation and achieve nothing. Can you imagine how he would feel if he knew you were pitting your wits against the enemy he disappeared in order to avoid?’ he asked, running his hands through his hair, making it curl wildly. He turned away from her to stride up and down the path as if it were the only way to stop himself laying hands on her and physically shaking her this time.
‘It may surprise you, but, yes, I can see that,’ she told him quietly.
‘And it makes no difference? You’re bound and determined to go your own way, whatever the cost to the rest of us might be.’
‘It will cost you nothing, my lord. You clearly don’t like me and will not care a snap of your fingers what happens to me.’
Somehow that stopped him in his wolf-like pacing and he turned to glare back at her as if she’d accused him of some terrible crime. ‘I might not like you, woman, but that doesn’t mean I can’t worry about you—donkey stubborn and as wilful as a three-month-old puppy as you clearly are. You need someone by who isn’t blinded by charm and physical perfection to the heart of a vixen that lies underneath it all.’
‘I could be just like you, then,’ she said unsympathetically, trying to fight a ridiculous feeling inside her that something astonishingly promising had just fallen empty at her feet like a deflated hot air balloon.
‘Hah!’ he raged on, resuming his pacing again, except now it was more of a wild-cat lope than a wolfish fury as he worked himself up about her shortcomings instead of Rich’s plight. ‘We’re not in the least alike, you and I, not in the least similar in any way,’ he accused as he kicked a skewed edging tile, then had to pretend it didn’t hurt as it proved to be a lot more fixed in place than it looked.
‘Well,’ she said sarcastically and folded her arms to stop herself going up to him and holding on to halt his frustrated activity, ‘we certainly have a foul temper in common, if nothing else.’
‘I’ve enough to make me foul tempered; you could infuriate a whole regiment without even pausing for breath.’
‘No, I couldn’t,’ she argued for the sake of arguing as much as to prove a point now. ‘Even I can’t shout loudly enough to make that many bone-headed, born-stupid, stubborn-as-rock men hear me all at once.’
‘Ah, but they’d hush long enough to listen to the likes of you, Persephone,’ he told her, as if saying her name softly like that ought to cancel out his unflattering opinion of her up until now.
‘Why?’ she demanded, uncrossing her arms so she could fist her hands and pretend he was wrong.
‘Because you’re as lovely as half-a-dozen goddesses put together,’ he told her with a wry grin that acknowledged it was a silly thing to say and almost made her long to melt into the sort of weak-kneed female he obviously admired.
‘With a dozen fists to hit you with and as many feet to kick you, I think I could support being that lovely,’ she said and tried not to laugh at the very idea of it.
‘You’d fall over,’ he informed her solemnly. Oh, the temptation of him as he stood there, suddenly as light-hearted and heart-breakingly handsome as Mother Nature had intended him to be.
‘True, but at least I’d do it happily, knowing you were sure to be hurting far more than I was,’ she said, determined not to be charmed into a quieter, more accepting frame of mind.
‘I bet you were a devilish little girl, ready to lash out at anyone who told you not to do something merely because you were born a girl,’ he said reflectively.
If he but knew it, he was in danger of succeeding by using his acute mind to read her true character where all his raging and charming and unreasonableness had failed to persuade her. Mainly because he was right, she told herself. His knowing all her frustrations at being born a girl in a world dominated by men, when every time they met they quarrelled and struck sparks off each other, felt oddly disarming.
‘Please don’t think me so changed I won’t do it again, Lord Calvercombe,’ she told him rather half-heartedly.
‘Yet it would have been such a shame if you had been born one of us unsatisfactory males instead of a goddess-like female, Miss Seaborne, for then I would be denied the sheer pleasure of looking at you,’ he told her as if it were no more than passing the time of day.
‘I’m not a cold collection of limbs and good enough features to be gawped at like yonder statue, my lord. I am a human being with all the faults and failures and hopes and dreams we earthly creatures are subject to.’
‘But it doesn’t hurt the rest of us fallible beings that you’re a sheer pleasure to look upon, Miss Persephone Seaborne,’ he informed her quietly and strode dangerously close again, to look down at her as if he’d find out all the secrets of her inner soul she’d managed to bury deep inside.
‘And if I was to be as rude and bold as you are, I’d have to admit you’re no hardship to behold yourself, Alexander Forthin,’ she countered, meeting his disconcerting gaze as if it were