The Mad, Bad Duke (Nvengaria #2)(23)
Her eyes bore the intensity of a woman determined to get what she desired. The prospect of her stepdaughter married to a Grand Duke had been dangled before her, and she would push for it like a jockey whipped his horse to win a race.
“Please, Papa,” Meagan said.
Michael took on a look of resignation. “Very well.” He laid his hand on Meagan’s shoulder and spoke in a low voice. “Remember, you can refuse him. I will love you and stand by you no matter what, I promise you that.”
He would break her heart. Meagan blinked to keep tears from forming.
Gaius ushered Michael and Simone out the door, leaving Meagan at last alone with Alexander.
Chapter 7
Alexander felt himself change the moment Meagan walked into the room.
The previous night and all this morning he’d forced himself to be logical and cold, to put plans in motion and not to think. But when he’d finally fallen into slumber last night, his dreams had been basic and urgent, reliving holding Meagan in his arms, the satisfaction of being inside her, the taste and scent of her around him.
He’d woken in the night thoroughly aroused, his cock tight. The primitive man in him had wanted to charge across London, find her, steal her, have her.
As Alexander had washed and dressed for the day, he’d been able to tamp down the beast, hiding it behind the neutral tasks of contacting his solicitor and making arrangements. But as soon as Meagan had entered this chamber, the calm man had departed and the predator returned.
He caught her scent, strong like roses, yet light like lemon. The movement of her body under her thin muslin heated his blood to searing. Alexander had remained planted behind his desk because he’d not be very convincing as the coolly efficient Grand Duke with the obvious erection in his trousers.
Meagan’s melodious voice broke through his thoughts. “Why do you not look at me, Alexander?” she was asking. “It would be so much easier to speak to you, you know, if you were not staring at the moldings on the other side of the room.”
Alexander pulled his gaze from the closed door and forced it to Meagan. “Because when I look at you, I feel the spell,” he said in a clipped voice. “I can control neither it nor myself while you are near.”
“Oh.” Meagan touched her tongue to her lip, drawing his attention to the moist redness of it. A bead of sweat trickled down his spine. “Then perhaps we both should study the paintings on the ceiling.”
She looked up at the gaudy representations of gods and goddesses high above them, a red curl dripping to her slim neck. Alexander wanted to kiss that neck, drawing his tongue along it and tasting the curl.
“Meagan.” He couldn’t help speaking her name, wanting to feel it on his tongue. “Marrying me is the best way to put things right.”
She took her gaze from the ceiling and fixed her golden brown eyes on him, brows slightly raised. “Best for whom? I presume you mean for me, but would it be?”
She was angry, her face flushed with it, her gaze steady, but like her father, Meagan would not grovel on the carpet, pleased that Alexander wanted to bestow such an honor. She took his breath away.
“I do not understand you,” Alexander managed to say. “How would marriage to save your reputation not be best for you?”
Meagan’s chest lifted with her agitation. “Because someone like me marrying you will draw the closest scrutiny. I could hie off to Scotland or some such place instead and live out my life, unseen by society, and no one would ever know what had happened between us. But if you marry me, plain Meagan Tavistock, it will be a great scandal. People will talk about it for years—the lofty Grand Duke and the English miss who tricked him into marrying her.”
She worried about gossip? The Grand Duke could turn gossip to his advantage, or create whatever gossip he pleased. He could play upon the English ton like a musician played a pianoforte.
“You need care nothing for what the English say,” Alexander told her impatiently. “The Nvengarians will believe it a grand romance, and their opinion is the only one that matters.”
Meagan blinked at him. “Truly? Well, you ought to worry about what English people think if you wish to be an ambassador. That is what ambassadors do, is it not, care about the customs of other people’s countries?”
“You are schooled in the way of ambassadors?” Alexander answered, wanting for some reason to laugh. “That will be useful, when you are Grand Duchess.”
“When I am Grand Duchess?” Meagan gave him an incredulous look. “You are certainly presumptuous, Your Grace. It would have been more pleasant if you’d asked me if I wished to marry you, before you sent that letter to my father.”
Alexander made a conciliatory gesture. “I admit that I mistook both your character and that of your father.”
Which confounded him. In all his life, Alexander had never mistaken a person’s character. He’d been able to manipulate men from the lowest born to the highest by simply knowing which of their strings to pull. Anyone else in the world who’d been ushered into this room would have already agreed to sign whatever Alexander wanted them to, and have done. But this young Englishwoman with red hair only regarded him in complete bafflement.
Alexander was trying to save her life, but Meagan quite decidedly did not want the likes of him to save it.