A Night Like This (Smythe-Smith Quartet #2)(61)

“You can’t,” she blurted out.
Which seemed to rouse that masculine don’t-you-tell-me-what-to-do reaction. “Why not?” he demanded.
“You just can’t,” she shot back, tugging at the sheet, which had snagged on the corner of the chair. “You should know that. For heaven’s sake, you’re an earl. You can’t marry a nobody.” Especially not a nobody with a falsified name.
“I can marry anyone I damn well please.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Now he looked like a three-year-old who’d had his toy snatched away. Didn’t he understand that she couldn’t do this? He might delude himself, but she would never be so na?ve. Especially after her conversation with Lady Pleinsworth the night before.
“You’re being foolish,” she told him, yanking at the damned sheet again. Dear God, was it too much just to want to be free? “And impractical. And furthermore, you don’t even want to marry me, you just want to get me into your bed.”
He drew back, visibly angered by her statement. But he did not contradict.
She let out an impatient breath. She hadn’t meant to insult him, and he should have realized that. “I do not think that you meant to seduce and abandon,” she said, because no matter how furious he made her, she could not bear his believing that she thought him a scoundrel. “I know that sort of man, and you are not he. But you hardly intended to propose marriage, and I certainly will not hold you to it.”
His eyes narrowed, but not before she saw them glint dangerously. “When did you come to know my mind better than I do?”
“When you stopped thinking.” She pulled at the sheet again, this time with such violence that the chair lurched forward and nearly toppled. And Anne very nearly found herself naked. “Aaargh!” she let out, so frustrated she wanted to punch something. Looking up, she saw Daniel standing there, just watching her, and she nearly screamed, she was so bloody angry. At him, at George Chervil, at the damned damned sheet that kept tangling her legs. “Will you just go?” she snapped. “Now, before someone comes in.”
He smiled then, but it wasn’t anything like the smiles she knew of him. It was cold, and it was mocking, and the sight of it on his face tore through her heart. “What would happen then?” he murmured. “You, dressed in nothing but a sheet. Me, rather rumpled.”
“No one would insist upon marriage,” she snapped. “That much I can tell you. You’d go back to your merry life, and I would be cast out without a reference.”
He stared at her sourly. “I suppose you’re going to say that that was my plan all along. To bankrupt you until you had no choice but to become my mistress.”
“No,” she said curtly, because she could not lie to him, not about this. And then, in a softer voice, she added, “I would never think that of you.”
He fell silent, his eyes watching her intently. He was hurting, she could see that. He hadn’t proposed marriage, not really, but still she’d somehow managed to reject him. And she hated that he was in pain. She hated the look on his face, and she hated the stiff way his arms were held at his sides, and most of all she hated that nothing was ever going to be the same. They would not talk. They would not laugh.
They would not kiss.
Why had she stopped him? She’d been in his arms, skin to skin, and she’d wanted him. She’d wanted him with a fire she’d never dreamed possible. She’d wanted to take him into her, and she’d wanted to love him with her body as she already loved him with her heart.
She loved him.
Dear God.
“Anne?”
She didn’t respond.
Daniel’s brow knit with concern. “Anne, are you all right? You’ve gone pale.”
She wasn’t all right. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be all right again.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Anne . . .” Now he looked worried, and he was walking toward her, and if he touched her, if he so much as reached for her, she’d lose her resolve.
“No,” she practically barked, hating the way her voice came from deep in her throat. It hurt. The word hurt. It hurt her neck, and it hurt her ears, and it hurt him, too.
But she had to do it.
“Please don’t,” she said. “I need you to leave me alone. This. . . . This . . .” She fought for a word; she couldn’t bear to call it a thing. “This feeling between us . . .” she finally settled upon. “Nothing can come of it. You must realize that. And if you care for me at all, you will leave.”
But he did not move.
“You will leave now,” she practically cried, and she sounded like a wounded animal. Which was what she was, she supposed.
For several seconds more he stood frozen, and then finally, in a voice as low as it was determined, he said, “I am leaving, but not for any of the reasons you request. I am going to London to settle the issue with Ramsgate, and then—and then,” he said with greater force, “we will talk.”
Silently, she shook her head. She could not do this again. It was too painful to listen to him spin stories about happy endings that would never be hers.
He strode to the door. “We will talk,” he said again.
It wasn’t until after he’d left that Anne whispered, “No. We won’t.”

Chapter Sixteen


London


One week later


She was back.
Daniel had heard it from his sister, who had heard it from his mother, who had heard it directly from his aunt.