Mr. Winterborne turned and set his back against the wall, his arms folded across his chest. “She was right,” he surprised her by saying. A corner of his mouth quirked wryly. “You’re as pretty as a moonbeam, cariad, and I’m not a high-minded man. I’m a bruiser from North Wales, with a taste for fine things. Aye, you were a prize to me. You always would have been. But I did want you for more than just that.”
The glow of pleasure Helen felt at the compliment had disappeared by the time he finished. “Why did you say that in the past tense?” she asked, blinking. “You . . . you still want me, don’t you?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want. Trenear will never consent to the match now.”
“He was the one who suggested the match in the first place. As long as I make it clear that I’m quite willing to marry you, I’m sure he’ll agree.”
An unaccountably long pause ensued. “No one told you, then.”
Helen gave him a questioning glance.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, Mr. Winterborne said, “I behaved badly, the day that Kathleen visited. After she told me that you no longer wanted to see me again, I—” He broke off, his mouth grim.
“You did what?” Helen prompted, her brow furrowing.
“It doesn’t matter. Trenear interrupted when he came to fetch her. He and I nearly came to blows.”
“Interrupted what? What did you do?”
He looked away then, his jaw flexing. “I insulted her. With a proposition.”
Helen’s eyes widened. “Did you mean it?”
“Of course I didn’t mean it,” came his brusque reply. “I didn’t lay a blasted finger on her. I wanted you. I have no interest in the little shrew, I was only angry with her for interfering.”
Helen sent him a reproachful glance. “You still owe her an apology.”
“She owes me one,” he retorted, “for costing me a wife.”
Although Helen was tempted to point out the flaws in his reasoning, she held her tongue. Having been reared in a family notorious for its evil tempers and stubborn wills, she knew the value of choosing the right time to help someone see the error of his ways. At the moment, Mr. Winterborne was too much at the mercy of his passions to concede any wrongdoing.
But he had indeed behaved badly—and even if Kathleen forgave him, it was unlikely that Devon ever would.
Devon was madly in love with Kathleen, and along with that came all the jealousy and possessiveness that had plagued generations of Ravenels. While Devon was somewhat more reasonable than the past few earls, that wasn’t saying much. Any man who frightened or offended Kathleen would earn his eternal wrath.
So this was why Devon had withdrawn his approval of the engagement so promptly. But the fact that neither he nor Kathleen had mentioned any of this to Helen was exasperating. Good heavens, how long would they insist on treating her like a child?
“We could elope,” she said reluctantly, although the idea held little appeal for her.
Mr. Winterborne scowled. “I’ll have a church wedding or none at all. If we eloped, no one would ever believe you went with me willingly. I’m damned if I’ll let people say I had to kidnap my bride.”
“There’s no alternative.”
A wordless interval followed, so full of portent that Helen felt her arms prickling beneath her sleeves, all the downy hairs lifting.
“There is.”
His face had changed, his eyes predatory. Calculating. This, she understood in a flash of intuition, was the version of Mr. Winterborne that people regarded with fear and awe, a pirate disguised as a captain of industry.
“The alternative,” he said, “is to let me bed you.”
Chapter 3
AMID THE CHAOS OF Helen’s thoughts, she retreated to one of the inset bookcases in the corner of the office.
“I don’t understand,” she said, even though she was terribly afraid that she did.
Mr. Winterborne prowled after her slowly. “Trenear won’t stand in the way after he finds out you’ve been ruined.”
“I would rather not be ruined.” It was becoming more difficult to breathe by the minute. Her corset had clamped around her like a set of jaws.
“But you want to marry me.” Reaching her, he rested a hand on the bookcase, cornering her. “Don’t you?”
In moral terms, fornication was a mortal sin. In practical terms, the risks of sleeping with him were enormous.
A horrid thought drained the color from her face. What if Mr. Winterborne slept with her and then refused to marry her? What if he were capable of such vindictiveness that he might dishonor and abandon her? No gentleman would ever offer for her. Any hope of gaining a home and family of her own would be lost. She would become a burden to her relations, condemned to a life of shame and dependence. If she conceived, she and her child would be social outcasts. And even if she didn’t, her disgrace would still sabotage her younger sisters’ marital prospects.
“How can I trust that you would do the right thing afterward?” she asked.
Mr. Winterborne’s expression darkened. “Questions of my character aside, how long do you think Trenear would let me live if I tried something like that? Before nightfall, he’d have me hunted and felled like a carted deer.”
“He might anyway,” Helen said glumly.
He ignored that. “I would never abandon you. If I took you to my bed, you would be mine, as sure if we vowed it on an oathing stone.”
“What is that?”
“A wedding ritual in my part of Wales. A man and woman exchange vows with a stone held between their joined hands. After the ceremony, they go together to cast the stone into a lake, and the earth itself becomes part of their oath. From then on, they are bound to each other for as long as the world exists.” His gaze locked with hers. “Give me what I ask, and you’ll never want for anything.”
He was overwhelming her again. Helen felt a light perspiration breaking out from her scalp to the soles of her feet. “I need time to consider it,” she said.
Mr. Winterborne’s determination seemed to feed from her distress. “I’ll give you money and property of your own. A stable of thoroughbreds. A palace, and the market town around it, and scores of servants to wait on you hand and foot. No price is too high. All you have to do is come to my bed.”
Helen reached up to rub her throbbing temples, hoping that another migraine wasn’t coming on. “Couldn’t we just say that I’ve been ruined? Devon would have to take my word for it.”
Mr. Winterborne shook his head before she had even finished the question. “I’ll need an earnest payment. That’s how a deal is bound in business.”
“This isn’t a business negotiation,” she protested.
He was adamant. “I want insurance in case you change your mind before the wedding.”
“I wouldn’t do that. Don’t you trust me?”
“Aye. But I’ll trust you more after we sleep together.”
The man was impossible. Helen floundered for another solution, some means of countering him, but she could sense him becoming more intractable with every passing second.
“This is about your pride,” she said indignantly. “You were hurt and angry because you thought I’d rejected you, and now you want to punish me even though it wasn’t my fault.”