Montgomery leaned back against the door and surveyed her with hooded eyes. “What is he to you?”
Confusion creased her brow. “Who?”
“Your companion. The professor.”
She gasped. “I don’t believe I owe you an explanation.”
“He touched you,” he said, and he reached for her to idly brush two gloved fingers over her elbow.
The contact rushed over her skin like wildfire, hot and uncontrolled.
She all but jumped back. “You have no claim on me, Your Grace.”
Something savage flickered in his eyes, as if he were of a mind to lay his claim on her right there and then. “But he does?” he demanded instead.
Unbelievable! And then she nearly choked on her tart reply when she deciphered the dark expression on his face.
“My goodness,” she breathed. “You are jealous.”
Montgomery blinked. “It appears that I am, yes,” he said. His mouth twisted with slight disgust.
“But that’s absurd,” she said. “You are here with Lady Lingham.”
His brows lowered. “And that is relevant how?”
“I know you are—I know that she’s your . . . arrangement.”
He pounced, and his hands clamped around her shoulders.
“She’s not my anything,” he snarled, “not since I met you. And you seem to think that this is going according to some plan—it isn’t, none of this.”
He spun her round and she was pinned flush against the door, trapped between oak wood and one incensed aristocrat. Out of the two, the oak would yield more easily.
“Your Grace—”
He thrust his face so close, their noses were an inch from touching. Fire and ice warred in the depths of his eyes.
“Do you think I planned it?” he said through his teeth. “Do you think I planned being mastered by my feelings?”
“I—”
His fingers closed around her nape and his lips slammed down on hers.
The kiss was rough, but it was frustration, not aggression she sensed in his hands, in the silky push of his tongue, the angry heat of his mouth, and in seconds, she was furious and desperate. Her hands pushed at his chest, futilely, because he was unyielding like a wall and her mouth was hungrily returning his kisses, matching every pull and slide and nip of his lips until a dull ache stirred between her thighs.
She jerked her head back and glared at him. “Am I in danger of being ravished against a door again, Your Grace?”
The primitive emotion burning in his gaze said it was an imminent possibility.
He dragged his thumb over her damp bottom lip. “Do you let him kiss you?”
She pushed his hand away. “Please don’t. Jenkins is an honorable man. He appreciates me for my mind.”
He gave an aggravating laugh. “If you think so. But know that I appreciate you for a lot more than that.”
“Truly?” she snapped. “I didn’t think you appreciated me much at all, given that you thought I’d gladly agree to be your whore.”
He reared back as if she had slapped him. “I did no such thing.”
His eyes had the bewildered look of a man genuinely affronted.
She threw up her hands. “Well, where I come from, that’s what they call a woman who makes free with her body for coin.”
“That is not how it is between us.”
“And pray, what exactly is the difference?”
His face had gone stark white. “You would be with me for me,” he said hoarsely, “not for my money.”
The hint of a plea beneath his imperious voice knocked the belligerence right out of her. For a long moment, they stared at each other, taking stock of the wounds inflicted.
They both had drawn blood.
She slumped back against the door.
“Even if I had no care for my own reputation,” she said, “in the arrangement you propose, any child we had would be a bastard.”
The mention of children seemed to take him by surprise. Of course. They never thought of that as a consequence of their pleasure.
“A ducal bastard leads a better life than the vast majority of the British population,” he said.
“In terms of worldly goods, yes. But one day, they would understand my role. And that they’d always come second to your other children.”
He gritted his teeth. “What do you expect from me, Annabelle? A bloody proposal?”
A proposal.
Marriage. To Sebastian.
The words reverberated through her very essence, raised a chorus of hungry whispers. She silenced them with a tiny shake of her head.
“I’m not expecting anything.”
He began to pace. “I can give you everything, everything except that, and you know it. My name has survived one scandal; it will hardly survive another. It would ruin my brother. It would taint my children. I would lose my allies. My standing, the Montgomery name—what sort of man would I be? I’d be no better than my father, at the mercy of his passions and whims.” He rounded on her, his body vibrating with tension. “Is that what you want? Would you have me change my place in history to prove how much I want you?”
The room seemed to close in on her: walls, ceiling, the floor, contorting.
She closed her eyes, trying to slow the flurry of words in her head. “This madness between us, it must stop,” she managed.
Silence.
“It’s not madness,” he ground out, “it’s . . .”
His face was grim. She watched him struggle, grasping for the right words. Naming it would make no difference. His name would always be more important to him.
“Whatever it is,” she said, “it will pass, if only you leave me alone.”
Chapter 22
The morning of the march on Parliament, Lucie gathered the suffragists at Oxford Station. A cold breeze swept over the platform and shrouded them in the suffocating plumes of black smoke that rose from the waiting train.
“Now, I cannot repeat this often enough,” Lucie said. “Much as it pains me, this must be an utterly peaceful demonstration, so no chanting, no accidental or purposeful obstruction of the entries to Parliament. No petitioning of passersby.”
Annabelle had informed Lucie that Montgomery was aware of their plans. Of course, Lucie had decided to go ahead. She seemed in an excellent mood this morning; the gleam in her gray eyes was positively rapacious. Ideological intoxication. Annabelle gave herself a mental shake. The sooner she stopped seeing and hearing Montgomery everywhere, the better.