Chapter 9

She ended the meeting engaged to the Earl.

Miss Rutley, Benedict noted, looked positively mutinous as she signed the contract he had negotiated with her father—though negotiated was perhaps a strong word. Her father had seemed almost desperate to be rid of her in a way that Benedict had found somewhat excessive.

Certainly, Miss Rutley had seemed destined for spinsterhood, even though Benedict wasn't entirely sure why, given her admission that she'd spent several Seasons actively pursuing a match. Presumably she was more polite to the men she saw as potential husbands, and it wasn't as though she was unattractive.

He stopped this train of thought before he could dwell overmuch on how not unattractive he'd found her when she was in his arms the night before. She hadn't been unattractive at all. She'd been soft and lush and pleasantly tall; he hadn't had to bend at the waist to reach that pouty mouth; she had opened so eagerly to him?—

This was very much not the time to be having those thoughts.

"Thank you very much, My Lord," Benedict said, laying down the pen with a decisive click. He waited for the ink to dry before taking his copy of the marriage contract, folding it, and putting it into his pocket. It was, he felt, an eminently fair contract. The bulk of Miss Rutley's dowry would be kept for her use, she'd be provided with a more than adequate allowance, and he would manage to avoid any further scandal.

"And you," the Viscount said with a satisfied nod. "I assume, given the…nature of the thing, you shall be seeking a special license?"

"I shall," he agreed as Miss Rutley gasped, "Wait, what?"

"Don't be na?ve, Emily," her father snapped and despite his own personal quibbles with Miss Rutley and her persnickety ways, Benedict found this to be a step too far. She was, after all, going to be his wife—and soon.

"I understand things are all moving rather quickly," he said to Miss Rutley in as calm a voice as he could manage. "But I wish to quell the talk. A speedy marriage is the most expedient way to do that."

She slumped in her chair, nodding.

He found, oddly, that he didn't like that.

Not that it seemed to bother her father.

"Excellent," he said, rapping his knuckles against his desk in an unequivocal dismissal. "I'm sure the two of you would like to discuss things. Emily, show the Earl to the front parlor, would you?"

And just like that, the Viscount had washed his hands of the whole affair.

Miss Rutley did, as instructed, lead Benedict to the front parlor though they'd scarcely made it two steps inside the room before she whirled on him.

"Why did you do that?" she asked, a plaintive note lurking beneath her exasperation.

He gave her a sardonic look. He'd used up all his patience for this morning.

"You know why," he said.

She threw up her hands and started pacing furiously. Her tall figure, he couldn't help but notice, was shown to particularly good effect while she was walking in the light fabric of her morning dress.

"This is ridiculous!" she exclaimed. "I am not some—some horse at a posting in that you can trade in when the one you had no longer serves. You wanted Amanda, not me!"

Benedict blinked. Curiously enough, he had not thought about Miss Amanda Rutley once, not this whole morning. Not the evening prior either, come to think of it, not since the moment his lips had touched those of this Miss Rutley.

Still, that was no longer important, and he told her so.

"Immaterial," he said shortly. "It was you there with me in that corner, and that means it is your name that is inextricably linked with mine in the annals of gossip."

"So we are meant to link them in the eyes of God as well?"

She asked the question like it was ridiculous, but he chose to answer it at face value.

"Yes," he said, aiming for gentleness but probably missing the mark. "It's the only way to preserve your reputation."

"Oh, who cares about my dratted reputation?" she exclaimed. "I was going to be a spinster anyway! I was fine with being a spinster!"

Benedict found, to his surprise, that he cared about her reputation, but he felt more compelled to address her last comment than to answer her question.

"Why?" he asked curiously. Most young women—not that he knew any of them on a particularly close basis—dreaded the specter of spinsterhood and treated it as a form of social death from which one could never recover.

There were exceptions, of course. There were bluestockings and those who agitated for women's rights, who protested marriage on principle. There were women who preferred the company of other women. There were wealthy heiresses with unentailed estates headed their way who merely had to wait out their fathers to achieve the kind of freedom that most women could only imagine—and many of these, he allowed, still married anyway.

Even so, Miss Rutley fit none of these categories. She wasn't overly rich though not destitute either. She wasn't a bluestocking.

And she had enjoyed his company, at the very least, if the needy moans that had come from her were any indication.

But, again, he put those thoughts aside. His trousers were far too tight for such recollections, and besides, it would not do to become, ah, intrigued by Miss Rutley's person in her father's house.

She stopped walking suddenly, her skirts pressing momentarily against the shape of her legs which did nothing to help Benedict's intrigue.

"Why what?" she demanded.

"Why were you so happy to become a spinster?" he pressed.

She waved a hand like this question was the height of foolishness and returned to her pacing. Benedict knew, though, that the dismissal of a question rarely indicated it was irrelevant—rather the opposite.

He grasped her by the wrist, pulling her to a halt. She looked at him with wide, wide eyes.

"Why were you content to become a spinster?" he asked again, voice quieter, more probing.

For a moment, he thought he had her then her eyes flashed.

"Because nobody had asked me to marry him, My Lord," she said with the patient tones of someone explaining something very simple to a very small child.

Benedict tightened his grip on her wrist, not enough to cause any discomfort but enough that she couldn't fail to notice. He had a suspicion that his little bride was used to managing everyone around her. Well, now was as good a time as any for her to discover that she wouldn't be managing him.

"That's not what I asked," he said quietly, his eyes fixed on hers. Her lovely hazel eyes, he couldn't help but notice, faded seamlessly from brown to gold with the barest hints of green towards their centers. "I asked why you were content with this."

She sighed, and he felt the surrender in that sigh, felt it reverberate through his touch on her wrist and settle, curled up with contentment, somewhere inside him.

"I sought a husband so that I could serve as chaperone to my sisters," she said. This was nothing he hadn't already gathered, yet it still felt like a confession. "I did not succeed. Yet, when my sisters debuted, only the sternest sticklers sniffed at my chaperoning them. So, it turns out that I did succeed after all." She shrugged but only with the arm not held in his grasp. "Why should I be sorry about that?"

His thumb moved over her inner wrist, across the soft skin and thrumming pulse there. She remained still, but he saw her reaction in the widening of her pupils.

"Well, perhaps," he said, his voice dropping low, "you did not only want things for your sisters." His thumb stroked again. "Perhaps you wanted something for yourself; perhaps you still do. After all, Miss Rutley, could you really be content with spinsterhood after you melted so beautifully in my arms?"

He hadn't consciously been aiming to seduce his little bride here in her front parlor—and good bloody thing, too, because she did not melt into him again when he referenced their kiss. Instead, she gasped in affront and yanked her wrist out of his grasp.

He told himself he was not disappointed.

"I—" she said, looking at him reproachfully. "You—" She huffed out an irritated breath. "You should not mention such things," she said imperiously.

It was a sickness, really, the perverse entertainment he got from needling her.

"Why not?" He took a step toward her. She took a step back in turn, but a settee got in her way. "You cannot tell me you didn't like it."

"That," she said archly, her prim tone somewhat undercut by the way she was pressing herself against the back of a piece of silk-covered furniture, "is entirely beside the point."

He pretended to think about this.

"I really don't think it is," he concluded.

Her ire was raised now, her cheeks pink with it.

"It is," she insisted. "You wanted a convenient wife. You wanted one without scandal, too, it's true, and you haven't gotten that. But convenience? Well, I'm neatly on the hook, am I not? You've gotten what you wanted, and you were very clear about what you did not want. You are not looking for love nor affection. So why should it matter to you what I did or did not like?"

Benedict had a great number of answers to these questions—too many as it happened as they all swirled around in his head which he found to be once again oddly muddled by Miss Rutley's proximity. He could point out that love, affection, and desire were all different things. He could argue that he might seek a marriage of convenience, but that he was not a monster, and he would not take an unwilling woman to his bed. He could retort that nothing about this entire situation could be labelled as convenient, and he resented the implication that he'd somehow planned the entire mess. Not only was he not some sort of rakish seducer of innocents, but if he had come up with an actual plan, he would have done a far cry better than this.

That was far too many thoughts, far too many words, to organize. So, instead, he took the expedient route.

He kissed her.

And hell, Benedict didn't know if he was cursed or blessed because Miss Emily Rutley, with her argumentative tongue and her willful ways, collapsed into him like she'd been starving for it.

He could not deny her, not then.

She was a fast learner, apparently, and this too was either marvelous or terrible because she opened her mouth to him immediately this time, letting the kiss turn heated in an instant. He pressed, and she folded, welcomed him, and God, how could she be so difficult and yet so good?

They should not be doing this he thought, even as he canted his hips to press more firmly against hers. With the settee behind her, she had no room for retreat, not that she seemed to want one.

"Emily," he murmured against her mouth, her given name tasting good on his lips. "We?—"

Shouldn't. He'd meant to say shouldn't. But before he could get the word out, she made another of those little sounds, the kind that would no doubt haunt him for the rest of his days, an eager, needy little noise.

His mind blanked of everything except fulfilling that need. He kissed her harder, putting one hand behind her head to pull her in towards the press of his mouth. He was too tall for most women, but Miss Rutley was not most women, and when he pressed against her, they nearly matched, hips to hips, chest to chest, mouth to mouth.

He was consumed. He was not himself, or perhaps he was his truest self. He didn't care. It didn't matter. Kissing her, getting more of her—that mattered.

She evidently felt the same because one of her hands came up to grasp at his hair. That, decided the possessive, animalistic part of Benedict that had taken control, would not do at all. He removed his hands from her to grasp her wrists—she whimpered again—and pressed them firmly against the back of the settee.

"Leave them there," he whispered into the soft skin of her throat.

She nodded, the gesture not nearly as obvious an acquiescence as the way she arched up into him, pressing closer even as she obeyed, her back bending her into a beautiful, glorious portrait of submission.

It sent Benedict's mind wild with ideas, of Emily, laid out before him, willing, eager, ready and bound?—

He thrust himself away from her with a gasp like he'd been drowning.

She blinked, confused, before she processed this swift change in their positions. Her cheeks had been flushed with pleasure, but now, they heated further, obviously with embarrassment. She lifted one of her hands—and despite everything, he wished to lunge at her and put that hand back where he'd left it—to press against her flaming cheeks.

He did not wish to embarrass her. Despite the animosity between them, she was to be his wife which meant that she was his to protect—which included, whenever possible, her feelings. But he could not make an apology, not when the most urgent thing from which she needed protection, in this moment, was his appetite.

Good Lord, but he wanted her. Enough that he'd practically debauched her in a parlor.

He was a disgrace.

He was a disgrace whose body had not, unfortunately, caught up with his mind. His blood thrummed, his heart raced, and his trousers?—

Well, he was not fit for polite company.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Rutley," he said stiffly. "I should not have behaved in so ungentlemanly a manner."

Her flush deepened, and he knew she was taking his comment as a slight against herself. He should clarify, he should, but he was helpless to do anything but take his leave before his senses decided to take their leave.

Again.

"Of course," she said faintly, hand still pressed to her cheek.

"I shall call upon you once the special license is sorted," he said brusquely, already half turned towards the door. The sooner her flush and the heaving of her delectable bosom were out of his sight, the better. "Good day, Miss Rutley."

And then the esteemed Earl of Moore turned and fled.