His left little finger twitched. ‘Her family’s estate is not far from here. We, err…crossed paths occasionally.’
‘Crossed paths?’ That sounded suspicious.
His little finger twitched again. ‘If you must know, Mr Linton, I used to throw things at her. Snowballs in the winter, mud balls in the summer.’
Well, well…that was a nice surprise. Much better than the kind of interactions I had been imagining. For a moment, I indulged myself gazing at the mental image of Lady Caroline Sambridge covered in slush - but then I shook myself. I refused to let myself be side-tracked! There was too much at stake.
‘You didn’t throw mud at her today!’
‘How observant of you, Mr Linton.’
‘You…’ I had to swallow before being able to get out the words. ‘You kissed her hand!’
‘Yes. And?’
‘And?’ I gaped at him. He sounded perfectly casual. ‘You didn’t do that with any of the others!’
‘Quite true.’
‘You never even kissed my hand!’
‘Of course not.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because,’ he told me in a tone of someone explaining the elementary mathematics of one plus one equals two to a very slow pupil. ‘Unlike you or any of the other ladies, Mr Linton, she is immensely rich.’
My mouth dropped open. I had suspected that he wanted her for her money - I really had. But I also had never expected him to just admit it to my face.
‘You…you…’
‘You seem to have some speech problems, Mr Linton. Is something the matter?’
‘You…I hate you!’
‘Indeed?’
‘I’m going to kill you!’
‘Is that so?’ He cocked his head, regarding me for a moment. His eyes narrowed, infinitesimally. ‘Mr Linton…you aren’t labouring under the delusion that simply because she is one of the wealthiest heiresses in the north, I intend to marry this girl, are you?’
I opened my mouth to scream some quite inventive obscenities at him - and then my brain registered what he had said.
‘Wait…you aren’t?’
‘Of course not.’ Cool eyes bored into mine, driving their way into my very soul. ‘I have varied methods for enlarging my fortune - but marrying is not among them. I do not relish the thought of a business model that, barring murder, can only be implemented once. Besides…’ His eyes took on a whole other kind of intensity. ‘…if I ever planned to claim a woman as my own, I would not waste my time with kissing her hand. I would pursue a very different strategy.’
‘Such as?’
I had just time to utter the last syllable of that sentence before strong hands closed around my wrists and I was shoved against the wall, trapped between hard wood and even harder Ambrose. The breath was knocked out of me, and I stared up at the most powerful man in the British Empire, utterly lost to the mesmerising power of his eyes.
‘Well, to begin with,’ he growled against my ear, ‘I would lure her into my room under some pretence, like, for instance…a business discussion.’
‘W-would you?’
His lips graced my earlobe, sending a firework through my flaming body. ‘Oh yes.’
I managed a weak smile. ‘What woman would be stupid enough to fall for that?’