A Most Unconventional Courtship

‘Yes, you are,’ Chance said. ‘Completely.’

‘I am a virgin,’ Alessa protested indignantly.

‘So I should hope!’ Lady Blackstone plied her fan energetically. ‘What has that got to do with anything, pray?’

‘I don’t have to do anything, because I am not compromised.’ That can’t be it, can it? Chance isn’t standing there looking like a thundercloud because he thinks he has to marry me?

‘You were alone with the Count of Kurateni. You were alone with me. You were seen on deck in male attire by a post captain of the British navy,’ Chance said, sounding every bit as censorious as her aunt.

‘Then if anyone compromised me, it was the Count. He tied me to his bed—’ Lady Blackstone moaned audibly ‘—he can marry me. He wants to, after all.’ Which is more than you obviously do.

‘You are not marrying Zagrede,’ Chance glared at her. ‘You are marrying me.’

It was so far from the tender declaration she had been dreaming about that Alessa’s jaw dropped. ‘No, I am not!’ she snapped when she recovered herself.

‘You will get married quietly here, as soon as possible,’ her aunt stated.

‘We most certainly will not,’ Chance riposted.

‘What?’ Both women stared at him.

‘Why not, may I ask?’ Lady Blackstone demanded.

‘Yes, why not?’ Alessa echoed. Not that she wanted to marry the wretched man who had only proposed because he had compromised her.

‘We will appear to meet in England once Alessa’s status has been established and there is no hint of scandal about her. A hugger-mugger marriage out here would give rise to talk.’

‘That is all you care about, isn’t it? Propriety, convention, what people will think.’ Alessa sprang to her feet and confronted them both. ‘I thought you cared about me, my lord. I thought that under that conventional, aristocratic, superior skin there was a romantic heart. Well, I was wrong, and I wouldn’t marry you if you begged me and I don’t care if you feel your precious honour has been compromised by not marrying me.

‘I am sorry, Aunt Honoria. I will come back with you and do my best to behave as you would wish until I can establish myself independently. But marry that man I will not!’

Chapter Twenty-Three

‘Hell and damnation.’ Chance swore without apology. ‘Excuse me, ma’am.’He threw the door open in time to see the skirts of Alessa’s gown flipping round the corner and gave chase.

He caught her on the terrace, which was mercifully deserted. ‘Alessa!’

‘Go away.’

‘Alessa, I want to marry you.’

‘Of course you do,’ she said cordially. ‘Not to do so would be such bad form, would it not? Whatever would people say?’

‘They would say what a lucky escape from such a sharp-tongued termagant,’ Chance retorted. ‘What do you mean, I don’t have a romantic heart? Let me tell you what I did about Harrison and Maria—’

‘Oh, I know about that. Well done, I am sure they will be very happy. But that was all right, was it not? He is just a secretary, he isn’t a stuffed shirt of an Earl.’

‘Alessa, I have every intention of marrying you when we get back to England.’

‘Oh, have you? I suppose you think so now, but what if there is a scandal after all? They’ll say I’m just a Greek girl that you had a fling with over here. Englishmen on the Grand Tour are notorious for it. They won’t like you bringing your mistress home, and then deciding to marry her.’

It was so close to his own anxieties about marrying her on the island that Chance felt himself flushing. She pounced on it as a sign of guilt.

‘Some emotion at last! I walked into the room and you pokered up like a clergyman confronted with a loose woman. I realise that you don’t want to marry me, but you might at least have tried to look enthusiastic.’

‘I was deeply resentful of being summoned by your aunt and being dragooned into making a proposal not of my own choosing,’ he fired back before he realised just how damningly that could be interpreted.

‘Honesty, finally,’ she observed. They stood looking at each other. Chance felt as though he was seeing her for the first time. A tall woman, golden skinned, imperious, her head flung back, weighted by the mass of black hair at her nape. She stared at him out of hostile green eyes, those winged black brows giving her an expression that was almost fierce. She was strong, and independent and unshakeable and he was not going to break her will.