The Wild Baron (Baron 1)

“Well, perhaps that is what a common rake would prefer,” he said, lifting her out of the hole she had dug so deep she would fall to China if she kept talking. “I am not common. I am at least three cuts above common. Thus, what I would prefer must be different. I want you. I want Marianne. I want Toby. However, I will be blunt with you. I do not want your cursed father.”

She persevered, he had to say that for her. She got the rope between her teeth and pulled and pulled. Her hands were kneading his shoulders now. It pleased him that she had no idea she was doing it. “You wouldn’t have looked at me for a second if it weren’t for this wretched situation. You wouldn’t have looked at me at all even if I’d paraded in front of you without my clothes on.”

His eyes nearly crossed, but he wasn’t a green boy. His father had always said that a man without control over his sexual urges wasn’t worth spit. “I wouldn’t count on that. Did I ever tell you I like your nose? Nice and thin and turned up just exactly right at the end.”

He kissed the tip of her nose. “I would have looked at you at least three times. If you were naked and parading in front of me, I would have thanked God for his beneficence and bounty and put a stop to your parading immediately. You are really quite beautiful, but not in the common way. Thus you deserve a man who is also not in the common way. Marry me, Susannah. I will teach you about enjoyment. Together we can learn about what’s important to us and what isn’t. We will take on life together, you and I. I won’t embarrass you in our lovemaking. I won’t humiliate you. I swear to you that at least half the groans between us will be yours.

“Let’s sweat together, Susannah.”

His damned voice was shaking her to the core. His words—no, surely he was smooth in his delivery, and his words sounded perfectly serious—but she’d already been taken in once, and not by a master, like the baron. She’d been taken in by a very young man. Taken in very easily. She’d been the greatest fool alive. Yes, it was madness to believe him. She couldn’t listen, couldn’t trust him. He still held her loosely, his hands splayed across her back.

Rohan was ready to throttle her for her damned tenacity as she said, aware that even to her own ears, she was floundering, “You must listen to me. You would come to detest me. I told you that I hated all those things men do to women. To me it is disgusting, repellent. It makes me ill just to think about it—having to take off your clothes not just in front of anybody, but in front of a man who has the legal right to do anything he pleases to you—it is horrid and I won’t do it again. There, I have told you the truth. I know sex is important to men—surely not as much as twice a day, at least to a reasonable man—but if that is so, then how long would it be before you went back to London to enjoy yourself with a woman who wanted to be with you in that way? For that many separate, er, occasions?”

She actually shuddered. The resulting difficulties of having a reputation as a womanizer had certainly come home to roost.

“I will make you a promise. A vow.”

He kissed her fleetingly on her mouth.

His lips were warm. She blinked and tried to pull away from him, but he didn’t let her go.

“What promise? What vow? I don’t like sweat. You can’t promise not to sweat on me.”

He laughed, he couldn’t help himself. “We’ll see about that. My vow is this: First you must marry me. If you decide you can’t bear me or my man’s body and my demands on you, if you don’t like our simply living together, then I will let you go. You will have the protection of my name and you will have ample funds for all your wants and needs for the rest of your life. Marianne will also have the protection of my name and her proper place in Society when the time comes. She will never want for anything. She will make a fine marriage. I will see to that. I will ensure that Toby has a proper education. He will go to Eton, then to Cambridge. Not to Oxford. I make you that promise, that vow.”

Goodness, he was offering her the world. Why? No, there was a huge problem here. “But you must have an heir.”

“Yes, it’s true that it would be nice to have a son to go with my daughter. Yes, Marianne will be my daughter. She will call me Papa. If, however—” he swallowed hard on this one “—you can’t bear me, then I wouldn’t ever get my heir. But again, our line wouldn’t die out, since I do have a younger brother, Tibolt. Upon my death, he would take the title.”

“That isn’t fair. I would be a wretched human being to consent to that, so I will not. Besides, what if I gave you an heir and then I wanted to leave? I wouldn’t be able to take my son with me.”

How the devil was she able to come up with so many arguments? The woman was a damned well that just didn’t run dry. And this argument took the prize. How confident was he? No, the better question was how could he even begin to doubt himself at this point? A man of his reputation had, perforce, the highest order of confidence.

“If you gave me an heir and then wanted to leave me, then you would keep our son until he went to school. However, I would always be

active in his life. Do you agree?”

“It is too cruel. No, I can’t agree. I am not a monster. No, forget that part of it.”

So she was doing herself in with all her own arguments. This would have been fascinating to behold if he hadn’t had such a deep stake in the outcome. But she was bringing him the outcome herself. He drew in closer for the kill. “Then what do you suggest? No, we’re talking marriage only here. Nothing else. Forget leaving me and running off with Marianne and Toby. That won’t happen. I won’t let it. Forget leaving me with my heir.”

She chewed her bottom lip over that. He had her, he knew it, but still, he hated the questions, the doubts, in her eyes. Finally, she said exactly what he’d expected her to, “You’re saying, basically, that I have no choice at all in this?”

“Yes, that’s about it.”

“Then there is no reason for me to be reasonable, is there? I will agree to your promise. What length of time?”

“Fifty years.”

She grabbed him about his throat and squeezed. She tried to shake him. “You make light of everything. You don’t take anything I say seriously.” She looked into his eyes. They were beautiful eyes, green as the thick grass at the edge of the Mountvale gardens.

But what were eyes in the master scheme of things? “You won’t even recognize that my reasons for not marrying you are quite valid?”

“They’re not. Can you think of a valid reason?”

She dropped her hands to his shoulders. She stared at his cravat. It looked soft, yet perfect, just like he was, only he was a womanizer. Oh, dear. She swallowed. “At least I thought I loved George.”

He felt an intense bolt of rage, but it was gone quickly enough, for George was gone, and life had shifted, dishing out new possibilities. Nothing was the same, thank God. He struck the pose of the reasonable male, which he knew he was. “Susannah, I know you don’t love me, yet. You’ve known me for a week. I don’t love you either. How could either of us have garnered deep emotions for each other within a week?”