“Sit with me.”
She assumed he meant on the arm of the chair, but when she realized he meant on his lap, she pulled back.
He sighed. “Mignonne, do not be missish. I wish to speak with you, yet if I stand close, I cannot always see your face. Likewise if you sit beside me. If you sit on my lap, it will be easier.”
There was sufficient irritation in his voice to dispel the idea that he was intent on ravishment—at least, not yet. Helena allowed herself a small “humph!” then, suppressing all reaction to the skittering thrill that raced up her spine, she smoothed her skirts and sat.
Beneath the folds of his toga, under the satin breeches he wore beneath it, his thighs were rock hard, but warm.
He closed his hands about her waist and lifted her, resettled her so they were indeed essentially face to face. Then he raised his hands and tugged on the ribbons that secured her mask; the two small bows unraveled. He drew the mask free, then set it on the floor beside the chair.
“Bon.”
Sebastian heard the reined temper in his tone and knew she heard it, too. He hoped it made her wary.
Step by step. That seemed the only way to accomplish the task with her. Every inch had been a battle thus far.
He looked into her peridot eyes.
She stared haughtily back.
I intend to offer for your hand would have done the job with most women, but with her, instinct prodded him to be rather more definite.
I’m going to make you my duchess had a more forceful ring to it—left less leeway for her to cavil.
Unfortunately, given her prejudice against powerful men, neither approach was likely to lead to quick success. She’d immediately dig in her heels, and he’d be reduced to pleading his case from a very weak position.
Mining her walls—undercutting her arguments before she had a chance to make them—was undoubtedly the road to victory. Once he’d weakened her defenses, then he could speak of marriage.
“You’ve told me you don’t like being the pawn of a powerful man. All you’ve said has led me to believe that your guardian is such a man—am I right?”
“Indeed. I know of what I speak.”
“And am I also correct in stating that your reason for seeking a meek and mild-mannered husband was that such a man could never rule you?”
She narrowed her eyes. “So that he would never manipulate me, use me as a pawn.”
He inclined his head. “Has it not yet occurred to you, mignonne, that marrying a man who knows little of, as you have put it before, ‘the games men such as I play,’ will leave you still in the power of the very man you seek to escape?”
She frowned. “Once I am married . . .”
When she didn’t continue, he hesitated, then quietly said, “My sister is married. Yet if I decide, for her own good, that she should return to the country . . . she returns to the country.”
She searched his eyes. “Her husband . . . ?”
“Huntly is a good-natured man who never pretended to be able to manage Augusta. He does, however, have extremely good sense and so knows when she needs to be managed. He then summons me.”
“My husband—the one I choose—will not summon my guardian.”
“But if your guardian doesn’t wait to be summoned . . . what then?”
He gave her time to think, to venture on her own down the lane of thought he’d pointed out. To see the possibilities, to come of her own volition to the realization he desired.
Even now he was too much the consummate manipulator to speak too soon, to push too hard.
Especially not with her.
Helena frowned—at him, at his hard face, the pale, auste