She lifted her hands, palms facing out for his view. Healed cuts and calluses showed on her fingertips. Persuasive evidence, Ash had to admit. Yet he remained unconvinced.
“Well, you can’t have been born to poverty. You’re far too self-possessed, and you appear to have all your teeth. I suppose you were orphaned at a tender age, in some particularly gruesome way.”
“No, Your Grace.”
“Are you being blackmailed?”
“No.” She drew out the word.
“Supporting a passel of abandoned children, whilst being blackmailed?”
“No.”
He snapped his fingers. “I have it. Your father is a scapegrace. In debtor’s prison. Or spending the rent money on gin and whores.”
“My father is a vicar. In Hertfordshire.”
Ash frowned. That was nonsensical. Vicars were gentlemen. “How does a gentleman’s daughter find herself working her fingers to nubs as a seamstress?”
At last, he saw a flash of uncertainty in her demeanor. She touched the spot behind her earlobe. “Sometimes life takes an unexpected turn.”
“Now that is a grave understatement.”
Fortune was a heartless witch in perpetual anticipation of her monthly courses. And didn’t Ash know it.
He swiveled in his chair and reached for a lockbox behind the desk.
“I am sorry.” Her voice softened. “The broken engagement must have been a blow. Miss Worthing seemed a lovely young woman.”
He counted money into his hand. “If you spent any time with her, you know that isn’t the case.”
“Perhaps it’s for the best that you didn’t marry her, then.”
“Yes, it was excellent foresight that I destroyed my face before the wedding. What bad luck it would have been if I’d waited until afterward.”
“Destroyed? If Your Grace will forgive me saying it, it can’t be that bad.”
He snapped the lockbox closed. “Annabelle Worthing was desperate to marry a man with a title and a fortune. I am a duke and ungodly wealthy. She still left me. It’s that bad.”
He stood and turned his ruined side to her, offering her a full, unobstructed view. His desk was in the most shadowy corner of the room—and purposely so. The room’s heavy velvet drapes kept out much of the sunlight. But scars as dramatic as the ones he wore? Nothing but complete darkness could obscure them. What bits of flesh had escaped the flames had only been ravaged further—first, by the surgeon’s knife and then, for hellish weeks afterward, by fever and suppuration. From his temple to his hip, the right side of his body was a raging battle of cicatrices and powder burns.
Miss Gladstone went quiet. To her credit, she didn’t swoon or vomit or run screaming from the room—a pleasant change from his usual reception.
“How did it happen?” she asked.
“War. Next question.”
After a moment, she said quietly, “May I have my money, please?”
He extended a hand, offering her the money.
She reached for it.
He closed his hand around the coins. “Once you give me the gown.”
“What?”
“If I pay you for your work, it’s only fair that I get the gown.”
“For what purpose?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t decided. I could donate it to a home for pensioned opera dancers. Sink it to the bottom of the Thames for the eels to enjoy. Hang it over the front door to ward off evil spirits. There are so many choices.”
“I . . . Your Grace, I can have it delivered tomorrow. But I must have the money today.”
He tsked. “That would be a loan, Miss Gladstone. I’m not in the money-lending business.”
“You want the gown now?”
“Only if you want the money now.”
Her dark eyes fixed on him, accusing him of sheer villainy.
He shrugged. Guilty as charged.
This was the peculiar hell of being disfigured by sheer chance on the battlefield. There was no one to blame, no revenge to be taken. Only a lingering bitterness that tempted him to lash out at anything near. Oh, he wasn’t violent—not unless someone really, truly deserved it. With most, he merely took perverse pleasure in being a pain in the arse.
If he was going to look like a monster, he might as well enjoy the role.
Unfortunately, this seamstress refused to play the trembling mouse. Nothing he said rattled her in the least, and if she hadn’t fled in terror yet, she likely never would.
Good for her.
He prepared to hand over the money, bidding her—and that gown—a grateful adieu.
Before he could do so, she exhaled decisively. “Fine.”
Her hands went to the side of the gown. She began to release a row of hooks hidden in the bodice seam. One by one by one. As the bodice went slack, her squeezed breasts relaxed to their natural fullness. The sleeve fell off her shoulder, revealing the tissue-thin fabric of her shift.
A wisp of dark hair tumbled free, kissing her collarbone.
Jesu Maria.
“Stop.”
She froze and looked up. “Stop?”
He cursed silently. Don’t ask me twice. “Stop.”
Ash could scarcely believe he’d managed the decency to say it once. He’d been on the verge of a private show for the price of two pounds, three. Significantly higher than the going rate, but a bargain when the girl was this pretty.
Not to mention, she was a vicar’s daughter. He’d always dreamed of debauching a vicar’s daughter. Really, what man hadn’t? However, he was not quite so diabolical as to accomplish it through extortion.
A thought occurred to him. Maybe—just maybe—he could still manage that fantasy, through different, somewhat less fiendish, means. He regarded Emma Gladstone from a fresh angle, thinking of that list of requirements in his interrupted letter.
She was young and healthy. She was educated. She came from gentry, and she was willing to disrobe in front of him.
Most importantly, she was desperate.
She’d do.
In fact, she’d do very well indeed.
“Here is your choice, Miss Gladstone. I can pay you the two pounds, three shillings.”
He placed the stack of coins on the desk. She stared at them hungrily.
“Or,” he said, “I can make you a duchess.”
Chapter Two
A duchess?
Well. Emma was grateful for one thing. At least now she had an excuse to stare at him.
Ever since the duke had revealed the extent of his scars, she’d been trying not to stare at him. Then she’d started worrying that it would be even more rude to avoid looking at him. As a result, her gaze had been volleying from his face, to the carpet, to the coins on the desk. It was all a bit dizzying.
Now she had an unassailable excuse to openly gawk.
The contrast was extreme. The injured side of his face drew her attention first, of course. Its appearance was tortured and angry, with webs of scar tissue twisting past his ear and above his natural hairline. What was more cruel—his scarred flesh stood in unavoidable contrast with his untouched profile. There, he was handsome in the brash, uncompromising way of gentlemen who believed themselves invincible.
Emma didn’t find his appearance frightful, though she could not deny it was startling. No, she decided, “startling” wasn’t the right word.
Striking.
He was striking.
As though a bolt of lightning had split through his body, dividing him in two, and the energy still crackled around him. Emma sensed it from across the room. Gooseflesh rippled up her arms.
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace. I must have misheard.”
“I said I will make you a duchess.”
“Surely . . . surely you don’t mean through marriage.”
“No, I intend to use my vast influence in the House of Lords to overturn the laws of primogeniture, then persuade the Prince Regent to create a new title and duchy. That accomplished, I will convince him to name a vicar’s daughter from Hertfordshire a duchess in her own right. Of course I mean through marriage, Miss Gladstone.”
She gave a strained laugh. Laughter seemed the only possible response. He had to be joking. “You can’t be asking me to marry you.”
He sighed with annoyance. “I am a duke. I’m not asking you to marry me. I am offering to marry you. It’s a different thing entirely.”