What the Duke Desires by Jeffries Sabrina

Author:Jeffries, Sabrina [Jeffries, Sabrina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9781451693515
Publisher: Pocket
Published: 2013-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

12

MAXIMILIAN SAT THERE numb, long after Lisette had fallen into a fitful sleep. He’d handled the whole thing badly. First he’d accused her of all manner of perfidy and behaved like a jealous, besotted fool, then he’d nearly taken her innocence, and finally he’d made that idiotic speech about not being able to marry her.

No wonder she’d withdrawn from him to cloak herself in her pride.

If that was what she’d been doing. Perhaps she’d really meant it when she said she had no desire to marry him. Given what she’d endured watching her father muck up her mother’s life, it would be understandable.

But he’d gone to the retiring room to fetch her, and heard her crying through the door. The sound of those tears still echoed in his brain. No, she hadn’t meant it.

It was one more measure of how different she was from other women. Any other woman would have pressed her advantage, tried to extract some promise of a future from him after he’d put his hands all over her so insolently.

Not his Lisette. She was too proud for that. Instead she went off and cried her heart out alone. And even knowing that, he had still hurt her.

He was an insensitive, arrogant arse.

At the very least, he should have revealed why he couldn’t marry her. He should have told her that both his great-uncle and his father had died raving mad, that odds were good he would as well, and that she would not enjoy watching it.

But after hour upon hour of having the woman treat him like a regular person, he hadn’t wanted to give that up. Because if she knew the truth, she would look at him the same way every other woman did—as the duke who was sure to degenerate into madness any moment.

At least other women weighed the advantages of being married to a rich duke against the possibility of madness and sometimes chose to ignore the latter. But she didn’t care about the former, so she would only see the latter. That would kill him. Better to have her think him an arse.

Not only an arse but a heartless rogue.

What had she said? I refuse to engage in an affair, and you have no interest in anything else.

Little did she know. The idea of marrying Lisette had begun to have an intoxicating appeal. He knew it would only end in tragedy, yet he couldn’t stop imagining what it would be like.

She would turn the ton on its ear. Ladies would gossip endlessly about her, and when they realized she didn’t care a whit, they would lionize her. Because the ton always worshipped whoever had no use for them, especially when that person was the wife of a wealthy duke.

In those long, lonely nights at Marsbury House, he would have her to hold, her to joke with, her to tease. He would no longer have to lie in his bed waiting for the madness to start. She would distract him from it.

But only until the day when his mind started to go.

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