Duke of Thorns by Sara Ramsey

Author:Sara Ramsey
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Sara Ramsey
Published: 2014-11-07T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

She never should have agreed to stay with him. She should have poured the tea and been done with it.

But Callie had never been good at shoulds — only wants. And she wanted to stay with him. She wanted to see what he could be like when he forgot his title, when he wasn’t surrounded by people toad-eating him, when he let himself laugh.

She shouldn’t have, though. Because it just made her want to see him more, when every rational thought said she should see him less. He wasn’t the husband she needed. No matter how humorous he could be in some moments, he was too autocratic to ever let her run her company herself.

Still, she was enough of a fool to want to hear his answers to her questions. So she drank far more whisky than she should have, took courage from it, and ignored how her courage turned to recklessness.

He had turned reckless as well. He tipped the last bit of whisky into his cup. “Why are you thinking of love?” he asked, setting his flask aside. “Do you no longer want a business arrangement?”

Either the whisky or the conversation suddenly made her tired. She tucked her legs up underneath her — not what a lady should do, but she needed to feel comfortable somewhere in this awful house. There wasn’t enough light left to read the nuances of his face, but she thought he tensed up, as though her casual pose somehow caused him pain.

“A business arrangement is what I should do,” she said.

“It’s the curse of our class,” he said. His voice was sympathetic — more sympathetic than she might have judged him capable of. “But I would rather take that curse than a different one. Love doesn’t pay the creditors.”

“Nor does it buy ships,” she agreed.

“Or whisky.”

Callie laughed. “We make quite the pair, don’t we?”

She had meant it in reference to their mercenary natures — they were sitting there talking about money like two misers in a counting house. But Thorington didn’t laugh. “If I could wish it different for you, Miss Briarley, I would.”

“I thought you told me to be careful of wishes.”

He fell silent. She tried to fill in what she couldn’t see in the low light, imagining he looked cool, concerned — more concerned about making sure she married his brother than anything else, she imagined. Thorington was difficult enough to get one’s bearings around without losing the visual clues.

“What would you wish for?” he asked.

“Peace between our nations, of course,” she said, somewhat flippantly.

He snorted. “You can be more selfish than that, my dear.”

There was something about the fading light that made her feel secure in his presence. He was the opposite of safe. But his voice didn’t sound dangerous. And he hadn’t made a single move to touch her.

Heaven help her, it wasn’t proper, but she wanted him to.

That reckless fuel was still in her veins, burning. She had a whole lifetime to do what she should. A whole lifetime to live by the cold rules of business rather than what her heart wanted.

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