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“I will get a book and leave you to…” Victoria vaguely gestured in his direction. “Whatever this is.”

And then she turned to her favorite section of the library, filled with scientific books. Not so much on her beloved mathematics, but she had decided to study the few there again and again.

While she looked for the book, she realized there was something very wrong—the Duke hadn’t uttered a single word to her.

Could he be plotting to kill her too?

Victoria frowned. A prickling awareness spread across her skin, like a touch she had not felt but somehow knew was there. Slowly, she looked over her shoulder at the man filling the room with his presence to the point that she felt suffocated.

Stephen was watching her. No, that was not exactly accurate. He was observing her. No. Not that either. He wasdrinkingher in, his eyes roaming over her body in a slow, deliberate way that made something inside her coil.

It was then that realization dawned on her.

Oh, good Lord.

She was in her nightgown. Not an indecent one, certainly not sheer or scandalous, but thin enough, soft enough, to remind her precisely how little separated her skin from the cool night air.

The mathematical parameters to their proximity after the sun had set seemed to include meeting while one or either was indecorously dressed—if at all. The odds of that happening two nights in a row were astronomical.

Heat rose to her cheeks, and she straightened her spine, willing herself not to fidget under his scrutiny.

“What are you doing here?” His voice was low, rough, and hard.

“I am getting a book,” Victoria spoke slowly, mirroring the condescending way he had talked to her the night before. “I didn’t realize I needed to repeat myself.”

He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. His eyes locked onto hers, something unreadable flickering in their depths.

“I meant, what are you doing here?” His voice was intense. “Inmyhouse. Inmylife.”

Victoria inhaled sharply. Of all the arrogant, high-handed, impossible things he could have said, he chose this.

“I am your mother’s companion,” Victoria said in a tone that conveyed that she found the question… well, senseless.

“Why?”

“Because I happen to find her interesting and because she asked me graciously. Qualities that I happen to love in your sister, in case you were wondering why I am friends with her.”

“My sister is married.” He set the crystal tumbler down. “As you should have been.”

“Excuse me?”

It was too late in the night and too absurd to be having this conversation with him. How dare he talk to her like that? Who gave this unbearable, arrogant man the power to dictate what sheshouldhave been?

“I said”—he got up—“that you should have been married by now. At your age, even a woman in your… situation should have already secured a husband.”

Victoria weighed the tome she was still holding and mentally calculated how hard she had to hurl it at him for maximum damage. But she was not going to waste a source of valuable knowledge on him.

“Ah, yes,” she scoffed. “How remiss of me to have neglected my duty of attaching myself to the first available man. One kind enough to look past my unfortunate situation.”

“Perhaps that is the exact purpose of all of this,” Stephen said in a glacial tone that made the fire dim a little. “Why you are walking around in your nightgown.”

Victoria’s rage flared.

He can’t be implying…?

This despicable, obnoxious man! Perhaps the tome was not that valuable, after all.

“Pardon me, Your Grace,” Victoria bit out, “but it rather sounds like you are implying that my presence in your house, specifically in your library, in my nightgown, at this precise moment, is some sort of desperate attempt to secure a husband. And seeing that there is no one else around, you seem to be under the impression that you are the intended target.”