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“You can’t possibly think that I’ll marry you now,” she gasped. “The whole of London will know that my sister took my place at the altar and that I let it happen! You’d be humiliated.”

“Weren’t you listening, Miss Belmont? Humiliation barely touches me. I can assure you, there’s no need to change a thing.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “You agreed to marry me. We are engaged. You aren’t about to go back on your word, are you?”

He took a step closer, and Emily suddenly found that they were standing too close together. Spectacles or not, she could see himveryclearly now. There were flecks of gold in his eyes, and up close, his eyelashes were even longer.

Are those freckles on his nose? Surely the infamous Duke of Clapton, blackmailer extraordinaire, does not have freckles.

She swallowed hard, refusing to let herself be cowed. Tilting up her chin, she looked him dead in the eyes. She wanted very much to take another step back, to retreat into her shell. But that would be a weakness, and so it could not be allowed.

“If you wish to marry me,” she said, as coolly as she could manage, “you are going to have to court me like a gentleman should. I can’t marry a man of whom I have such a dire opinion, so you’d better work hard to make me think better of you.”

He gave a sudden bark of laughter, pitched higher than she might have expected. It gave him a faintly unhinged air.

It was entirely too much for Emily, and she took the opportunity to put a little distance between them, banishing him back to distant blurriness, just out of arm’s reach.

“Oh, my dear! You are very bold, I must say, but whatareyou playing at? Do you believe you have any leverage at all? I’m afraid there are no choices here for you. Beggars cannot be choosers, as the saying goes. Why, if your little secret were to come out…”

“I’ll deny it,” Emily snapped, suddenly determined. “I’ll deny it like I deniedyou.”

He pursed his lips, looking down at her. In a flash, before she could react, he wrapped long, cool fingers around her wrist and hauled her close to him, so close that her chin almost brushed his chest. It wasn’t a painful grip, but it was tight enough that she could not wriggle away.

There was a sharp, spicy smell of sandalwood and crushed grass, and it took her a moment to understand that it was his cologne. There was something remarkably pleasant about the scent, and Emily fought to keep herself from sniffing him.

He leaned down, putting himself almost nose to nose with her, and she held her breath.

I do not like this,she told herself severely, ignoring the flutter in her gut. There was no reason, none at all, to feel even the faintest twinge of attraction towards this man. She would just have to ignore those feelings until they had the decency to fade.

“We’ll see about that,” the duke whispered, a wolfish smile spreading across his face. “We shall see whose word holds stronger—yours or mine. You’ve made a promise to me, my dear Miss Belmont, and you will be keeping it, at any cost.”

Emily swallowed thickly but did not allow herself to look away. Instead, she forced herself to speak.

“Unless your time runs out, of course.”

He blinked at that, and she had a faint sense that perhaps it had shaken him, just a little.

Leaning forward, she hissed out, “I am not afraid of you anymore, Your Grace.”

Before anything further could be done or said, the click of approaching bootheels rang out on stone.

“Release my daughter at once, Your Grace, or you’ll be sorry!”

Emily felt a knot of worry untangle in her chest at the sight of her mother advancing on the Duke of Clapton with a faintly murderous look in her eyes.

Her mother, of course, did not know the whole situation. Emily had not told her about the blackmail, and certainly not what had led her to being blackmailed in the first place.

Nevertheless, Octavia Belmont, the Dowager Viscountess St. Maur, was a formidable woman and fiercely protective of her children.

The duke wisely released Emily’s wrist and stepped back, bowing graciously.

“Lady St. Maur. I hope you have recovered from the shock of all this.”

Octavia curled her lip. “I’ll recover when I have my other daughter safe and sound, and whenthisone deigns to explain to her mother what’s going on. In the meantime, Your Grace, perhaps you should keep your distance from us.”

The duke bowed again but said nothing.

Octavia seized Emily’s elbow and prepared to drag her away. Hesitating, she glanced over at the duke for good measure and said loudly, “Come along,Daphne.”

Emily bit back a smile. “Mama, he knows I’m not?—”