Page 42 of Bad Luck Bride (Scandal at the Savoy #3)

That mortifying reminder ought to have been like a splash of ice water. Sadly, it wasn’t. Instead, her lips began to tingle, and tongues of heat curled in her belly.

Damn him.

“You should despise me, of course,” he said. “And I’ve no doubt you want to do so. And maybe you really did once. But I don’t think you do. Not anymore.”

That, she feared, might be true. And that admission only made her more angry with him. “Your insufferable arrogance is truly a thing to behold.”

“It’s not arrogance. It’s simply that that kiss makes a liar out of you. You lie to others, you even lie to yourself. But don’t lie to me, because I know you couldn’t have kissed me the way you did if you hated me.”

At this moment, she might resent him like hell, she might want to slap his face or bash him with a newspaper, but he was right.

No matter what he did, he’d always been able to find a way to penetrate her defenses.

She’d built up layers of armor as a carrot-haired child, as a plump, freckled adolescent, and as a shy social failure, but one kiss from Devlin in a maze fourteen years ago had shattered all her protective layers.

And now, in spite of everything, he might manage to do it again, leaving her vulnerable to yet another heartache.

But that could only happen if she allowed it. There could only be heartache if she let herself fall in love with him again. Far better, she decided, if she sent him back to Africa where he belonged.

“So, you want to do right by me now, do you? That’s why you want to marry me?”

“Yes.”

“Well, maybe it’s silly of me, but I don’t think guilt and remorse are a good basis for marriage.”

“Right, because marrying for money is so much better?”

She gave him the most withering look she could muster. “If you’re trying to persuade me, remarks like that won’t help you. And unless you intend to tie me, gag me, and keep me a prisoner in here,” she said, turning her back and reaching for the doorknob, “I’m leaving.”

His hand closed over hers on the knob, his palm callused and warm.

She jumped at the contact and yanked free, and she half expected him to refuse to let her go, but instead, he nudged her gently aside and opened the door, but if she thought his action meant he’d accepted her refusal of his marriage proposal, his next words disabused her of that notion.

“This isn’t over, Kay,” he told her as she stepped out into the corridor. “If I remember correctly, you said not long ago that you deserved a proper courtship from me? Fair enough. Courtship it is.”

“What I want is for you to leave me alone and stop ruining my life. Go back to Africa.”

He shook his head. “Not unless you marry me and come with me.”

“Not a chance.”

“I’ll win you over,” he called as she turned and walked away down the corridor.

“Ha!” she shot back over her shoulder without stopping. “That’ll be the day.”

“I am not giving up.”

“Of course you’re not,” she muttered as she turned the corner and made for the electric lift. “Why should my luck change now?”

Devlin had meant what he’d told Kay about winning her over, but during the fortnight that followed her refusal of his proposal, he realized he had a long, hard road ahead. Winning a woman was not an easy thing to accomplish if the woman in question refused to even speak to you.

He tried to call on her, several times, but whenever he sent up his card with a footman, she refused to see him.

He appeared at her door, unannounced, but she slammed it in his face.

He tried letters. They went unanswered, even after he began paying a delivery boy to put them directly in her hand.

He even tried a telegram. All to no avail.

When he read that she was attending a charity ball, he bought a voucher and attended it, too. But she refused to dance with him and didn’t even bother to invent an excuse. She just turned him down flat and ordered him to leave her alone.

He knew he could not comply with that order. He would not.

She’d said marrying him would be a mistake, but he didn’t see it that way at all.

Marrying Kay felt absolutely right. He’d known that from the moment the proposal had come spilling out of his mouth.

And his certainty didn’t stem from any of the logical, practical reasons he’d given her.

Nor did it stem from any sense of guilt or pangs of conscience.

She was right that he’d taken her decision to marry Rycroft out of her hands, but he didn’t regret it.

Not a jot. He should, but he didn’t. He just had to convince her not to regret it, either.

A dim possibility at present, but as he’d told her, he was not giving up. Not by a long chalk.

That kiss had proved that despite all the years that had passed, despite all the resentments and misunderstandings and pain, the passion between them was still there, hotter than ever, though it was not quite the same sort of passion it had been then.

What he felt now, he realized, went far beyond the wild, crazy attraction he’d felt for her in his youth.

This was, he realized, a deeper feeling.

It was the passion of knowing without a doubt that Kay was his woman, but also of being willing to shoulder the responsibilities that came with that knowledge.

Kay was wrong to say he’d never grown up, because he had.

He knew now that to protect and cherish and provide for Kay was his destiny, and that meant far more than merely providing an income to support her.

It meant standing by her side until he was laid in the ground.

In other words, he was in love with her.

In fact, he’d never stopped loving her, and all his efforts to deny that fact had been futile.

She didn’t feel the same, but he could not let that deter him. This time, there would be no walking away. No believing the worst. No letting some man move in and take his place because he’d been foolish enough and na?ve enough to leave her behind. Not this time.

Still, after a week of being cold-shouldered, Devlin knew more than determination and learning from past mistakes would be needed if he was going to win her over.

The problem was that the scandalmongers were determined to shred her to ribbons in the meantime, and watching it happen was almost more than he could bear.

By the end of the first week, the news of Pam’s elopement with Rycroft had given way to stories about Kay, and those stories were nearly identical to the dreck she had predicted they would print.

They regaled the public with her supposed lack of attractions as a girl, a take that baffled and infuriated Devlin as much now as it had fourteen years ago.

They dredged up the elopement, of course, and her broken engagement to Giles.

Some made her an object of pity, while others deemed her nothing more than a desperate, grasping spinster.

By the end of the second week, the gossip columns were mocking her for being unable to keep any man long enough to walk down the aisle.

As bad as it was, none of it seemed to change Kay’s mind about marrying him, however.

And he didn’t know whether to be frustrated by that or glad of it.

He didn’t want her to marry him merely to stop the merciless onslaught, but he did want it to stop, and he knew the only way to make it stop was to soften her stance, get past her pride, and persuade her to change her mind.

But what could he do? Keep writing letters, sending flowers, and inserting himself in her path?

Or was there something else he could do that he had not yet tried?

He knew from painful experience that pushing Kay too hard was a recipe for disaster. He’d done that fourteen years ago, and it had ultimately cost him the only woman he’d ever loved. Now, he was doing all the things suitors were supposed to do, and that wasn’t working either.

What he needed, he realized, was a new plan of campaign, and allies to help him.

Allies . He considered the word. Allies .

Setting aside the latest edition of Talk of the Town , he finished his breakfast, got dressed, and headed for the Mayfair Hotel.