Page 115 of Rogue of My Heart
She returned that assessing, head-to-toe gaze, and she had far more to look at than he did. Her mouth twitched up in one corner. “You truly are the nakedest man I’ve ever known,” she said.
“What are you doing here, Marie?” he asked before her mischievous humor could trick him out of all the guilt and sorrow he should rightfully be feeling.
“I’m here to save several lives,” she said with a triumphant grin. For a moment, she rested her hands on his arms, then moved them to his sides, then quickly slid them to his chest, leaving tendrils of desire pulsing through him. A heartbeat after that, she pulled her hands away entirely and stepped away from him. “I’ve no idea where to put my hands, and I cannot think at all with them anywhere on your body,” she said, deliberately turning to one side. “I cannot look at you either.” As soon as she said that, she cheated her eyes back to him, focusing on his cock—which wasn’t as flaccid as it should have been. “Strike that. I cannot help but look at you,” she went on, her lips twitching into a saucy grin. A grin that she instantly stifled. “No, it’s best if I avert my eyes.”
She turned fully away from him.
“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” Christian said. He put on as stern an expression as he could manage, but his heart overflowed and excited energy coursed through him, whether he wanted it to or not. He considered going to his wardrobe to fetch a robe, but stubborn pride kept him glued to his spot. At least, he hoped it was stubborn pride and not a far cheekier sort of satisfaction that came from knowing she liked the look of him. Or that he enjoyed how it felt to have her look.
Marie tensed for a moment before letting that tension out with a breath as she turned to him. “You cannot marry Lady Aoife. She doesn’t love you. She loves Lord Garvagh instead. And you love me.” She paused, but before he could launch into an explanation of why none of that mattered, she added, “And I love you.”
Those words hit him far harder than Christian anticipated. Marie loved him. Of course, he knew she loved him, but to hear her say it, plainly and honestly, was like an arrow piercing his heart. Except, instead of taking his life away, that arrow infused him with life and purpose.
He didn’t dare entertain those feelings, though.
“Love is inconvenient at the moment,” he said, gesturing helplessly. He must have looked especially helpless, saying as much while stark naked and on display for her. “I’m terribly sorry that Lady Aoife’s heart longs for someone else, but?—”
“Don’t you dare tell me you have to marry the poor woman anyhow, just because your father wanted it,” Marie rode over him, taking a hard step toward him. The intensity of her glower was enough to shock Christian right out of the certainties that he knew to be true. “I can account for your confused thinking because you are grieving, but if you persist in marrying the woman, knowing she’s in love with Lord Garvagh and you are in love with me, then you’re a bigger fool than I thought it was possible for you to be.”
He wanted to argue with her. He wanted to spout volumes about duty and honor, his father, family legacies, and so on. Except that he didn’t. He didn’t want to argue at all. He didn’t want to marry Lady Aoife, he wanted to marry Marie. He wanted it so badly that it made every fiber of his being burn.
With paradoxical coolness that he didn’t truly feel, he asked, “What am I supposed to do about it? The betrothal has already been made.”
“We aren’t living in some medieval society, where oaths are bound in blood and where wars are started because of broken engagements, Christian,” Marie told him, crossing her arms and shaking her head. “You are the most dramatic man I’ve ever met. Nudity, pranks, wallowing in sorrow.”
“I love you, Marie, but I’m not going to stand here and listen to you mock me like this,” Christian replied.
A sudden, wide grin split Marie’s face. Her eyes danced like leaves in the summer breeze and her cheeks went as pink as the sunrise. “You love me,” she said. It was a repetition of his own words, but it was a way of calling him out as well. “I knew it,” she went on, tilting her chin up haughtily. “I knew that underneath all that hurt your heart was still beating.”
She was still mocking him, but that didn’t mean she was wrong. The shell of grief and horror that had closed in around him after the accident began to crack and break away, letting the sunshine of the love he felt for her peek through.
It would have been so easy to give in to that love. The man he’d been a week ago would have thrown himself headlong into it. But he’d changed in the last week. He’d grown up, and he had to take responsibility for himself and others.
“Are you absolutely certain that Lady Aoife is in love with Lord Garvagh?” he asked seriously, stepping toward her. Only a few inches separated them, but he restrained himself from reaching for her.
“I am as certain of it as I can be,” she said, equally serious. “I tried to get her to confess this morning, but she wouldn’t let go of what I suppose is loyalty to you. Or perhaps to her brother, whose wish it is that you marry. Though heaven only knows why the man is so determined to see his sister wed.”
Christian frowned. “That’s not enough to make a decision this important. It’s not enough evidence to break an engagement.”
Marie let out a sigh of frustration that was almost comical in its intensity. “Are you still so stubborn that you’re demanding proof of Lady Aoife’s love?”
“Yes,” Christian answered with a shrug. On the one hand, he couldn’t, in good conscience, go against what his father and Lord Boleran had set up. On the other, seeing Marie aggravated and ready to tear into him lit a fire inside of him that he’d sorely missed. He wanted to feel again, desire again, and she was well on her way to granting that wish.
“Fine,” Marie huffed, either not seeing how she was affecting him or enjoying the game as much as he was beginning to. “We’ll prove that Lady Aoife and Lord Garvagh are in love and that everyone would be much happier if they were allowed to marry.”
“How?” Christian planted his hands on his hips, secretly hoping the gesture would draw Marie’s attention to his quickly-growing arousal.
“We’ll play a prank on them,” she said. “So to speak. We’ll find a way to get the two of them alone together and….” Her words faded as her gaze dropped to his groin. Her already pink cheeks grew redder, and her eyes sparkled with hunger. A naughty smile spread across her lips, and she bit one, as if contemplating how she could take a bite out of him.
Christian cleared his throat, his pulse kicking up.
Marie drew in a breath and forced her eyes to meet his. “Sorry. What was I saying?”
“Something about getting two lovers alone,” Christian said, grinning. Lord help him, he was actually grinning. For what felt like the first time in years.
Marie met that grin, fire flickering in her eyes. “That’s right. We get Lady Aoife and Lord Garvagh alone. In…in the springhouse.” Her expression brightened with an entirely different kind of mischief. She paced to one side. “We come up with a way to trap them in the springhouse. That way, they’ll be forced to confess their love for each other.”
“Forced,” Christian repeated with a mock serious nod. He loved watching the gears turn in Marie’s brain, loved watching her get carried away on the wings of a mad-capped scheme. It made him want to run away with her. It made him want to be happy.