Page 11 of The Duke of Cups (The Highwaymen #3)

He shrugged. “Well, I’m a duke. You’d be a duchess .

And I have more money and more lands than all of these men.

And I’d be willing to let you do as you like, really.

If you don’t want to have children, you don’t have to.

Trust me when I say I have no desire to carry on the Dunrose legacy.

If you’d ever met my father, you’d understand. ”

“Well, but that’s just because you don’t want to bed me,” she said. “You’d be marrying me out of convenience.”

“We’d likely have to do that ,” he said. “An unconsummated marriage isn’t legal.”

She folded her arms over her chest.

He shrugged at her. “I think I could make you like it, if it comes to that.” Notwithstanding Rutchester’s little dig about how whores were all faking it, Dunrose had reason to believe he wasn’t terrible at pleasing women.

Truthfully, they could all be pretending, he supposed.

But really? All of them? No, he was confident he could do a better job, at the very least, than the other men she was considering.

If a man couldn’t tie a cravat, how could he know his way around a cunny?

She looked away, and she looked strangely disappointed in some way, which troubled him.

She should have looked shocked and dismayed at the turn in conversation, he supposed.

It wasn’t as if he was expecting her to have a positive reaction to his saying that to her, but he hadn’t expected her to look like that.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing,” she said in a way that let him know it was not nothing.

He sighed. “You don’t wish to marry me, and I already know this.”

“You don’t wish to marry me either,” she said.

“You’re going on about it, but now I see why.

It’s the madness within men that Seraphine is always talking about, the way they want between women’s legs.

You’re quite well known for getting between as many as you can.

This is some ruse on your part, pretending to wish to marry me, even going so far as to draw up some fake agreement to convince me. You’re disgusting.”

He shrugged. “Well, yes, I am that, I suppose. Quite disgusting, in fact.” He thought about it. Maybe she was right. That really did make the most sense, didn’t it, why he was so interested in her, why he was so bent on marrying her at all?

It was probably because he wanted to tup her.

Truth was, he usually didn’t much care about whatever it was that he tupped. If he had the desire, he went around looking until he found someone willing to appease him. If his first choice denied him, he went to another choice. It was the act he desired, not the woman.

But this woman was not easily attainable, and the only way to have her in that way was to marry her. He couldn’t very well go around deflowering young, well-borne ladies, after all.

Or could he?

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, thinking that over. Well, no, he didn’t have a plan for it yet, but maybe he could formulate one. And if he slaked his lust, got what he wanted, then, maybe it wouldn’t matter if she was married to some other man, some old man, even.

He wanted her, and he wanted to be first, something he had never actually done, now that he thought about it.

He’d lost his virginity to a girl who’d told him she was also a virgin, but she’d lied in the service of tricking and robbing him.

Well, he could not say for certain if she’d lied about having never been with another man, but considering the way she’d gone on about his lack of skill as a lover, it seemed likely.

So, it made sense he’d want to bed a woman who wasn’t lying about her virginity.

Hyacinth was saying something, and she was angry.

He shook his head to clear it. “What was that?”

She rolled her eyes. “I was saying that you’re not even ashamed of yourself.”

“No,” he said, giving her an apologetic shrug.

“People would be more forgiving of me if I were more regretful, I think. I don’t seem to have that in me.

You see, my father, he was very good at finding people’s weaknesses in that way.

I would watch him do it, and I determined very young not to do that, to show my own weakness.

If you show people that you are weak, it means they can exploit those weaknesses, you see.

And it’s all the better simply not to have any weaknesses, or to claim all your weaknesses as strength, perhaps.

I don’t know. Never mind this.” He got up from where he was sitting.

“I think you’re right, though. I think you’re entirely right. ”

“Right about what?”

He rounded on her. “I want to have you like that. I want to deflower you, more precisely. And I suppose I had conflated that with thinking I wanted to marry you, but I know I don’t want that.

And I’m not saying I won’t, by the way, because I will, if need be.

I’m not taking that back, you understand.

But you don’t wish to marry me, and I’m not going to be any good at getting you a husband while I’m obsessing over thinking about him deflowering you. ”

She gave him an odd look. “What are you saying?”

“Well, could I?” He cringed. “Oh, this is the worst way to go about it, isn’t it? But, no, trickery would likely be worse, and I don’t wish to trick you, if I can help it.”

“Could you what?”

“Deflower you, obviously.”

She sputtered.