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Kynthea held up her hands. “Hush! Both of you! Or we’ll end up with an outcome no one wants!”

To which Zoe rounded on her cousin with a harsh expression. “But I do want it!” she all but screamed. “That’s why I’m here. Do you really think I want to… to…” She glanced at the bed and shuddered. A real live shudder that shook her whole body. He would have been insulted if he weren’t so relieved.

“Think, Zoe,” Kynthea pressed. “You would have to do that every night until you conceived.”

“I know!” she sniffed. “I am prepared to make the sacrifice.”

You’d think he was hideous or something.

“No man wants to be married for his stable,” Kynthea said gently.

“No!” Zoe said, her shoulders raised up to nearly her ears. “It was for Father.” She swallowed. “You know he wants me to make a brilliant match. He wants to walk me down the aisle.”

Ras huffed. “You would make us both miserable for the rest of our lives just so your father can have one day of joy?”

Zoe lifted her chin. “I wouldn’t be miserable. I would have the running of—”

“Of the stables,” everyone finished for her.

The girl jutted out her chin. “I will be very happy,” she said firmly.

“I would not,” he retorted.

Kynthea sighed as she stepped between them. “This is getting us nowhere. Zoe, even you must see that it isn’t possible.”

“Of course, not now,” the girl sulked. “Not with you here.”

How anyone could appear so tragically betrayed when she’d created this disaster was beyond him. He would have said she had a future on the boards except that he remembered her badly done words when she’d first walked into his room.

“Do not blame your cousin,” he said firmly. “You dosed me, you burst into my room, and you…” He looked at his hand and surreptitiously wiped it on his pants. He did not want to know the feel of her breast.

“But what am I going to do?” she cried. It wasn’t a wail like he expected.

Indeed, if she had continued making that noise, he would have thrown her out of his room and the gossips be damned.

He would not have a wailing child in his bedroom.

But the words were whispered with a choking kind of sob.

She really was overcome and desperate, by the looks of her, as only a spoiled girl could be.

“You are going to go back to bed,” Kynthea said sternly. “It is wrong to trick a man into marriage. You know that.”

“It was Mama’s idea.”

Oh heaven. Not that he was surprised. She wasn’t the first girl to try to trap him into marriage. Only the youngest.

Kynthea managed to get the girl to take a step, but then Zoe dug in her heels and looked first at her cousin and then him. “But what about you two? What are you… When did it…” She was struggling with her words and no wonder. Just those aborted questions had everyone’s face blushing.

He held up his hand. “First, Lady Zoe, my affection for your cousin has nothing to do with you.”

“Affection—”

“Second!” he interrupted. “You had no right to dose me and then burst in here without my leave. That is beneath you, no matter who pushed you to do it.”

The girl pressed her lips together and tried to look defiant. It didn’t work. Eventually, her head dipped in shame. “I was thinking of my father.”

“Poppycock.” He wanted to say something much stronger, but he tried not to curse in front of children. “You were thinking of my horses and very little else.”

She had no response to that which was very wise of her.

“And finally, I should like to discuss something with you in the morning. An arrangement that I think will benefit us both.”

Her head snapped up. “What arrangement?”

“In the morning!” he repeated, now all but shouting.

“When we are both properly attired.” He pulled his bedroom door open then stepped to the opposite wall.

“You may go back to your room and think upon your crimes.” He winced at the stuffy phrasing.

And damn her for making him sound like his old nanny.

Think on her crimes, indeed. But she’d tried to trap him into marriage. For his horses!

Thankfully, Kynthea was gentler. She wrapped her arm around the girl’s shoulders and urged her forward.

Undaunted, Zoe tried one last time. “But what about—”

“Hush,” Kynthea said firmly. “We’re going back to your room now. His Grace has had enough for one night.”

“But—”

“Zoe!” The word was sharp, and Ras was relieved to see that there was an end to Kynthea’s well of sympathy for the spoiled girl. “We will talk in your room.” Then she steered the girl firmly out of his bedroom.

Kynthea closed his door behind her which left him to stare at it with an angry glower.

So much for his hopes of a conversation tonight.

Not to mention anything else. It was childish of him, but he needed to talk to Kynthea, and now he’d have to find another way to get her alone.

That wouldn’t be easy in the middle of the Season with prying eyes and plotting mamas everywhere.

But he would find a way because, damn it, he was determined to make Miss Petrelli his bride.