A dam in her, long cracked, had broken; the toxic words were pouring out of her like a waterfall.

The ensuing silence was deafening. There was only the sound of her breathing, shaky and erratic.

Tristan stood as still as if shot.

Eerily still.

There was no mistaking the angry color slowly tinging his cheekbones.

An uneasy sensation stirred in her stomach. A line had been crossed she hadn’t known they had heeded until now.

He took a deep breath. “Useless,” he said. The word dripped from his lips in cold contempt.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, yes,” she muttered. “And I cannot share a business with you.”

“I see.” His tone was controlled, but in the depths of his eyes simmered something sinister. The deliberate slowness of his gaze traveling over her, from her face down to her toes, raised all the fine hairs on her body. She had terribly provoked him.

He turned to the fireplace and stared into the glowing embers on the grate. In his flowing robe, with one hand on the mantelpiece and his profile hard and brooding, he looked like a vengeful young god contemplating the firelight.

“Tell me, Lucie.” His voice was silky-smooth. “How badly do you want it?”

The question slipped like a satin rope around her neck. She could feel her throat tightening.

This was a trap.

She raised her chin. “Name a price. And I shall see whether I can pay it.”

“Oh, but you can.”

The fingers of his left hand had begun an idle exploration of the objects on the mantelpiece, trailing over the smooth curve of the ceramic clock, an oblong box, the heavy candlestick turned from oak wood. They lingered on the candlestick, slid around it, tested its girth.

Heat poured over her like liquid fire.

“You can,” he repeated, and turned to look at her. His eyes were fathomless pools in the flickering shadows. “The question is whether you are willing.”

His hand circling the candleholder languidly slid up over polished wood, then down again, a lewd gesture if she’d ever seen one. Terribly mesmerizing, too, because the firelight was playing over his bare chest and he had well-formed fingers that knew every shameless caress under the sun.

That he should dare it left her breathless.

“Your price,” she whispered. “Name it.”

A glint of canine teeth. “You’re an intelligent woman,” he said. “Take a guess.”

“You are leering at me whilst fondling a phallic object,” she said. “It does not take great intelligence to assume you are propositioning me.”

“Mmh,” he hummed. “Assume that I am.”

“Lecherous, shameless creature.”

“Are you speaking of me, or yourself?”

She could only stare and loathe him.

He took his hand off the candlestick. “Darling, you forget who I am. I know lust from twenty paces, and despite your outburst of virtuous severity earlier, you are roiling with it. It’s in the shine of your eyes and the charming flush of your cheeks. If I were to lay my fingers against your throat now, I would feel your pulse beat unnaturally fast and hard.”

Her body was suddenly too heavy for her legs. The heated cheeks, the quickened pulse, were all true.

“You are ridiculous,” she said, and it came out husky.

His smile was pure vindication. “And yet neither one of us is laughing,” he said. “One night. One night in your bed for one percent of company shares. And you shall give it to me in writing that you look after my books. That is the price.”

She was breathing too fast, she was dizzy from it. “So you lied,” she said. “You said you never force your attentions.”

His brows rose. “I don’t. I doubt anyone else in my position would even contemplate the potential ruin of their business by making any kind of offer. Decline it, and things shall rightfully remain as they are. Take it, and London Print shall be yours.” His attention moved past her, to the bed. “We could begin now. You would wake up tomorrow morning well-pleasured and the owner of a publishing house. I’m a fool to offer you such a bargain.”

The bed was close, a step or two to the right. His tone, for all its derisiveness, was matter-of-fact. Her hands clenched; for a fleeting second, she had almost felt the softness of the counterpane beneath her palms, had seen his bare throat and shoulders move over her. His seduction was already at work, naturally—he must have honed it by years of practice. . . .

The perverted entrancement he had spun around her with his silken voice and sliding hand shattered.

“If you think I’d trade a company share for the pox, you are deluded,” she said coolly.

He made a face. “There are ways of preventing such things.”

She doubted he used any of them.

She turned on her heels.

“I shall make it a standing offer, until the end of summer,” she heard him say, and there was a smirk in his voice.

She spun back round to face him. “You sound rather desperate for me to take your offer.”

His smile left his eyes stone cold. “I’m always desperate, princess. Take your time to consider it—as it is, I’m not all that useless in the bedchamber.”

She knew. Women talked.

“Go to Hades,” she said, and stomped out of his room.

* * *

The window’s bull’s-eye pane grotesquely distorted Lucie’s cloaked shape as she disappeared into the shadows of Logic Lane. Tristan continued to stare down into the dusky emptiness of the street. The heat wave engulfing him minutes ago was abating only slowly. He realized he was fingering his cheekbone, quite as though he were twelve again and felt the sting of her slap.

He dropped his hand and gave a puzzled laugh.

Useless. Of all the insults she could have chosen, the little witch. She might as well have flown at him brandishing a scimitar. In fact, he would have preferred a knife attack, as he would have dealt with it rather more smoothly.

He turned to the room and sprawled back down onto the divan, and the piece of furniture shrieked in protest. To hell with it. Nothing in this provincial hovel was built for his size. Except the bed. The bed was built for two.

His gaze lingered on the silken counterpane as he reached for his brandy flask. What a sobering chain of events. He had not expected her to hold him in such contempt, nor that it would grate on him so to learn that she did. Apparently, his youthful preoccupation with her ran deeper than he’d known; so deep, it had become invisible beneath the years piling up upon it. But there it was, a furrow carved across a forgotten part of his soul, and it had filled up with want like a wadi in a flash flood when he had seen her stand next to the bed. He must have still thought of her as a fairy, had held an idea of her frozen in time. In truth, she was a red-blooded woman and he did not know her much at all. And she desired his body, which changed everything. Pleasure spread through him as he imagined her under him, on top of him, wanting, needing . . .

By the time the brandy had burned down his throat, he had decided to seduce her. And he would have to seduce her until she would consider it worth it regardless of the company shares, because he’d have to lose his mind before he ever let those go.

Chapter 11

She had crossed the Oxford town center and walked the length of Parks Road at a brisk pace, but when she arrived at her house on Norham Gardens she was still shaking with emotions.

She nearly stumbled over a bag of mail Mrs. Heath had deposited in the dark corridor. On her way to the kitchen, she snatched an unsuspecting Boudicca up into her arms and the bemused cat sank five claws into her left palm. She dropped the animal with a hiss. At least the stinging pain diluted the urge to go back to Logic Lane to shoot Tristan in the knee.

There was a pot of cold stew in the kitchen, and she ate two spoonsful before her stomach became tied up in knots and she admitted defeat. There were days when one had to just retire to bed early and wait for a new morning.

Her room was overwarm, here under the roof in midsummer, and the standing collar of her dress jacket was constricting like a noose. She unhooked the skirt and let it fall to the floor, then discarded the jacket with equal carelessness, followed by her underskirt, her corset, and the chemise. A chill touched her bare torso.

The ceramic basin in her wash corner had been filled with fresh water. She grabbed the clump of soap and rigorously lathered up the flannel. She scrubbed the scratches Boudicca had inflicted and it stung, however, there was no need to end a tedious day with an infection. She rubbed the flannel over her face, her neck, her arms, as though Tristan’s lewd proposition could be washed clean off.

Unfortunately, the matter went beyond skin-deep. Images kept flashing: rippling back muscles beneath fire-tinged skin. The up-and-down motion of a well-formed hand.

She dropped the flannel into the basin and started at her reflection in the mirror.

Tonight, he had treated her with utmost disrespect.

You were not exactly kind to him, either. . . .

She leaned in, blinking away the soap in her eyes. A tension around her mouth and between her brows had her looking a hundred years old.

Her pupils narrowed to small black dots as she studied herself.

Her face, presumably, was still a fine enough face.

She pulled back until the tops of her breasts were visible in the mirror.

Her body was useful, never sickly and reliably carrying her everywhere.