Christ, it sounded like he’d already made his decision.

Was he crazy? Was he ready to throw over nearly a decade of plans for a tiny red-haired American chit?

Alex groaned again and hauled himself out of the tub, water running down his lean body in thin rivulets. He grabbed the towel that his valet had left neatly folded on a chair near the bathtub, quickly dried himself off, and padded over to his closet and took out a robe. Wrapping it around him, he flopped down on his bed.

He was fairly certain that Emma would accept him if he asked her to marry him. He knew she missed her father and had always intended to go back to America, but he could be flexible. There was no reason they couldn’t go visit Boston every other year or so. In fact, the rest of her family was here in London, and he knew they wanted her to stay. He didn’t really want a wife who married him because of familial pressure, but he figured he shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. There would be plenty of time to convince Emma that she loved him.

Alex sat up like a bolt. Did he want Emma to love him? That might be a little bit more than he could take. If someone loved you—someone decent and kind, that is—you had a responsibility not to trample all over her heart. And while he had no intention of hurting Emma, he knew that he could injure her just by not loving her back.

Of course, maybe he did love her back.

But then again, maybe she didn’t love him in the first place. She hadn’t actually said as much. He couldn’t very well love someone back if she didn’t love him first.

He could, however, love her first.

And that meant that he was going to have to convince her to love him back.

But the question was moot anyway because he hadn’t yet decided to love her.

Or had he?

Alex bounded off the bed and began pacing to and fro across his room. Had he decided to love her? He didn’t know. And furthermore, did a man actually decide to love a woman, or did it just sort of grow on you until one day you hop out of a bathtub and realize that you’ve loved her for ages, for so long that you’re not even sure when it all started and that you’re really just fighting the inevitable because it’s become a habit to thwart your mother and your sister.

Oh God, he loved Emma. Now what was he going to do? Oh, fine, he could ask her to marry him, and she’d probably say yes, but he didn’t think that was going to be good enough. He didn’t want her to marry him just because she liked him; he wanted her to marry him because she loved him, loved him so much that she couldn’t bear the thought of life without him because he was slowly beginning to realize that that was how he felt about her.

Maybe he should test the waters a little before he actually proposed—try to get an idea of what she really felt for him. There was no huge rush to ask her. Now that he had committed himself to this marriage idea, he was eager to get her legally bound to him for life, but he supposed a few days wouldn’t make much of a difference. After all, if it became apparent that she wasn’t going to return his feelings, he might not want to propose.

Who was he kidding? Of course he’d propose. Napoleon himself couldn’t stop him.

But there really wasn’t much harm in waiting just a little while—if only for his peace of mind. After all, it wasn’t as if she was going away anytime soon. And no one else was going to ask in the meantime. Alex was fairly certain he’d made sure of that. Few men were brave enough to ask her to dance twice in one evening, much less to ask her to marry them. Alex had staked a claim. And it was getting time to claim that claim.

Friday would do nicely. There was some function he was supposed to attend on Wednesday. He couldn’t remember where, but his secretary would have it written down back in London, and Emma would certainly be present. He could talk to her then, probe a little and try to guess her feelings. On Thursday his mother was having a small dinner party. He’d have a good chance of getting her alone then. His mother certainly did her best to give him every opportunity of doing so. On Friday morning he’d pick out an engagement ring from the family jewels and then head over to the Blydon mansion, propose, and be done with it.

Except that he really wouldn’t be done with anything. Alex smiled peacefully. He would be beginning everything.

Chapter 15

Oh Lord, what was she thinking?

Tuesday afternoon saw Emma standing on the steps in front of Alex’s bachelor’s lodgings, an elegant townhouse located only five blocks away from the Blydon home in Grosvenor Square. It wasn’t very large; Alex didn’t like to entertain, and Emma supposed he planned to move into the family mansion when he married.

Which she hoped would be rather soon.

She lifted her hand up to the large brass knocker and then quickly whirled around. “Would you just go away?” she hissed. Ned was loitering about six feet away from the bottom of the steps.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Someone has to walk you home.”

“Alex can walk me home.”

“What if he says no?”

“Ned Blydon, that is a perfectly cruel thing to say,” Emma blurted out, her heart dropping into her stomach. “He’s not going to say no,” she muttered. “I think.”

“What?”

“Go!”

Ned started walking away backwards. “I’m going. I’m going.”

Emma watched Ned disappear around the corner before turning back to the brass knocker that was looming large in front of her forehead. Taking a deep breath, she picked up the knocker and let it fall with a resounding thud. The noise was overly loud to her already frazzled senses, and she jumped nervously backwards, catching her heel on the edge of the step. With a small yelp, she flailed her arms, trying to catch her balance until she desperately grabbed hold of the railing, pitching herself forward at a bizarre angle.