“I know,” Griffin replied low. “You seem to only want to do, er, other things with me.”
“Hush!” she hissed desperately.
In any other man, the look he gave her might be mistaken for hurt. “I’m not going to disgrace you here in front of everyone, never fear.”
She didn’t know how to reply to that, and while she was contemplating it, he led her swiftly through a pair of French doors and outside.
She looked around the lovely paved balcony with wide steps that led into a shadowed garden and turned to him accusingly. “You told Mandeville we were to dance.”
He shrugged, unconcerned. “We’ll tell him you felt overwarm. You certainly appear overwarm.”
She lifted a hand to her flushed cheek. “That’s not a very gentlemanly thing to say.”
He laughed shortly and without humor. “Nothing I say ever pleases you, my Lady Perfect. Have you noticed? Only the things I do please you.”
She looked away, but he placed a thumb under her jaw and turned her head back so that she had no choice but to look him in the face. “You were pleased this morning, were you not?”
Hero wanted to lie, but in the end she could not, so she simply stayed mute.
He grimaced and let his hand drop with a gesture of disgust. “You won’t admit it, but I know you were. I felt you as you came apart in my arms, as your sweet cunny clenched about my cock.”
She shivered, remembering the feel of him, too. “Please.”
He stared at her hard and then drew her down the steps and into the shadows of the garden. Pulling her along until they were out of earshot of the ballroom doors.
He turned and placed his hands on her upper arms. “We must discuss it, even if you want to forget it forever.”
“That’s just it,” she whispered, emboldened by the dark. “I don’t want to forget.”
“Hero,” he said low, and her name sounded like a prayer on his lips.
He bent over her, there in the dark garden, and she felt the brush of his lips over hers. They were whisper-soft, like the kiss of a knight for a maiden he held in high esteem. Did he think of her that way, even now that she’d proven herself unvirtuous? She drew back and tried to search his face, but it was in shadow. He might as well have been a stranger.
She made to step back, but he caught her hand, holding her against himself. “Will you marry me?”
She shook her head, tilting her face to look at the stars, still and empty and so very far away. “How can I?”
“How can you not?” he retorted, his voice deep. “I’ve pierced your maidenhead.”
She closed her eyes.
“Hero.” His hands rose to grip her shoulders hard. “You must marry me.”
“Do you love me?” she asked.
His head jerked back. “What?”
“Do you love me, Lord Griffin?”
“I… have feelings for you.”
She felt her heart tear a little. “Feelings are not the same as love.”
“You don’t love Thomas.”
She shook her head. “No, that wasn’t our pact together.”
“Then for God’s sake, why demand it of me?” he growled low and urgent. “If I’m good enough to bed, surely I’m good enough to wed.”
She merely shook her head again. Panic was rising in her chest, a suffocating sense that she could never undo her wrong, that she’d never recover the place that she’d always had in society and her family.
“Do you love me?” he demanded.
“No!” The denial burst from her lips without thought or preparation. The mere notion of falling in love with this man made fear surge in her breast.
“Then why come to me? Why let me make love to you?”
“I don’t know.” She inhaled to steady her voice. “I… I came this morning to see if you were all right, to talk to you about the home, about your gin making. I had no notion of doing what we did.”
But was that the truth? a small voice asked deep inside her. Her heart had been beating hard when she’d knocked on his door. She’d been excited, her hands trembling in anticipation. Maybe without knowing it herself, she had gone there to submit to him. To find out, once and for all, if she was more than the facade of a duke’s daughter.
He shook his head, clearly confused. “At least answer my question: Why not marry me?”
She shook her head frantically. “I… I can’t think. You don’t understand the magnitude of this decision. If I marry you, my life will never be the same again. Maximus will hate me. He may repudiate me, keep me from the family.”
“For God’s sake.” For a moment she could tell he was struggling to keep his voice low. Then he said urgently, “I may be a rake, but my reputation isn’t that sordid. I doubt your brother will be happy with our match, but to cast you out—”