Because his assumption was insufferable. It flattened her to a mere type. It made the real dramas and terrors and hopes of her life seem cheap and ordinary.
And frankly, she’d hoped to shock him.
He merely performed a skeptical, pitying, “Come now, Lady Worth” head-tip.
“To your concern. How should I put this?” He cast his eyes ceiling-ward briefly. “We might as well be two different species, aye? What sense would that make? Furthermore, my appetites do not run to unwilling women. At the moment your hair is standing up as fuzzy as a pussycat in the midst of a fright, and that’s no way to seduce a man.”
She met his gaze steadily.
The little creases at the corners of his eyes had deepened. That was the only way in which his steady, challenging expression had changed.
She nearly sprained all of her muscles in an effort not to clap her hands to her head and frantically smooth.
She desperately wanted to wake up from a dream in which she’d been standing in a strangeroom with a large pagan who had “appetites” and somehow knew the difference between “willing” and “unwilling” women. She was hardly completely naive. But her knowledge of debauchery was primarily gleaned from Greek myths in which fleeing maidens turned into trees to avoid the terrible fate of ravishment and luridly accomplished Renaissance canvasses filled with fleshy nude people writhing in gossamer draping.
Mr. St. Leger would not look out of place in one of those paintings. Or as a satyr, for that matter.
“In other words, you’re quite safe from me, Lady Worth,” he clarified when she said nothing. He still sounded insufferably amused, and a little distracted now. As though he was nearing the end of his willingness to humor her with conversation at all.
Despite everything, the emphasis on the word “quite” landed on the raw.
“Understood,” she finally said. Somewhat faintly. “Thank you for the... clarification.”
He nodded politely. “But I should warn you that patting a man’s knee might just give him wicked notions.”
“Do forgive me, Mr. St. Leger. I suppose you can always put your head out the window and let the rain extinguish your inflamed passions.”
His eyes went bright as lit windows when he smiled, delighted.
She cleared her throat.
“I should like to thank you for... for understanding the awkward social circumstances into which I had inadvertently walked when Mrs. Hardy recognized me. And for leaping selflessly into the fray, as it were. I expect the last thing you wanted to do this evening was acquire a wife, given that you hoped to take lodging in a bordello.”
It was as stiff and awkward an expression of gratitude as anyone had ever uttered. It also marked the first, and God willing, the last, time in her life she’d used the word “bordello” in a sentence.
But every person deserved the dignity of appreciation, regardless of their motives. She understood the terrible subtraction of being taken for granted, as though one was a mere utility, like a fork or a barouche. She was uncomfortable simply taking.
His expression grew more and more inscrutable as she spoke. He studied her a moment longer.
“While virtue may be a millstone, pride has its uses. And pride is about all you’ve got left, ain’t it, lass?”
He said it ironically.
Her throat seized up.
It was possible his startling astuteness was just instinct. Perhaps he knew this about her the way a fox might learn a thousand different things by sniffing the wind.
But shehatedthat he was right, and that he knew it.
Suddenly, exhaustion was like mud sucking at her ankles.
“Why don’t we talk in the morning about how we intend to maintain our marital charade for the duration of our stay here? Assuming this is how you mean to go on,” he said.
“Very well.”
He turned away, put his hand on the doorknob to the room. He froze like that a moment.
Then he pivoted a crisp half turn.