She swung back to face him. Folding her arms beneath her breasts, she regarded him stonily. “I don’t understand.” An understatement.
“For that I fear I must apologize,mignonne, yet before we leave here, I intend that all will be plain between us.”
He studied her for a moment, then leaned forward, slowly reached up and tugged one of her hands free. He sat back, drawing her to the chair. She frowned but consented to move closer.
“Sit with me.”
She assumed he meant on the arm of the chair, but when she realized he meant on his lap, she pulled back.
He sighed. “Mignonne,do not be missish. I wish to speak with you, yet if I stand close, I cannot always see your face. Likewise if you sit beside me. If you sit on my lap, it will be easier.”
There was sufficient irritation in his voice to dispel the idea that he was intent on ravishment—at least, not yet. Helena allowed herself a small “humph!” then, suppressing all reaction to the skittering thrill that raced up her spine, she smoothed her skirts and sat.
Beneath the folds of his toga, under the satin breeches he wore beneath it, his thighs were rock hard, but warm.
He closed his hands about her waist and lifted her, resettled her so they were indeed essentially face to face. Then he raised his hands and tugged on the ribbons that secured her mask; the two small bows unraveled. He drew the mask free, then set it on the floor beside the chair.
“Bon.”
Sebastian heard the reined temper in his tone and knew she heard it, too. He hoped it made her wary.
Step by step. That seemed the only way to accomplish the task with her. Every inch had been a battle thus far.
He looked into her peridot eyes.
She stared haughtily back.
I intend to offer for your handwould have done the job with most women, but with her, instinct prodded him to be rather more definite.
I’m going to make you my duchesshad a more forceful ring to it—left less leeway for her to cavil.
Unfortunately, given her prejudice against powerful men, neither approach was likely to lead to quick success. She’d immediately dig in her heels, and he’d be reduced to pleading his case from a very weak position.
Mining her walls—undercutting her arguments before she had a chance to make them—was undoubtedly the road to victory. Once he’d weakened her defenses, then he could speak of marriage.
“You’ve told me you don’t like being the pawn of a powerful man. All you’ve said has led me to believe that your guardian is such a man—am I right?”
“Indeed. I know of what I speak.”
“And am I also correct in stating that your reason for seeking a meek and mild-mannered husband was that such a man could never rule you?”
She narrowed her eyes. “So that he would never manipulate me, use me as a pawn.”
He inclined his head. “Has it not yet occurred to you,mignonne, that marrying a man who knows little of, as you have put it before, ‘the games men such as I play,’ will leave you still in the power of the very man you seek to escape?”
She frowned. “Once I am married . . .”
When she didn’t continue, he hesitated, then quietly said, “My sister is married. Yet if I decide, for her own good, that she should return to the country . . . she returns to the country.”
She searched his eyes. “Her husband . . . ?”
“Huntly is a good-natured man who never pretended to be able to manage Augusta. He does, however, have extremely good sense and so knows when she needs to be managed. He then summons me.”
“My husband—the one I choose—will not summon my guardian.”
“But if your guardian doesn’t wait to be summoned . . . what then?”
He gave her time to think, to venture on her own down the lane of thought he’d pointed out. To see the possibilities, to come of her own volition to the realization he desired.
Even now he was too much the consummate manipulator to speak too soon, to push too hard.
Especially not with her.
Helena frowned—at him, at his hard face, the pale, austere features limned but not softened by the lamplight. Reluctantly, already sensing what she would see, she let her mind turn—almost as if she were mentally turning around and looking at something behind her, something she’d failed to see.
He was right. Fabien would not be deterred from using her by the protestations of a weak husband. Look what he’d done with Geoffre Daurent, her uncle, her initial and natural guardian. Although not a particularly weak man, Geoffre was weaker than Fabien. Because controlling her fortune and marriage conferred considerable political power, Fabien had “discussed” matters with Geoffre, a distant kinsmen, and an agreement had been reached that had seen Fabien legally installed as her guardian.
How Fabien might use her once she was married she did not know, but his intrigues were manifold—power flowed from many sources, from the control of myriad subjects, in their world. And power was Fabien’s drug.
“You are right.” The words fell from her lips as she refocused; she frowned. “I will need to think again.”
“There are not that many options to consider,mignonne . Indeed, as one of the ilk against whom you struggle, I can tell you there is only one.”
She met his eyes, narrowed her own. “I will not—” She broke off, an image of Fabien rising in her mind. In truth, there was very little she wouldn’t do to escape his web.
Sebastian searched her eyes; then his gaze steadied, holding hers. “How alike are we, your guardian and I?”
His words were soft, wondering, inviting her to make the comparison. She recognized the ploy, enough to acknowledge it as a bold and brave stroke. He didn’t, after all, know Fabien.
“In nature you are much alike.” Honesty forced her to added, “In some respects.”
He was infinitely kinder. Indeed, many of his actions, albeit executed with typical arrogance and high-handedness, were prompted by a detached, quite selfless wish to help, something she found immensely endearing. Kindness was not a quality Fabien possessed; it was her considered opinion that in all his years Fabien had never once thought of anyone but himself.
Where St. Ives arranged for his sister to return to the country for her own good, Fabien would do the same for his own purposes, irrespective of whether that benefited or indeed even harmed his pawn.
She continued to study Sebastian’s face. He raised one brown brow. “Which would you rather, if you could choose—your guardian, or me?”
And that, she knew, was the question he’d sought this interview to ask. A single, simple question that, as he’d correctly seen, was the central, crucial issue in deciding what she did next.
“Neither would be my first choice.”
His lips lifted lightly. He inclined his head. “That I accept. However, as you’ve now realized, that choice will not free you of powerful men. If not your guardian, if not me, then it will be some other like us.”
He hesitated, then lifted a hand and traced her face, his fingertips lightly touching. “You are extremely beautiful,mignonne, extremely wealthy and of the highest echelons of the nobility. You are a prize and a woman—that combination will always determine your fate.”
“That combination is not something I can change.” She stated it flatly, knowing it as a truth—one she disliked but had long ago accepted.
“No.” His gaze held hers. “All you can do is choose the best of the options it leaves you.”
Which would she rather?
She blinked, drew in a breath, allowed herself to imagine, to speculate. “You are saying that if I accept you, you will become my champion, that you will protect me from others, even my guardian.”
His eyes were very blue. “Mignonne,if you were mine, I would protect you with my life.”