Page 5 of Two Blessings For His Duchess
“You’re a man,” she mumbled, her eyebrows furrowing.
“And you are a woman, in a man’s bed,” the dream-man responded.
“Is this a dream?” she asked, still unsure if her mind was playing tricks on her. She had never drunk that much wine before.
“Would you like me to pinch you?”
Euphemia squinted, her pulse giving a sluggish, confused thrum. In her defense, the wine had been excellent, and the sunlight was doing very generous things to the stranger’s silhouette. He was broad… excessively so, and the way he loomed over her felt less like a threat and more like a haunting.
He reached past her and gripped the bedpost. The wood cracked against his palm, and he shook it, the vibration moved through the mattress and directly through Euphemia.
Euphemia sat up, clutching the covers to her chest. “Good heavens, what on God’s green earth are you doing in my room?”
The fog lifted immediately. She was not dreaming... had never been dreaming, and was in fact standing in front of a man with her hair in her face and her sight still a little blurry.
The man stood exactly where he was, looking down at her with a puzzled look on his face.
“You’re Miss Vane,” he said, tilting his head as he studied her.
Euphemia’s brain stalled for a second, and then the indignation hit her like a bucket of ice water. There was only one reason a man would have the effrontery to barge into a lady’s room so early in the morning and show such a blatant disregard for propriety. He must have heard the rumors. He must have listened to every whispered lie about her imminent ruin or her desperate search for a match, and assumed that her circumstances gave him the confidence to treat her like common prey.
Of all the insufferable, presumptuous, small-minded?—
She threw the blanket down and huffed, turning to glare at him.
“I am indeed Miss Vane!” she snapped. “Who let you in here?”
The man didn’t flinch. He didn’t even look surprised. He just watched her with a heavy, unblinking gaze that made her feel even more hysterical. “I?—”
“What did you think?” Euphemia climbed to her knees on the mattress, her hair spilling over her shoulders in a wild tangle. “Did you think it would be easy? Did you truly believe that a lapse in my social standing equated to a lapse in my cognitive functions?”
“Cognitive functions?”
“Did you think that because a man of consequence decided I was dispensable, that made me so? Did you think a woman’s value is so dependent on whether some title-bearing coward chose to honor his word that the moment he didn’t, any other man could simply walk through her door and find her grateful for the attention?”
Euphemia took in a breath. “I believe it was Mary Wollstonecraft that wrote that women are rendered weak and wretched not by nature but by circumstance, sir, and I will not be your convenient circumstance.”
“Why on earth are you bringing Wollstonecraft into this?” he questioned.
She pointed at him. “She also wrote that it is vain to expect virtue from women until they are in some degree independent of men, which I intend to be, at the earliest possible opportunity, so whatever conclusion you have drawn from whatever you haveheard about me, I suggest you revise it immediately because I am not broken, I am not desperate, and I am not remotely interested in being anyone’s opportunistic consolation prize!”
He looked at her for a long moment then he let out a loud breath. “Are you familiar with Mary Wollstonecraft personally, or only through correspondence?”
Euphemia stared at him. “She is dead.”
“That would explain the correspondence, then.”
“Are you making a joke?” She squinted her eyes.
“I am...” he started to say. “... trying very hard not to.” He tilted his head, his gaze sweeping over her wild hair and her indignant, flushed face. “Actually, I had one question. Is it a frequent occurrence for your mental faculties to completely desert you at sunrise, or is this a special performance curated just for me?”
Euphemia froze. Her hand dropped an inch. “I would like you to leave, sir.”
“I cannot do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is my room,” he announced. “And you’re in it.
