Dukes Prefer Blondes by Loretta Chase Page A

hideous. She was unreasonably beautiful.
    A less disciplined man might have found it painful to look at her.
    He concentrated on unknotting the ribbons. His hands were perfectly steady. His heartbeats were erratic.
    He drew the soggy ribbon out from under her chin. “There. It’s done. I should advise you to throw it on the fire, but at present I have no ladies’ hats to replace it.” He snatched the sodden hat from her head and dropped it on the nearest table. “However, I recommend . . .” He trailed off as he turned back to her.
    The room’s light flickered over hair the color of champagne.
    He’d never seen her bareheaded before.
    He tried to detach himself, but his other self clung, and for a moment he felt he’d been launched into the world of the Odyssey . She was too cruelly beautiful to be a mere human. She was Calypso or Circe or Aphrodite herself. The mythical bewitchers of men.
    But this wasn’t a myth and he was a reasoning human being. He could not be bewitched because there was no such thing.
    She was fumbling with the cloak’s fastenings.
    He went to help. “I know it’s true, but one must see it to believe it,” he said. “You cannot manage even the simplest act of self-­sufficiency.” He reached for the fastenings.
    She pushed his hands away. “I’m perfectly capable—­”
    â€œYou obviously are not.” He tried again.
    She jerked away. “Leave me alone.”
    â€œYou can’t—­”
    â€œYou don’t know what I can and can’t do. Stop treating me like an idiot.”
    â€œI did not say you were an idiot.”
    â€œYou say it constantly ,” she said tightly. “In a hundred different ways.”
    â€œI merely point out simple facts, which you seem unable to accept.”
    â€œI’d like to see you accept them,” she said. “I’d like to see you try to live my life. You wouldn’t last twenty minutes.”
    â€œOh, no, such a trial it is to live in the lap of luxury, where one is endlessly petted and adored.”
    â€œYou haven’t the stamina to endure it,” she said. “You’d die of boredom in an hour.”
    He stepped back, aware of a fraught note in her voice and a flash of something—­pain?—­in her eyes. “Very possibly,” he began. “But—­”
    â€œYou’ve no notion how I live in the world you call a fantasy,” she went on in the same taut tone. “You’ve no idea what it’s like to spend your life wrapped in cotton wool, with all about you protecting you, mainly from yourself, because you don’t behave as they think a girl ought to do, and they believe something’s wrong with you. You don’t know what it’s like to watch your brothers go away to school and make new friends and have adventures you’ll never have, even vicariously, in books. You don’t know what it’s like to be scolded for reading too much and knowing too much—­to be taught to hide your intelligence, because otherwise you’ll frighten the gentlemen away—­to stifle your opinions, because ladies aren’t to have any opinions of their own, but must always defer to men.” She stamped her foot. “You know nothing about me. Nothing! Nothing! ”
    She burst into tears—­and not mere weeping, but great, racking sobs, as of a long pent-­up grief.
    He started to reach for her and caught himself in time. “Stop it,” he said, clenching his hands. “Stop it.”
    â€œNo! You’re such an idiot!”
    â€œYou’re hysterical,” he said calmly, while his heart pounded. “Don’t make me pour a bucket of water on your head.”
    She stamped her foot again. “I’m already w-­wet, you m-­moron!”
    â€œOh, good. What I always wanted. An irrational female bawling and stamping her foot, because