Mutual Consent by Gayle Buck

“Babs, you need not flail yourself so,” he said quietly.
    Her green eyes suddenly glittered with unshed tears. She turned her head away from him, a gesture that said as plainly as if she had spoken that she was ashamed of her own vulnerability.
    Lord Chatworth’s mouth tightened. He could not have given coherence to his feelings, but the fact that she was not willing to use her tears to gain his sympathy did her no disservice in his eyes. His innate protectiveness for those weaker than himself was stirred. “Babs...” He let go of one of her hands so that he could bring her to him.
    At the barest touch of his hand on her back, she flinched.
    An instant later she had whisked herself away from him, coming at last to stand several steps across the study in apparent contemplation of the tides on a bookshelf. “Were there any other discrepancies in the prenuptial arrangements, my lord?” she asked breathlessly, without looking at him.
    Lord Chatworth sat quite still. There was a chilly quality in his expression as he stared at her back. He had been served a rare set-down and it had not left a pleasant taste in his mouth. His pride was well and truly stung. But in all fairness he was forced to concede that she was perfectly within her rights to refuse his advances, however half-formed they might have been.
    “Everything else was as it should be. The bridal settlement was perfectly within bounds. As for the fortune that your father settled on you upon our marriage, it is quite respectable,” he said.
    He was startled and irritated to hear the edge in his own voice. It surely did not matter one way or the other whether the lady he had married did not wish for him to touch her. He had not tied the knot for that reason, after all. His practiced eyes raked her trim figure as she turned toward him, and he thought that it would not be entirely unpleasant to make of theirs a real marriage. Indeed, after the blow that he had suffered to his ego, he was quite amenable to the notion of initiating his wife into the art of dalliance and seduction.
    “My fortune—my lord, that is the answer!” Babs did not heed the earl’s oddly forbidding expression as her enthusiasm carried her back across the room to him. She saw the frowning incomprehension in his eyes and she said impatiently, “Marcus, do you not understand? You may redeem your vowels and whatever else you owed to my father with the fortune that he has settled on me.”
    Incredulity entered his eyes. “I think not, my dear,” said Lord Chatworth shortly. “That is quite out of the question.”
    Babs was astonished by the spasm of distaste that had crossed his face. “But I don’t understand! That fortune by law passed into your hands upon our marriage. It is there for the using, my lord.”
    Lord Chatworth smiled, but it was the mocking twist of his lips that she so detested. “Obviously your education regarding a gentleman’s honor has been deficient, my dear. I could not take what belongs to you and use it for this purpose.”
    “My God, Marcus! You could be free.”
    “Could I indeed, my lady! When every day I shall have your face to remind me that I had stooped to stealing in order to be rid of Cribbage. Thank you, but no! I prefer not to place myself in the same category as your less-than-estimable parent,” he said bitingly.
    There was a short silence during which she regarded him with a blank look in her eyes. He had the most startling conviction that he had deeply wounded her. Finally she drew herself up, her chin rising proudly, and he could not any longer divine her feelings behind the cool expression she assumed.
    “Forgive my lamentable ignorance, my lord. I did not precisely understand the matter. You have certainly enlightened me. I shall not again forget my place,” she said. She turned away to walk swiftly toward the door.
    In one stride Marcus reached her. He did not forget how she had stiffened when he had touched her, especially when he saw