The Problem with Seduction by Emma Locke

botched my proposal like a stupid oaf. I thought I’d hurt you.”
    She looked stunned. “It wasn’t the finest masterpiece, I’ll grant you that.”
    He wasn’t going to stay conceited very long if she kept this up.
    After a moment of silence, she tapped the long edge of her cards on the table. “It wasn’t anything to do with you.”
    “I know that now.” He’d been pretty quick to realize she hadn’t given him a second thought after he’d walked out of her door.
    She half-laughed at this. “You must regret your rashness. But…” She raised her eyes to his. “You followed me all the way to Shropshire—the very middle of nowhere—because you thought you’d hurt my feelings ?”
    He wasn’t sure if she was testing him for a lie or if she really couldn’t believe he’d done something so stupid. The way she kept asking him if he liked women and if he leaned toward histrionics made him feel like she doubted his virility. “I thought it was strange of you to up and disappear. I feel a bit responsible for you now.”
    She looked horrified. “You’re not.”
    He smiled sheepishly. “I suppose not.”
    He’d just said he wasn’t. She’d paid him for a job. The job was complete. Why, then, had he followed her?
    She was quiet a moment. “Did you go to my parents’ house, too?”
    He cringed. Now here was a topic that strayed safely away from his own misfortune. “Lamentably, yes. I knew your parents were in that county—my brothers have done little else of late but lecture me on you. I missed you by a few hours. I’m sorry about my mother, by the way. I had no idea. Certainly, I didn’t put her up to it.” Maybe he should have married by now. His mother deserved to have at least one of her children settled and carrying on the family name. He hadn’t realized she was desperate enough for a grandchild that she’d traverse half of England to appeal to two of the most horrendously snobbish people he’d ever met. He felt responsible for exposing her to their abuse.
    “My father threatened me,” Elizabeth said suddenly, breaking into his thoughts. “Did he tell you that?”
    Con shifted uneasily. He’d had a distant relationship with his own father, whose detestableness had culminated in the near-destruction of their family’s finances and returned in his youngest son’s ghastly affliction. Her father had done nothing to improve Con’s opinion of fathers. Lord Wyndham terrified him. “He gave me an earful. I’m not sure I remember all that he said.” Mostly because Con’s instinct had been to get out of there as quickly as possible before Lord Wyndham pointed a fowling piece at his head.
    Elizabeth’s eyes blazed. She tossed her cards facedown onto the table and flattened her palms on either side. “Allow me to summarize for you, then. I have one month to give Oliver over to either you or Finn, or my father is going to help Finn take me through the courts, where I’ll be massacred.”
    No, he hadn’t heard that. He set his own cards down. “What are you going to do?”
    “I’m going to run.”
    “ That’s why you’re traveling toward Ellesmere,” he guessed aloud. Then he heard what he’d just said. She was going to Ireland ? There must be a better solution than leaving the country entirely. There had to be, because her leaving with Oliver was the last thing he wanted.
    “And now?” he asked, as if she might have reconsidered since a moment ago. Since he’d become involved.
    She pursed her lips, looking at once lovely and disgusted by his question. “Do you think your catching me changes anything?”
    Not in and of itself, no. He didn’t think he made a difference. And yet… “You can’t run.”
    She looked him square in the face. He’d never seen a more beautiful, or more determined-looking, woman. “Can’t I?”
    He managed to keep his voice even. What he wanted to do was seize her wrists and force her to accept his help. She was a spitfire. He didn’t think she ever