To Win a Lady's Heart (The Landon Sisters) by Ingrid Hahn

you esteem? Upon someone you…care for?”
    He said nothing.
    Finally, she reached out to touch his arm. “Promise me you’ll think on what I said.”
    Corbeau said nothing. His eyes remained hard, his unwavering gaze stayed fixed. He parted his lips and drew in a long breath.
    She braced herself for his abject refusal to consider anything she’d said.
    But she’d underestimated the man. Apparently, he wasn’t quite so unmovable as she’d originally believed.
    “I promise.”
    A blade cut through the center of Grace’s heart. The look on his face as he’d issued his assurance to her had left no question as to exactly what it cost him to say those words.

Chapter Eleven
    Of course he didn’t want to push her. But there was a measure of reassurance in what she’d said to him, if for little more reason than she’d trusted him enough to confide. Was it enough that he might hope he was moving any closer to winning her?
    Knowing how she and her family were treated was a devil of a tricky problem. It wasn’t as if he could charge into all the ballrooms of Mayfair and demand at knifepoint that the Landons be accepted. Not being able to do anything left a gaping hole in the middle of his chest.
    Corbeau was not used to being ineffectual. It was hellishly uncomfortable—worse than having shackles locked about his ankles. At least shackles would be a tangible item for him to struggle against.
    He studied her troubled face. It wasn’t enough to tell her he didn’t care about the past—or anyone in the future who might judge her for what couldn’t be helped. This was her struggle, one she had to overcome before she could be his.
    He would have to help her.
    Somehow.
    Following the direction of her gaze, he found himself looking upon the row of his younger guests happily engaged in a buoyant reel. “Do you wish to dance?” It looked only slightly more favorable than wading through pig muck, but such things didn’t matter where Grace was concerned.
    “Thank you, my lord, but no.” She tried to smile.
    “Are you regretting telling me so much?”
    She thought a moment. “No, actually. I think you ought to understand the groundings for my objections to this marriage. Marrying you would solve a good number of my problems—but at what price?”
    “Marriages have started on shakier grounds than a little scandal, my lady.”
    “Nothing is a little scandal where the late Lord Bennington’s daughters are concerned, but that isn’t the point. The point is that I couldn’t live with myself.”
    He took a breath. “I thought about what you said.”
    She turned to him in surprise. “Already?”
    “I meant about the maid’s predicament.”
    “I don’t think…” She pressed her lips together, brows crossing, and took a pause, seemingly gathering her thoughts. “I think it would be better were we to speak no more on the matter, my lord.”
    “I want you to know you would be my full partner in life. I can’t abide the idea of any woman being in a marriage where she might be stifled by the likes of a priggish husband. Least of all you.”
    She leveled him with a hard look, all but sending him tumbling backward. “I thank you for such sentiment, my lord. But you’ve peripherally involved me in something to which I have no claim. I’m not your wife, so I’ve no right to offer an opinion in the matter of how you choose to deal with such things. But that leaves me with only a question about what I would be allowed were I to become your wife.”
    “I want to make something perfectly clear right now.” It was becoming difficult to keep his voice schooled at an appropriate level. The room was expansive and they were well apart from the others, but living here since birth was more than enough to teach him how well sound could carry through the space. “There will be no further discussion of what is or is not allowed. I’m not going to be making demands of you.”
    “Aren’t you?”
    “Am I?” He held her gaze,