Winning the Wallflower: A Novella by Eloisa James Page B

reasons.
    If not from competition with his cousin, then because he couldn’t bear to lose any competition, ever. He hadn’t answered that part of her question, she noticed.
    He took her hand and, without asking permission, began to remove her riding gloves. “You owe me a last question,” he said, looking at her hands and not at her face.
    “It will have to wait,” Lucy told him. “I can’t think of anything in particular I’m interested in knowing about you at the moment. You mustn’t assume that everyone finds you as fascinating as you do yourself.”
    He glanced up, smiling, and her heart thumped at the sight. “That hadn’t the force of your insult last night. I do not find myself fascinating at all: quite the opposite.” He poked her gloves into her coat pocket and took her hand again.
    “All right, I have one final question,” she said, trying to ignore the weakness she felt in her knees at his touch of his fingertips on her bare hand.
    They began walking down the street.
    “What are you most afraid of?” she asked.
    “Scandal. The very idea of a scandal that comes anywhere near what my mother caused by running off with my father makes me feel half-cracked.” His mouth tightened.
    “They married in Gretna Green, didn’t they?” Lucy asked. She was trying to pay attention, but she couldn’t help thinking about the way his large hand curled around hers. She had held hands with no one since Beata died.
    “Yes.”
    He said nothing more.
    Lucy could hardly pretend ignorance of the scandal, given her mother’s inability—or refusal—to mask her feelings in Cyrus’s presence. “Why would your parents’ love affair make you avoid all the beautiful women the ton has to offer?” she asked. “Were you afraid that you’d be overcome by passion and run off to Gretna Green?”
    “No,” he said unhesitatingly. “And you are beautiful.”
    “Did you think that only a much-besought woman would have the opportunity to elope, the way your mother did?”
    His jaw tightened.
    She said it because it needed to be said. “Women’s hearts are not ruled by how appealing they are to men. And I can assure you that even those of us on the margins of the room are able to find men who would ruin us, if we wish.”
    “My father did not ruin my mother. I was born ten months after their wedding,” Cyrus said. His voice was hard.
    She twisted her hand in such a way that she was holding his, rather than the other way around, and then she gave it a squeeze. “My older brother wasn’t born until two years after my parents married.”
    He nodded. “I thought perhaps I wouldn’t consummate my marriage for a few months.”
    Lucy could just imagine the reaction of the woman whom Cyrus married. What if it had been her? She snorted even thinking of it, and then discovered that he was looking down at her with a rather startled expression.
    “Pompous ass again, am I?”
    She bit her lip, trying not to laugh. “If the glove fits . . .”
    “Bloody hell.”
    “I wasn’t pointing to the respectability of my brother’s birth. In truth, my parents did not consummate their marriage for over a year; my mother told me about it last year – preparing me for my debut on the marriage market, I suppose. ”
    “What?”
    “They discovered during their betrothal that they didn’t care for each other.” She stopped. “That isn’t the right word. I suspect that they enraged each other. Yet over time they did come to love each other. And I think that until Beata died they were reasonably happy. But after that, they couldn’t . . . manage it.”
    Cyrus nodded. “I’m sorry.”
    “So,” she said, aiming at a cheerful tone and nearly succeeding, “would you prefer a version of my parents’ marriage over scandalous nuptials?”
    His face didn’t change as he thought about it. He still looked as distant and handsome and too-much-for-her as ever.
    “No,” he said, only after she realized that she was holding her