Free Mary's Christmas Knight by Moriah Densley Page A

you.” He quit before adding, You belong to me.
    She turned and speared him with a half-angry , half-incredulous look. He let her stare.
    “ Mary Diana Cavendish. Marry me.”
    “No! ”
    “You’re right — I must sound like a lunatic.”
    “Yes, you do.”
    “Well, I haven’t had much practice proposing, and you’ve had plenty rejecting, so it’s not quite fair.”
    “You’ve had enough practice.” Her tone made it clear she thought him dubious. If she believed the rumors, then she must think him a bad sort indeed.
    Wes refused to rise to his own defense. In time his character should speak for itself, and if she was ever brave enough to ask frankly if he’d killed his fiancée, he’d tell her the truth. “You should be warned; I don’t surrender easily.”
    “I wish you would. I’m tired.”
    He let out a breath and decided to take her at her word rather than leave her be, as she’d politely requested. With an arm draped across her shoulders, he opened his coat, tucked her against his side, then wrapped his coat around them both to counter the chill on the breeze and the cold seeping from the stone wall.
    She went without protest, fitting her head in the dip between his chest and shoulder. Some thoughtful designer had made Mary just her height and Wesley just his size so that they fit together precisely the way they should. Didn’t she notice?
    Minutes later he felt the tentative brush of her fingers on his lapel. He hummed in his throat, encouraging her, waiting. Before long she grew bolder and slipped her fingers under his collar and rubbed over his shoulder, back and forth across the ridge where his pectoral joined the deltoid muscle. If she’d been uninspired by a smaller man, then the way her hand moved on his skin seemed to convey appreciation.
    He cleared his throat. “Is it the money?”
    “Hmm?”
    “I don’t want your money, Mary. I have my own. The Duke of Sutherland is my uncle. I have a generous allowance.”
    “Oh.”
    The insight that his roguish persona appealed to her prevented him from clarifying that he was second in line to inherit. The philanthropic, artistic, rebellious part of Mary, which he suspected she’d revealed to no one else but him, would not be lured by the prospect of being a duchess.
    The horseshoe nails in his pocket bothered him . He took them out, tossing away the one with jagged edges but keeping the smoother one, which he tuned over in his fingers. “What else am I lacking, Mary?”
    “Open the front door so I can roll out the list.”
    His hand already resting in the crook of her waist, he gave her a light pinch and chuckled. With his wife, his inclination would be to spank her for teasing. “Be serious. I want to know. Which of my faults are unforgivable?”
    She sighed, drew breath, then didn’t speak. Finally she said, “You are impulsive , and therefore inconstant, I wager. How can you make my acquaintance yesterday and propose marriage today? That sounds like a morphine delusion to me.”
    “On the contrary, my head has never been clearer. Haven’t you ever laid eyes on something fo r the first time but felt it had been yours forever? It resonates with truth and gives you peace. How else can you explain your behavior?”
    She made a sound like an angry hen. “My behavior?”
    “I assume you’re not in the habit of climbing into a fellow’s lap and kissing him into tomorrow.”
    “Of course not!”
    “Not until you met me. Because you know me already. And I think you do care for me, Mary.”
    “How could I? You are a rapscallion and a libertine. And I never met a beautiful man who wasn’t vain.”
    “Confidence is not vanity.”
    “But you couldn’t possibly be satisfied with Mary Cavendish forever. And I don’t want a philandering husband.”
    “I would never.”
    “I want a knight on a white charger.”
    He almost gestured to the gelding and said, “Will a dapple grey do?” then was glad he didn’t make a joke when she’d