He looked at her now with an expression she had never seen on his face before. Hopeful.

She tried to imagine him as her husband, because she liked him and her future was hanging by a thread and both rash decisions and dithering could prove catastrophic at this point.

He was a good man, and he cared about her well-being. His looks, scent, and dress sense were perfectly agreeable, and she expected he had a housekeeper to do the housework, so she would have her head and hands free for assisting him. He was also not an easy man—he was wholly cerebral and irritable, and he’d spend most of his life in his books, but given that she was used to that, she’d deal with it well.

But could she imagine him coming home, and loosening his cravat, and sliding his shirt off his shoulders, and have him cover her with his bare body—

She felt herself flush. “You . . . you mentioned not wanting any children,” she said.

Jenkins sat up straighter, sensing they were moving into a negotiation. “I don’t mind them as a concept. But for us, well, they would be beside the point, would they not?”

“Most people would argue that the point of marriage is children.”

Jenkins made a face. “Most people are bleating fools. My wife would have to understand and assist my work. I am my work. And if you were a man, you’d already be making a name for yourself in our field, given how good you are, but the moment you began to breed, you would become utterly addlebrained, all your razor-sharp thinking blunted by the relentless demands of squalling brats. You would lose a few teeth, too; trust me, I have seen all of it happen to each of my six sisters.”

She should take offense. In the history of marriage proposals, this had to be the most shockingly unromantic one ever uttered. But then, as a near-felon, she was not much of a catch, and it was still more respectable than her other offer, the one for the position as a kept woman.

Her silence seemed to make Jenkins nervous. He fiddled with his pen. “Have I perhaps drawn the wrong conclusion?” he asked. “Since you seemed to be a spinster by choice, I didn’t think a family was your priority.”

She had to force herself to look him in the eye. “I just wondered whether you are proposing a marriage in name only.”

To his credit, he did not reply at once but seemed to weigh the question with the consideration it was due. “Is that what you would prefer?” he finally said. His eyes were unreadable behind his reflecting glasses, but his shoulders appeared tense.

Yes would have been the obvious answer to his question. Then again, on paper, he was more than what she could have ever hoped for: an academic, comfortable, and free to ignore the more petty social mores under the guise of brilliant eccentricity. Most important, she liked him. Liked, not loved. He’d never have the power to crush her heart. But if she refused him the marriage bed, would he respect her decision without growing surly over time?

“I would like some time to consider the proposal,” she heard herself say. “A week. If that is agreeable to you.”

Jenkins nodded after a brief pause. “A week. Perfectly agreeable.”

A week. A week to consider an alternative to going back to Gilbert’s house. To tell him that studying had been too much of a challenge for her female brain after all, and that she’d gladly be an unpaid drudge for the rest of her days, with no certain future. Perhaps it wouldn’t even come to the workhouse. Perhaps she’d end up in Bedlam, muttering to herself that she’d had dukes and Oxford dons vying for her attention in days gone by.

She left the office, thinking she should have just said yes.

A duke had no business attending an investment summit. Glances followed Sebastian around Greenfield’s town house, and he knew he would have raised less gossip trawling a low-class bordello. But men like Julien Greenfield wouldn’t pass insider information on to Sebastian’s investment manager, nor over a discreet dinner; officially grace my home, and receive first-class intelligence in return, that was the deal. Even business was never to be had without the politics, certainly not without the petty power plays.

Greenfield plucked two brandy tumblers from a tray floating past. “I suggest we proceed to the sitting room; these chaps are really keen to make your personal acquaintance,” he said, handing one glass to Sebastian and wrapping his plump hand around the other.

Sebastian carried his untouched drink down the corridor, listening to Greenfield’s assessment of the diamond mine of which Sebastian planned to become a shareholder. The two South African business partners in Greenfield’s sitting room could potentially add a million pounds to his accounts, depending on how trustworthy he found them.

His first impression was promising: firm handshakes, good eye contact. The younger of the two had started out as a mining engineer, so he knew the business inside out and his description of the current project status matched the information Sebastian’s man had compiled on the duo.

Disaster struck when he caught a familiar figure from the corner of his eye.

The businessman’s speech turned into meaningless noise.

Annabelle.

There on an easel, guarded by a footman, was a life-sized, breathtaking, glowing version of Annabelle.

Her green eyes stared back at him heavy-lidded with some private triumph. Her shoulders were thrown back, her hair whipping about her like the flame of a torch in a storm. From below the hem of her clinging white gown peeked a familiar pale foot.

A giant fist seemed to squeeze the air from his lungs.

Hell. He was in a peculiar sort of hell, where all paths always circled back to the same thing.

He drew closer to the painting as if in a dream, his gaze riveted on her face.

He had stroked these proud cheekbones; he had kissed the fine nose. He had felt this lush mouth on his cock.

Two men were at her feet, bare-chested and on their knees, one dark, one fair, their heads tilted back to glower at her with a rather too-familiar expression of awe and resentment and longing.

Helen of Troy, not as a prize, but as a vindicated puppet master.

“I see you’re admiring my daughter’s handiwork,” Greenfield remarked.

Sebastian grunted.

“Extraordinary, isn’t she?” Greenfield tipped his glass toward Annabelle. “Before my own daughter nagged me into letting her go up to Oxford, I was convinced all bluestockings sported beards and warts. Imagine my surprise when she introduced this young woman to us at your New Year’s Eve ball. I stood happily corrected.”

“I’d stand happily,” the engineer said. “I’d launch a thousand ships for that.”

“I say, she’d launch me,” drawled the older one, and they all sniggered.

“How much,” Sebastian said, his voice edged with such menace that the sniggering stopped abruptly. “How much for this?”

Greenfield’s bushy brows flew up. “Now, I don’t think it is considered for sale—”

“Come now, Greenfield,” Sebastian said, “everything has a price.”

The banker sobered. This language, he understood. “It is certainly negotiable,” he said. “I’m sure Harriet could be moved to part with it for ample compensation.”

“Excellent,” said Sebastian. He knocked back the brandy in one gulp and set his tumbler down hard on a sideboard. “Have it wrapped and sent to my house in Wiltshire. Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

He stalked from the house, leaving a trail of worried and bemused people in his wake who had accidentally been hit by his black stare. A murmur rose: Did you see the aloof Duke of Montgomery storming out of Greenfield’s place, looking dark and mercurial like Vulcan himself?

Meanwhile, the ducal landau was on course to Victoria Station at breakneck speed.