To wed a viscount

"You want to marry me."

Eleanor said it flatly, the way one might announce that the sky had, in fact, turned green overnight, or that pigs had recently taken up residence in Hyde Park.

"I want to propose a contract," Henry Blackthorne said, lounging in the chair across from her as though he owned the room, which, to be fair, he technically did. "Marriage is simply the paperwork attached to it."

"How romantic."

"I didn't say I was romantic. I said I was desperate, which is considerably more interesting."

Eleanor studied him across the desk, the notorious Viscount Blackthorne, the man half of London's mothers warned their daughters about and half their husbands quietly envied. He was, infuriatingly, exactly as handsome as the rumors claimed, dark haired, sharp jawed, with the kind of lazy smile that suggested he found the entire world faintly amusing and himself the most amusing part of it.

"Forgive me," Eleanor said, "but I was under the impression you preferred your women unmarried and your evenings spent at establishments respectable ladies aren't meant to know the names of."

"You've heard about the Golden Rose, then."

"Everyone has heard about the Golden Rose, my lord."

"Henry," he corrected, grinning like the correction itself was a small victory. "And you're not wrong. I do prefer my evenings unencumbered. Which is precisely why this arrangement suits me. A wife who expects nothing from me beyond the appearance of respectability. No affection required. No devotion demanded. Simply a signature and a title."

"And why," Eleanor asked, "would I agree to marry a man who intends to keep visiting brothels the moment the ink dries?"

Henry's grin faltered, just slightly, replaced by something almost like irritation. "Because your family owes considerably more money than either of us is comfortable saying aloud in a drawing room, Miss Ashford, and I am, at present, the fastest solution available to you."

Eleanor's jaw tightened. It was a low blow, delivered with entirely too much charm to feel like the insult it was.

"And what, precisely, are you getting from this arrangement," she asked, "beyond a bride you clearly have no interest in touching?"

"My mother," Henry said, and something shifted in his voice, the humor draining out of it all at once, "has informed me that unless I marry and produce an heir within the next eighteen months, she intends to see the estate's income redirected elsewhere. Entirely legally. Entirely within her rights, according to my father's will, which she guards like scripture."

"Your own mother is blackmailing you into marriage."

"My own mother," Henry said, "is tired of watching me drink my way through my inheritance, and has decided the fastest cure is a wife she approves of." He spread his hands, the humor creeping back despite himself. "I confess, Miss Ashford, you were not entirely her first suggestion. But you were mine."

Eleanor blinked. "Why."

"Because you're clever enough to be interesting, and poor enough to need this badly enough to actually agree to it," Henry said, "which means you won't waste either of our time pretending this is a love match. I find that remarkably appealing in a wife."

"How flattering," Eleanor said dryly. "To be chosen for my desperation."

"I did say I was desperate too. I thought that made us rather well matched."

Despite herself, Eleanor felt the corner of her mouth twitch, quickly suppressed. "If I agree to this, my lord, there will be rules."

"Henry," he said again, leaning forward now, elbows on his knees, watching her with an attention that felt entirely too focused for a man who claimed to want nothing from her. "Do go on. I do love rules. Mostly for the pleasure of discovering which ones I enjoy breaking."

"Discretion," Eleanor said, ignoring the comment entirely, though her pulse betrayed her by picking up its pace. "Whatever you do outside this marriage, you keep it far from me and far from any scandal that might touch my name. My family cannot afford another disgrace."

"Agreed."

"No public displays that make me appear a fool. If we are seen together, we are seen as a genuine match, whatever the truth of it privately."

"Also agreed."

"And no expectations," Eleanor said, meeting his eyes squarely, "of anything beyond what is written on that contract. I did not ask for a husband. I certainly did not ask for you."

Something flickered across Henry's face then, quick and unreadable, gone before she could name it. "No expectations," he repeated slowly, as though tasting the words and finding them not quite to his liking. "Very well, Miss Ashford. You have my word."

He rose, crossing to the desk to retrieve a folded paper already prepared, the contract itself, drawn up, she suspected, before she'd even walked through the door.

"One more thing," Eleanor said, as he held it out to her. "Why me, truly? You could have found a dozen women equally desperate and considerably less inclined to argue with you."

Henry's smile returned, slow and dangerous, the kind of smile that had ruined reputations across three counties. "Because, Miss Ashford," he said quietly, "I have a terrible weakness for women who argue with me. I suspect you're about to become my favorite mistake."

Henry had not, in fact, chosen his bride from a list of desperate women, whatever Eleanor seemed to believe. He had chosen her from across a crowded ballroom three weeks earlier, and he'd been thinking about her, rather inconveniently, ever since.

"You're smiling," Julian said, dropping uninvited into the chair across from Henry's desk the morning after the contract was signed. "You never smile this early. It's unsettling."

"I've secured a wife, Julian. I believe that was rather the point of my mother's ultimatum."

"Your mother wanted a wife who might actually manage you," Julian said, helping himself to Henry's brandy despite the hour. "Not one you married in a fortnight without a single soul in London hearing so much as a whisper of courtship."

"There is no courtship to whisper about."

"Clearly. Which is precisely my point." Julian raised his glass in mock salute. "So tell me honestly, since your mother certainly can't be told the truth of any of it.