Page 28 of A Scandal for the Beastly Earl

"I don't know. All I know is that now I have a wife I didn't want, a dog who's probably destroying my kitchen as we speak, and a life that's become infinitely more complicated than I ever intended it to be."

The words should have hurt but strangely, they didn't. Perhaps because he'd delivered them without cruelty, just a kind of weary resignation.

"My turn?" Arabella asked.

He gestured for her to continue.

"I wanted to marry for love. I wanted someone who would see me—not the daughter who needed to make a good match, not the solution to financial problems, just me. Instead, I got caught in a scandal not of my making and married a man who views me as an unwanted complication. So here we are, two people who didn't get what we wanted, trying to make the best of what we have."

"And what do we have?"

"I don't know yet. But I'd like to find out."

"That sounds dangerously like optimism."

"Would pessimism be better?"

"It's usually more accurate."

"My goodness, you're depressing."

To her surprise, he laughed; a short, rusty sound, as if he'd forgotten how. "So I've been told."

"Has anyone told you that you're also rather interesting when you forget to be the Beast of Blackthorn?"

"I don't forget."

"You did just then. When you laughed."

"A momentary lapse."

"Have more of them. They're becoming."

He looked at her then, and for a moment something shifted in his expression. "You're very strange, Lady Blackthorn."

"So you've mentioned. I'm starting to take it as a compliment."

"That's probably wise. I meant it as one."

The second course arrived—some sort of fowl in a sauce that was definitely excellent but still registered only vaguely on Arabella's consciousness. She was too aware of the man beside her, the way his hands moved as he cut his meat and the way candlelight played across his scarred features.

"Tell me about the fire," she said suddenly.

His hands stilled. "That's not a dinner conversation."

"Then tell me later. But tell me. If I'm to be your wife, even in name only, I should know what shaped you."

"Why?"

"Because despite your best efforts to prevent it, we're going to have to coexist. And I can't coexist with a mystery."

"I thought women loved mysterious men."

"In novels, perhaps. In real life, they're exhausting."

Another of those rusty laughs. "You really are extraordinary."

"Is that another way of saying strange?"