Tender Torment by Alicia Meadowes

speak with you at supper, and I have a preference for blondes.”
    A heated blush traveled from Marisa’s bosom to her cheeks in a wave of hot embarrassment which Straeford regarded impassively.
    She dared no longer look at him. What did he mean by accosting her this way? She wanted to slap his face, but her good manners
     forbade such behavior. Obediently she took his proffered arm.
    Her obvious distress angered the earl. He hated his own rude behavior, but he hated this marriage auction even more. He could
     not stem the flow of his cruelty.
    “I’ll take this one,” he claimed bluntly passing in front of Loftus and marching through French doors into the small salon
     beyond with Marisa firmly clamped to his side.
    Angus Loftus too was suffering pangs of distress. The earl was being deliberately provocative. It would have given Angus great
     pleasure to show the arrogant devil the door. But ambition warred with pride and ambition won. He would not be provoked into
     hasty action.
    “Meg, play something for our guests!” Angus demanded of his younger daughter who was staring thunderstruck at the earl and
     her sister as they left the room.
    “Father, it ain’t proper,” John Loftus whispered into his father’s ear.
    “Quiet, puppy.” Angus silenced his son.
    The earl led Marisa into the salon, but she would not be seated as he would have her be. She preferred standing for this confrontation.
    A branch of candles on a console cast flickering shadows about the small chamber as they regarded one another silently for
     some moments, each striving to take a measure of the other. The girl’s slender form, simply draped in flowing amber satin,
     presented an image of elegant allure. The soft sensuous curves of her body tempted the earl, and almost drove his real purpose
     from his mind.
    “Well,” he demanded at last, “will I do?”
    Marisa did not reply at once, but studied the arrogant face with its determined mouth set beneath those glittering green eyes
     and black brows. She felt a tremor of fear. Her audacious captor in his black silk jacket and black breeches that hugged his
     powerful thighs seemed a dark demon about to swoop down on her. She could believe those tales of cruelty that were whispered
     about him. He held his broad shoulders in a stiff military stance that bespoke unbending authority. His hands, like the rest
     of his physique, were slender but strong. In all he was a formidable specimen of manhood whose physical perfection attracted
     while his cold hauteur repelled. He looked so harsh and forbidding that all sense flew from her mind, and she had not two
     coherent thoughts to pull together since he had suddenly seized her.
    “I… I am at a loss, sir.”
    “Come now, ma’am, you know why I am here to-night.”
    “Yes, I do… but…”
    “Well, then.”
    “I… we…” Marisa stammered, horrified at her loss of composure. What was his power that paralyzed her brain? “You are… offering
     for
me,
my lord?”
    “Indeed I am.”
    “What about Margaret? We thought she would be the one.”
    “I prefer you.”
    “But she… Meg’s heart will be broken.”
    “That is not my concern.”
    His answer finally stung some sense into her. “How cruel you are!”
    “Best know the truth from the start. I make no apology for my personal qualities.”
    “What other qualities besides cruelty do you profess to recommend yourself for matrimony?”
    Her audacity surprised them both.
    “Why, I offer…” and here a glint of humor flashed in his piercing eyes, “experience of command, wisdom of the world, and
     nerves of steel; all suitable accomplishments for the proposed state of matrimony, I daresay.” His smile gleamed wickedly
     in the dusky room.
    “I think you also offer arrogance, conceit, and self-consequence!” Marisa retorted heatedly.
    “In large measure, my dear. In large measure.”
    “I do not think those qualities lend themselves to matrimonial harmony,” Marisa claimed,