Regency Rumour

Never Trust a Rake

Annie Burrows

Reforming the Viscount

Annie Burrows

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Never Trust a Rake

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Reforming the Viscount

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Copyright

Never Trust a Rake

ANNIE BURROWS has been writing Regency romances for Mills & Boon since 2007. Her books have charmed readers worldwide, having been translated into nineteen different languages, and some have gone on to win the coveted Reviewers’ Choice award from Cataromance. For more information, or to contact the author, please visit www.annie-burrows.co.uk or you can find her on facebook at facebook.com/AnnieBurrowsUK

With thanks for all the help and support the Novelistas of North Wales provide. You are a great bunch of ladies.

Chapter One

Ye Gods, he’d known it would not be easy, but he hadn’t expected them all to be quite so predictable.

Lord Deben strode out on to the terrace, deserted since the night air was damp with drizzle, made it to the parapet and leaned heavily on the copingstone, where he drew in several deep breaths of air blessedly unadulterated by perfume, sweat and candle grease.

First to run true to form had been tonight’s hostess, Lady Twining. Her eyes had practically popped out of her head when she’d recognised exactly upon whose arm the Dowager Lady Dalrymple was leaning. He had only ever once before had anything to do with a come-out ball, and that had been his own sister’s—a glittering affair which he’d hosted himself some four years ago. He could see Lady Twining wondering why on earth he had suddenly decided to accompany such a stickler for good form to such an insipid event, held in the home of a family who would never aspire to be part of his usual, racy set.

While they had slowly mounted the stairs, he’d watched her rapidly working out how to deal with the dilemma his attendance posed. She could hardly refuse to admit him, since she’d sent his godmother an invitation and he was evidently acting as her escort. But, oh, how she wanted to. She clearly felt that letting him in amongst the virtuous damsels currently thronging her corridors would be like opening the henhouse door to a prowling fox.

But she didn’t have the courage to say what she was thinking. And by the time he’d arrived at the head of the receiving line, it was all what an honour to welcome you into our home, my lord, and we did not think to have such an august presence as yours …

No. She had not actually said that last phrase, but that was what she’d meant by all that gushing and fluttering. The presence of a belted earl was such a social coup for her that it far outweighed the potential danger he posed to the moral tone of the assembly.

And as for those assembled guests—his lip curled in utter contempt. They had divided neatly into two camps: those who reacted solely to his reputation by clucking and fluttering like outraged hens in defence of their precious chicks and those, he grimaced, with an eye to the main chance.

He’d felt their beady eyes following his progress into the house. Heard the whispered swell of speculation. Why was he here? And with Lady Dalrymple, of all people? Was it a sign that this Season he was at last going to do his duty to his family and take a wife?

On the outside chance that the most notorious womaniser of his generation, the most dangerous flirt, was actually going to look about him for a woman to take her place at his side in society, as his legally wed countess, the most ambitious amongst them had promptly begun elbowing each other aside in their determination to thrust their simpering charges under his nose.

The fact that they’d guessed correctly didn’t make their approaches any less repellent. Which was why he would have to attend more events such as this and endure the vapid discourse that passed for conversation and the gauche mannerisms … and sometimes even the spotty complexions. How else could a man be absolutely sure that his first child, at least, was of his own get unless he married a girl who’d only just emerged from the schoolroom? And the duty he owed his proud lineage made that an absolute imperative.

But did they really think he’d propose to the first chit he met, at the first event he attended since he’d made up his mind it was time, and past time, he knuckled down to the fate his position made inescapable?

He leaned back and tilted his face to the rain. It managed to cool his skin, even if it could do nothing to soothe the roiling bitterness churning in his guts. Nothing could do that.

Unless … He stilled, as the most fantastic thought occurred to him. He didn’t think he could face many more such events as this. And what was there to choose between all those pallid, eager, young females, after all? Why the hell shouldn’t he just propose to the very first chit to cross his path when he went back inside? That would at least get the whole unpleasant business over and done with as quickly and painlessly as possible.

What would it take—a year out of his life? Propose to one of those girls who’d been paraded before him like brood mares at Tattersalls. Get the banns read, go through the travesty of a ceremony, bed her, then keep on bedding her until he could be certain she was increasing. Hope that the child was a boy. Then, with the succession sorted, he could return to his carefree existence and she could …

He sucked in a short, sharp breath, bowing his head again as he considered what his wife would get up to, left to her own devices.

Anything. Anything and everything. Nobody knew better than he just how far bored young matrons would go in the pursuit of sexual adventure.

With an exclamation of impatience he pulled his watch from his waistcoat pocket and turned to catch the light from the ballroom windows so that he could check the time. His brow raised in disbelief. Had he only been in this house for thirty minutes? It could be hours before Lady Dalrymple was ready to leave. She would want to watch the dancing, gossip with those of her cronies who were present and take supper.

So be it. His mouth twisted with distaste. He had to fill in the time somehow, so it might as well be following his impulse to deal with the marriage situation as swiftly and cleanly as possible. He would return to the ballroom and ask the first girl to cross his path to dance with him. If she accepted, and if he didn’t find her too repulsive, he would locate her father and start talking settlements.

There. The whole abominable, damnable thing settled. He would not even have to alert the ton to his intent by setting foot in that hellhole known as Almack’s.

And yet, when he replaced his watch in his pocket, his feet remained welded to the spot. And his gaze stayed fixed straight ahead, though his eyes were not seeing the dampening gardens below the terrace, but the abyss into which he was about to throw himself.

It would not matter if he could not grow to like the anonymous chit who waited for him inside that house very much, as long as he could contemplate bedding her for the requisite amount of time to get an heir. If he didn’t grow fond of her, she wouldn’t have the power to hurt him. Humiliate him. He could watch her carrying on her love affairs with the same kind of amused indifference displayed by all the husbands he’d cuckolded over the years. Whose bored, dissatisfied wives had been actively seeking younger, more energetic men to provide them with the spice their dutifully contracted marriages so singularly lacked.

Within the bounds of such a lukewarm arrangement, he might even be able to tolerate her offspring. Perhaps even treat them with kindness, rather than calling them bastards to their face. And they’d think of each other as brothers and sisters, and care for and support each other, instead of …

A swell of music issuing from the ballroom pulled him abruptly from the maelstrom of negativity that always churned through him whenever a stray thought escaped its confines and crept back towards his childhood.

He turned slowly, annoyed to have his brief interlude of solitude interrupted, though he hadn’t expected to see a female silhouette in the doorway that led back to the house.

‘Why, Lord Deben!’

The girl gasped and raised her hand to her throat in a dramatic gesture, intended, he supposed cynically, to betoken surprise.

‘I did not think anyone else would be out here,’ she said, glancing along the length of the otherwise deserted terrace and back.

‘Why, indeed, would anyone venture forth in such inclement weather?’

Undeterred by the dryness of his tone, she advanced a step or two and giggled.

‘I should not be out here with you, all alone, should I? Mama says you are dangerous.’

Now that she was closer he could see she was quite a pretty little thing. Good features, clear skin, expensively and fashionably clad. And well used to male attention, to judge from the way she was preening under his leisurely, not to say insolent, perusal of her assets.

‘Your mama is correct. I am dangerous.’

‘I am not afraid of you,’ she said, sashaying right up to him. She came so close that the perfume she wore wafted to his nostrils from her hot little body. She was breathing hard. She was excited. A little nervous, too, but mostly excited.

‘You have never been known to harm a virtuous damsel,’ she said breathily. ‘Your reputation has all been gained with young matrons, or widows.’

‘Your mama should have warned you that it is not the thing to discuss a man’s amours with him.’

She smiled. Knowingly.

‘But, Lord Deben,’ she murmured, sliding one hand up the lapel of his jacket, ‘I am sure you want your future wife to understand these things. To be understanding …’

He gripped her hand and detached it from his clothing, filled with a gut-deep revulsion.

‘On the contrary, madam, that is the last thing I want from the woman I shall marry.’

It was no good. He was more like his father than he’d thought. Even if he took the greatest care never to fall in love with his own wife, he wouldn’t be able to bear the thought of her being understanding. Of expecting him to carry on as though he was still a bachelor, so that she could enjoy her own sexual adventures.

In short, of becoming a cuckold.

‘You had better return to the ballroom. As you yourself said, it is quite improper of you to be out here, alone, with a man like me.’

She pouted. ‘It is absurd of you to preach propriety, when everyone knows you have never had any time for it.’

Then, in a move so swift it took him completely by surprise, she flung both arms about his neck.

‘God dammit, what are you about?’ He reached up and tried to disentangle himself from her hold. He managed to prise one hand off, but then she dropped her fan, leaving her other hand free to find purchase. When he stepped smartly back in a more determined effort to evade her grasping hands, she clung tighter, so that he found himself dragging her with him.

‘Let go of me, you impudent baggage,’ he growled. ‘I do not know what you think you will achieve by flinging yourself at me like this, but …’

There was a shriek. Light flooded the terrace as the doors from the house burst open. The girl who had been clinging so tenaciously slumped against him, pressing her cheek to his chest.

‘Lord Deben!’ A well-built matron stalked towards him, her jowls quivering with indignation. ‘Let go of my daughter this instant!’

He still had his hands on her wrists, from when he’d been trying to prise her off. As he attempted to push her upright, she gave a little moan and arched theatrically backwards, as though in a faint. Instinctively, he caught her as she began to fall. And though part of him would have dearly liked to let her slump into a crumpled heap on the damp flagstones, another part of him knew that were he to give in to such a base instinct, it would only make the situation look worse for him.

At any moment, another person might take it into their heads to come outside, and what would they see? The wicked Lord Deben standing over the prone body of a shocked, half-ravished innocent? Or the wicked Lord Deben standing with the swooning victim of his attempted seduction clasped in his arms? With the indignant mother demanding the release of his supposed victim?

Whichever tableau they would see, the outcome would be the same. These two females would expect him to make reparation by marrying this scheming little baggage.

He had never been so angry in his whole life. Caught in the kind of trap a greenhorn should have seen coming. And on his first foray into the world of so-called innocents! How could he have so woefully underestimated the predatory nature of womankind? He’d dismissed those virtually indistinguishable white-clad girls in the ballroom as vapid, brainless ciphers. But this girl had a quick mind. And an immense amount of ambition. He was the wealthiest, youngest, most highly ranking man she was ever likely to get within what he guessed was her limited social reach. And she had taken ruthless advantage of his momentary lapse of concentration to compromise him. She didn’t care a whit for his character. Or have a qualm about marrying a man she believed was incapable of fidelity. In fact, she’d told him she would condone it.

What was worse, the chit was not to know he was, in actual fact, looking for a wife. For all she knew, he was still an obdurate rake.

And yet she had persisted in setting out to ruthlessly snare him.

Cunning, ambitious, ruthless and amoral. If his mother were still alive, she would have seen this girl as a kindred spirit.

‘It is quite obvious what has been going on out here,’ said the girl’s mother, drawing herself up to her full height. Then, just as he’d expected, she said, ‘You must make amends.’

‘Offer marriage, you mean?’ That did it. He no longer cared if the old besom did think him ungallant. He thrust her clinging daughter from him with such determination she tottered a few steps and had to clutch at her mother to prevent herself tripping over.

Had he really been toying with the idea of proposing to the first apparently eligible female to cross his path? Was he mad? If he married a creature like this one, history would repeat itself, with the added twist that he would never be entirely certain who had fathered any of the children for whom he would be obliged to provide.

He leaned back against the balustrade and folded his arms. He was just about to inform them that no power on earth would induce him to offer this girl his name when another voice cried out, ‘Oh, please, it is not what it looks like!’

The three of them at his end of the terrace whirled towards the shadows at the far end, from whence the voice had emanated.

He could just make out a slender female form wriggling out from between two massive earthenware planters, behind which she had clearly been concealing herself.

‘For one thing,’ the still-shadowed girl said, reaching down to free her gown from some unseen obstruction, ‘I was out here the whole time. Miss Waverley was never alone with Lord Deben.’

Having freed her skirts, she straightened up and walked towards them. She hovered on the fringe of the pool of light in which they stood, as though reluctant to fully emerge from the shadows. But he’d glimpsed moss smearing the regulation white of her gown as a corner of it had fluttered into the light. And there was what looked like dried leaves caught in the tangled curls which tumbled round a pair of thin shoulders.

‘That’s all very well,’ the outraged mother of the scheming Miss Waverley, as he now knew her to be named, put in, ‘but how did he come to have her in his arms?’

Miss Waverley was still clinging to her mother with the air of a tragedy queen, but on her pretty face he could see the first stirrings of alarm.

‘Oh, well, she …’ The dishevelled girl hesitated. She darted a look towards the worried Miss Waverley, then drew herself upright and looked the older woman straight in the eye. ‘She dropped her fan. And then she sort of … stumbled up against Lord Deben, who naturally prevented her from falling.’

Well, she’d certainly presented the whole sequence of events in such a way as to put an entirely different complexion on the matter. Without telling an outright lie.

In fact, it had been very neatly done.

He pushed himself away from the balustrade and took the two paces necessary to reach the fan, which he bent down and retrieved.

‘No gentleman,’ he said, having decided to take his cue from the girl who, for some reason, reminded him of autumn personified, ‘not even one with a reputation as tarnished as my own, could have permitted such a fair creature to fall,’ he said, returning the fan to the set-faced Miss Waverley with a flourish. He had no idea why the Spirit of Autumn had decided to put a stop to Miss Waverley’s scheme, but he was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Miss Waverley’s mother was looking pensively at the uneven edges of the damp flagstones on which they stood.

Miss Waverley’s eyes were darting from him to the girl who had emerged from the shadows. He could almost see her mind working. It was no longer a case of her word against his. There were two people prepared to swear nothing untoward had occurred here this night.

‘Sir Humphrey should get these flags attended to, don’t you think?’ He smiled frostily at the girl who had attempted to compromise him. ‘Before somebody comes to grief. But at least I have the satisfaction of knowing that you have not come to any lasting hurt from this night’s little encounter.’

She flung up her chin and glowered at him.

Her mother, however, was more gracious in defeat.

‘Oh, well, I see now how it was, of course. And I do thank you for coming to my daughter’s aid, my lord. Though why she was out here with Miss Gibson, I cannot begin to imagine. She is not our sort of person. Not our sort of person at all.’

The matron shot the bedraggled nymph a look of contempt.

Did he imagine it, or did she shrink from the scrutiny, as though she was half-thinking of ducking behind the ornamental urns again?

‘Nor can I imagine how my dear Isabella has come to be on such intimate terms with her. Really, child,’ she said, addressing her daughter, whose mouth was pouting sulkily, ‘I cannot think what on earth possessed you to accompany a person like that out here, where you might have soiled your gown. Or caught a chill. How on earth,’ she said, rounding on the hapless Miss Gibson, ‘did you manage to persuade my daughter to come out here? And what were you doing, hiding at the end of the terrace down there, leaving my daughter alone with a gentleman? Have you no notion how improper your action was? How selfish?’

Though he couldn’t help wondering himself how Miss Gibson would answer that barrage of questions, he had his own list, which were far more pertinent, given that he knew what had actually occurred.

The one which was uppermost, however, was to wonder why she had not taken the chance to expose Miss Waverley for the scheming jade she was, if she was so keen to put a spoke in her wheel. Her description of the sordid little scene had been so neatly wrapped up that Miss Waverley would walk away from this encounter with her reputation untarnished. Yet concern for Miss Waverley’s reputation could not have been what prompted her. She’d come out of hiding before he told them he would never offer her his name, no matter what tales they told. His reputation was already black as pitch, so he had nothing to lose. But the Waverley chit would most definitely have got her just deserts if this pair of designing females had attempted to cross swords, socially, with a man of his standing.

All Miss Gibson had needed to do, so far as she was concerned, was to stay concealed behind her plant pots and wait for them all to go away. Had she acted from friendship, then? Had she wanted to save a friend from a disastrous marriage?

No … he didn’t think that was it either. Miss Waverley had, at no point, looked as though she felt anything … friendly about the girl who’d thwarted her ambition. She certainly had not expected her to be out here. She had scanned the terrace for witnesses before staging her attempt to compromise him. And been furious when the Gibson girl had emerged and scotched her plans to bag herself an earl.

Enemies, then? No … from what the mother had said they barely mixed in the same social circles. Which meant they were not likely to have had opportunity to become either enemies, or friends.

Whichever way he looked at it, he kept on returning to the same unsettling conclusion. Her actions had nothing to do with Miss Waverley at all.

She had been attempting to rescue him.

He leaned back against the parapet once more, one hand on either side of him, and watched her in fascination. She was not making any attempt to defend herself while Miss Waverley’s mother rang a peal over her. She scarcely seemed to notice either the tirade, or the poisonous glances Miss Waverley kept darting at her.

She was just standing there, shoulders slumped, as though she simply did not care what anyone thought of her, or said of her. As though she wasn’t even fully attending to the vitriol being poured upon her innocent head.

Right up until the moment when Miss Waverley’s mother said, ‘But, then, what can one expect from somebody hailing from such a family as yours?’

At that, the change which came over her was remarkable. She lifted her head and stepped forwards, so that she was for the first time fully illuminated by the light streaming from the ballroom windows. All the colours of autumn glowed in her wild tresses. Rich conker browns, threaded with gold and russet of leaves on the turn. And her demeanour was so fierce, it was like witnessing a storm whipping up out of nowhere, blasting away all shreds of one of those drear November mornings which so depressed him.

‘One can expect honourable behaviour,’ she said. ‘I was concealing myself only because I did not wish anyone, especially not a gentleman, to see that I had been crying.’

Now that he could believe. Miss Gibson did not weep prettily. Her nose, which was a shade too large for her rather thin face, was red and running. Her cheeks were mottled and streaked with what looked like not only tears, but horrifically like the effusions from that abomination of a nose.

It made it all the more remarkable for her to have exposed herself to view, in order to intervene in the affairs of two people who were neither her friends, nor, in his case, even a remote acquaintance.

‘I might have known,’ the matron snapped. ‘I hope you are thoroughly ashamed of yourself, young lady. You see what comes of giving way to such a vulgar display of emotion? Not only do you look an absolute disgrace, but your selfish, wilful behaviour has exposed my own, blameless daughter to a situation that might very easily have been misinterpreted!’

Miss Gibson clenched her fists. She looked at the blameless Miss Waverley and took a breath. She was just about to blurt out the truth that would send shock waves rippling through the tranquillity of Miss Twining’s come-out ball, when he saw a look of chagrin cross her face.

Ah. She had just worked out that she could not now tell the complete truth without exposing herself. That was what happened when a woman began to spin a web of lies. She only had to put one foot wrong, to run the risk of becoming hopelessly enmeshed herself.

At least she had the intelligence to see it. She closed her mouth, lifted her chin and regarded the mother in stony-faced silence.

He felt his lips twitch as the gale blew itself out. Really, this was better than a play.

It was perhaps unfortunate that Miss Gibson glanced at him at the exact moment he began to see the humour in the situation. She caught his amused expression and returned it with a scowl that could have curdled milk.

‘Well,’ said the matron, who had missed the exchange of glances, because she’d been busy placing a comforting arm about her thwarted daughter’s shoulders. ‘I can see that you were motivated by the kindness of your heart, my dear, but really, it would have been better to have sought out Miss Gibson’s chaperon and let her deal with it.’

His brief foray into amusement at the absurdity of it all was over. The matron’s attitude was almost as offensive as that of her daughter. Here was a young female, so distressed that she’d run outside to give way to her emotions, and all she was getting was a lecture. It was not right. Somebody ought to be offering her some comfort. After all, females did not weep with such abandon, not in private, without having very good reason. They must know that, surely?

He looked at the mother. At Miss Waverley herself. And frowned.

He did not have much in the way of empathy for the sensibilities of females, but he was clearly the only person out here who felt even the tiniest scrap of it towards the bedraggled Miss Gibson. Not that he would dream of attempting to deal with her personally. He’d never had any success soothing weeping females. On the few occasions he’d attempted to offer consolation to one of his sisters when indulging in a fit of tears, his brand of rational argument had thrown them into something bordering on hysterics.

She needed a sympathetic female. The chaperon that the Waverley woman had mentioned—that was the woman who would know how to deal with her.

He pushed himself off the balustrade. ‘Allow me to rectify that error,’ he said, ‘by performing that office this very minute. If one of you would be so good as to furnish me with her name?’

‘Oh,’ said the matron with a sneer, ‘she is a Mrs Ledbetter. I dare say you would not know her, my lord. Indeed, I cannot think how a woman of her station in life came to secure an invitation to an event such as this.’

He smiled. ‘Indeed. One attends private balls in the expectation of only encountering a better class of person. Mrs Waverley, is it?’

‘Lady Chigwell,’ she simpered.

‘Lady Chigwell,’ he replied, with a bow of acknowledgement. As he straightened up, he caught Miss Gibson’s eye and gave her a wink. But if he had thought she might have relished the thinly veiled snub he had just administered, he was disappointed, meeting only disapproval in her gaze.

Perhaps she had not understood the gesture he had made on her behalf.

‘Miss Gibson,’ he said, closing the distance between them so that he could take her hand, ‘may I tell Mrs Ledbetter you will wait for her out here?’ In an undertone, he added, ‘What does she look like?’

Miss Gibson blinked up at him with eyes that, at close quarters, he could see were still swimming in unshed tears. He squeezed her hand gently, trying to offer her both his gratitude and, somewhat to his surprise, some reassurance. There was not another female in the world, to whom he was not related, who could testify that Lord Deben had shown the slightest hint of concern for her welfare.

But no man, not even one as immune to fellow feeling as people often accused him of being, could fail to be moved by her plight. She had come out here to indulge in a private fit of tears, only to find herself obliged to have her breakdown exposed, and, to crown it all, to have not only her own character, but that of her chaperon quite unjustly ripped to shreds.

‘She is wearing a purple turban,’ she hissed in an undertone, ‘with one white and one purple ostrich feather in it. You really cannot miss it.’ And then, snatching her hand from his, she said, ‘I think it would be for the best if I wait out here.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ put in Miss Waverley in a sugary-sweet voice. ‘You would not want to walk across that ballroom, not as you are. You really need to give your face a good wash before you let anyone see you.’

Miss Gibson hastily swiped at her cheeks with the backs of her hands. The effect, since her gloves were as badly soiled as her gown, was unfortunate.

‘Allow me,’ he said, producing a square of monogrammed white silk from his tailcoat pocket with a flourish and offering it to her.

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said gruffly and proceeded to take it from him with such reluctance that he suspected she would have refused it altogether were she not so desperate.

Why was that? he wondered. If she had taken a dislike to him, as seemed to be the case from the way she glared at him, after blowing her nose with a very unladylike thoroughness, then why had she come to his aid in the first place?

Or perhaps, as she had stated, it was just that she did not like to have any gentleman see her in such an unbecoming state of distress.

That must be it.

He turned, satisfied that he had accounted for the unwarranted hostility he could detect in her attitude, and made his way along the terrace, back to the ballroom.

Now all he had to do was find a woman of advancing years, in an ostrich-feathered purple turban, pass on the information that Miss Gibson was outside awaiting her assistance and he could lay the whole matter to rest.

Although he could not quite shake off an unfamiliar feeling of wishing he could do something to alleviate Miss Gibson’s distress. He’d realised, in the instant the threat of becoming leg-shackled to a creature of Miss Waverley’s calibre loomed before him, that he would rather die than face a marriage such as the one endured by his own father. And he was becoming more and more convinced that Miss Gibson had intervened to save him from just such a fate.

That must be it. She could not bear to see anyone forced into a marriage that was not of their own choosing.

Perhaps that was why she was out here crying. From what Lady Chigwell had said, she was not from a very good family. Perhaps she was being coerced to marry ‘well’ in order to advance their social standing. Perhaps that was what she was doing here tonight. Being put on display, to be sold off like a slave at auction. He had not seen her at her best just now, but her very youth, her very vulnerability, would hold enough appeal to interest several men he knew who were casting about them for wives this Season. It was the way of the world. Older men with money and status could more or less have their pick of the young virgins who came up to town each year to find a husband. The families of said virgins practically sold them off to the highest bidder, no matter what their feelings.

Denied choice in the matter, they eventually rebelled and took lovers of their own choosing.

Having freedom of choice was the one benefit that, as a man, he had which many women were not permitted. And he’d almost thrown it away.

It had been Miss Waverley who had shocked him out of the apathy that had almost led him to make a disastrous error. He held such cynical views of marriage that he’d been on the verge of allowing fate to take the choice out of his hands. Like a gambler, who tossed a coin to determine his next move. He’d thought it would simplify things to remove the element of choice from the equation. No such thing. Marriage, once entered into, was an inescapable bond. Reluctance to enter that state did not excuse a cavalier attitude towards the choice of bride. Though he still could not imagine finding any real pleasure for himself, in marriage, he owed it to his children to thoroughly investigate the character of the woman who would bear them. He would never knowingly foist a parent like his own mother upon poor innocent children. Nor a woman like Miss Waverley.

She might have jolted him out of his fatalistic attitude this evening, but it was only because she epitomised all he most despised in females.

He felt no gratitude towards her whatsoever. And yet, in spite of her intervention being quite unnecessary, the fact that Miss Gibson seemed to have acted out of concern for him did make him feel as though he wished he could repay her in some way.

For nobody, male or female, had ever attempted to rescue him from anything.

Good God. He stood stock still, smiling with unholy mirth at the thought that suddenly struck him. He’d just been rescued by a damsel in distress.

Not that anyone could, by any stretch of the imagination, think of him as a knight in any kind of armour. He fought his battles in the House of Lords, with cutting words rather than at tourneys, with lance and mace.

He turned, he was not entirely sure why, to take one last look at her—and caught Miss Waverley shooting her a look of pure venom.

He’d already ascertained that she was amoral and ruthless. And though Miss Gibson clearly possessed a great deal of courage, she appeared to be socially inferior to the scheming Isabella. Which rendered her vulnerable to the kind of attack he had no doubt the girl would launch at the first available opportunity.

He had wondered how he might repay Miss Gibson for helping him preserve his liberty. Now he knew. Over the next few weeks, at the very least, he would keep a discreet watch over her.

Or heaven alone knew what twisted form of revenge the thwarted Miss Waverley would exact.

Chapter Two

Another day in London.

Henrietta looked out of the drawing-room window at the row of houses across the street from the one her Aunt Ledbetter inhabited, repressing a sigh.

Too many buildings squashed together, too many people thronging the narrow streets, too much noise and bustle, and an overpowering concentration of smells. She had only been here just over a month and already she longed for the peace and quiet of Much Wakering: the wide skies, the sound of birdsong and the scent of blossom.

From her bedroom window she could see just one tree, if she hung out over the windowsill and craned her neck. One miserable, stunted sapling that looked as out of place in its environment as she felt.

‘What did you think of the performance, Miss Gibson?’

Henrietta started and pulled her attention back to her aunt’s guests. Or at least, the one guest who was trying to include her in a conversation to which she had not been giving her full attention. She had hoped that going to sit on a chair on the fringes of the room would have been enough to deter people from obliging her to talk. But Mrs Crimmer was not an easy person to deter from any course upon which she set her mind.

‘The performance? Oh, I, um …’ They had gone to the theatre the night before. In truth, if she were in a better frame of mind, she would have enjoyed the spectacle. But ever since Miss Twining’s ball there had been a cold lump of misery lodged just beneath her breastbone, which not even the most skilled of clowns could alleviate, and a fog of depression hanging round her through which everything she saw seemed grey and unappealing.

As unappealing as she knew herself to be.

The only thing that managed to make her haul herself out of bed in the mornings was the knowledge that if she lay there all day feeling sorry for herself, her aunt would worry. Mrs Ledbetter had done so much more than just accept the responsibility when her father had written to his cousin to ask if she might supervise a Season in London. Mrs Ledbetter had flung herself into the task with an enthusiasm which had taken Henrietta by surprise. At first, she’d been inclined to feel a bit offended by the way ‘Aunt’ Ledbetter had shaken her head and clucked her tongue as she’d watched the maid unpack her clothes. But then she’d never had a female relative supervise her wardrobe, at least not since her mother’s death so many years ago. And any offence soon melted away under the discovery that Mrs Ledbetter did not just enjoy shopping for clothes, but derived enormous pleasure from discovering which colours or styles became her the most. When she wasn’t taking her shopping for garments and all sorts of accessories Henrietta had no idea were absolutely essential, she had hired people to round her off in other ways. A friseur had come to the house to cut and style her hair. A dancing master visited regularly to teach her the steps of all the dances she had always wished she might be able to do, but had never had the opportunity to learn.

And her kindness continued, day after day. She organised trips to the theatre or the latest exhibitions, and took her to musical evenings and dinner parties where she introduced her to all her friends and acquaintances. Nothing was too much trouble. And, considering her own daughter Mildred was at an age to be considering matrimonial prospects herself, she might easily have treated Henrietta as a rival, or a threat, or even just an imposition.

Neither mother nor daughter had done any such thing. They had welcomed her into their circle with open arms.

For their sakes, Henrietta drew on all her reserves of will-power and mustered up a wan smile.

‘We have nothing like it in Much Wakering, Mrs Crimmer,’ she said quite truthfully. ‘So many talented acts, one after another. It was quite, um …’

‘Overwhelming, was it, my dear?’

Mrs Crimmer, the wife of one of Mr Ledbetter’s business contacts, nodded her head in a sympathetic manner. People who lived in London all year round, she had swiftly discovered, tended to look upon provincials with a mixture of pity and contempt.

If Mrs Crimmer had spoken so patronisingly to her three days ago, she would have made a withering retort. Or at least, she corrected herself, she would have bitten one back, for the sake of Mildred’s prospects. For Mr and Mrs Ledbetter were hoping that Mildred would look favourably upon young Mr Crimmer’s suit.

She glanced across the room to where the red-faced young man was paying court, rather bashfully, to Mildred, while Mildred was looking decidedly unimpressed.

Her aunt and uncle, for so she had come to think of them, might have hopes in that direction, but Mildred was looking for more from life than a prosaic match to cement a business alliance. She was looking for romance.

But then Mildred was pretty enough to have romantic aspirations. She had lovely golden hair, wide green eyes and a delicate little nose that made her look like an angelic kitten.

Perhaps that was why they had all accepted Henrietta into the household so readily, she sighed. With her gawky figure and plain face, she posed no threat to her distant cousin. When the pair of them walked into a room, all masculine attention went to Mildred.

Which had not bothered Henrietta in the slightest. She did not want masculine attention. Or at least, she had only ever hankered after the attention of one man.

But even he was beyond her reach now. Three nights ago, he’d finally forced her to accept the fact that she’d been a complete fool to follow him to London. And now she could no longer even pretend to herself that, deep down, she did mean something to him.

She could never have meant anything to him, for him to treat her as he had. She reached out and took a biscuit from the plate set on the table between her and Mrs Crimmer.

She was stuck in town until the end of June, at the very earliest, for she could not bring herself to slink home. Especially not in the light of what he’d said.

You belong in the country, not in a rackety place like London, had been the opinion he’d expressed upon the only occasion he’d called upon her. I shouldn’t wonder at it if you aren’t soon aching to get back to Much Wakering.

It was galling to admit that, in a way, he was correct. She did miss the trees and the tranquillity, and the fact that everyone knew everyone else.

But that didn’t make her a country bumpkin.

It had been a shock to hear Richard—her Richard, as she’d still been thinking of him then—speak to her in such patronising tones. She had only been in town one week, after all, and of course she’d still been a bit wide-eyed and excited.

But that did not mean she would never be able to cope with the sophistication of London society. Why, Richard himself had only acquired his town bronze after several trips. At first, the difference had only been apparent in his appearance. He’d begun to look very smart in clothes bought from a London tailor. And then the way he’d had his hair cut, well, it had drawn gasps of admiration all round. That shock of unruly curls had been tamed into a style that took much of the boyish roundness from his freckled face. He’d no longer looked like the easy-going son of the local squire, but, well, just as she’d always envisioned Paris, the man so handsome goddesses had squabbled over him. But, gradually, she’d sensed an inner change, too. She’d begun to feel uneasily as if he was drawing further and further away from her. And this last Christmas there had been a veneer of sophistication about him, expressed in languid mannerisms which were so unlike those of the blunt, honest boy who had run tame in her house for years that he had made her feel positively naïve and tongue-tied.

She ought, she reflected gloomily as she snapped her biscuit in half, to have taken heed of his withdrawal then and spared herself the humiliation she’d endured at Miss Twining’s ball. Or recognised his reference to her return to Much Wakering as a hint that he didn’t want her in town. Instead, she had persuaded herself that his words were an awkward expression of concern for how she would cope. Oh, why was she so stupid? Why hadn’t she seen? If he had really been concerned about how she would cope, he would have escorted her everywhere. Haunted the Ledbetters’ house and taken steps to shield her from all the undesirable elements he warned her stalked London society.

Well, now she knew better.

She popped one half of the biscuit into her mouth, consoling herself with the fact that at least she had not confided her romantic aspirations with regard to Richard to anyone. Which meant she was the only one who knew what a stupid, pathetic fool she’d been.

Unfortunately, it also made it quite impossible to go home. If she were to start talking about leaving, everyone would want to know why she wanted to cut her stay short. And she had no plausible excuse to give. She couldn’t possibly offend her dear Aunt Ledbetter by letting her think she was in any way responsible for her present unhappiness. And she was absolutely never going to let anybody know what a fool she’d made of herself over Richard. Her heart might be bruised, but at least her pride was still intact.

And that was the rub. If she insisted on going home without confessing the full truth, they would all assume she wanted to go back to the countryside because town life was, indeed, too much for her.

Given the choice between looking like a silly girl who’d pursued a man who didn’t love her to London, or a feeble-minded ninny who couldn’t cope with being more than five miles away from her parish church, or putting a brave face on it and staying in town when all the lustre had gone from the experience, Henrietta had decided on the latter course. She would stay in town.

Besides, she owed her aunt and cousin even more since her ignominious departure from Miss Twining’s ball. They had been so gracious about it. They had fussed over her in the coach when they’d seen her tears, and expressed the kind of sympathy for the fictitious headache she’d claimed which she had never in her life experienced before. She would never have invented a headache to explain her distress if she’d known how concerned they would be. She had just assumed they would pat her hand and send her to her room for a quiet lie down, like her brothers or her father would have done.

Instead, they’d come to her room with her, with vials of lavender water to dab on her temples, and had stayed with her while she drank a soothing tisane, sharing anecdotes about their own monthly fluctuations in health until she’d been almost crushed with guilt.

Particularly as they’d both been so thrilled to get an invitation to the house of a genuine baronet—Aunt Ledbetter so that she could gossip over the details of the interior of a baronial town house with her circle of friends and Mildred because she hoped to attract the attention of one of the sons of the lower ranks of the nobility who were bound to fill the house. She had robbed them both of at least half their pleasure, just because she’d been unable to control her temper when she’d seen that cat Miss Waverley attempting to snare yet another poor unsuspecting man in her clutches.

Even when she’d tried to apologise, their response had heaped coals of fire on her head.

‘We would not have spent even that one hour in such elevated company had you not become friends with Miss Twining,’ Aunt Ledbetter had said. ‘In fact, I thought it most gracious of her to include us in your invitation at all.’

‘Yes,’ she had replied weakly. ‘Miss Twining is a lovely person.’ Which short statement had been the only truthful remark she could make about the entire affair. For she really had liked Julia Twining for the way she had not looked down her nose at Henrietta’s London connections, nor made any disparaging remarks about their background.

Unlike some people.

‘I cannot help wondering where on earth your father dredged up this set of relatives,’ Richard had said, eyeing her aunt askance on the one visit he’d paid to this very drawing room. ‘Never heard of ‘em before you took it into your head you wanted a Season. And now I’ve met ‘em, I’m not a bit surprised. Oh, not that there’s anything wrong with them, in their way. Cits often are very respectable. It’s just that they’re not the sort of people I want to mix with, while I’m in town. And if your father ever took his nose out of a book long enough to notice what’s what, he’d have known better than to send you to stay with people who can’t introduce you to anyone that matters, or take you any of the places a girl of your station ought to be seen.’

Had she really been so idiotic as to interpret that statement as an expression of concern for her? He was not in the least bit concerned for her. He was just worried that she might pop up somewhere and embarrass him with her humble relations, or perhaps her countrified ways, in front of his newer, smarter, London friends.

But, she consoled herself, stuffing the other half of the biscuit into her mouth, at least she’d had the spirit to object to the disparaging way he’d spoken about her father.

‘Papa cannot help being a bit unaware of what London society is like,’ she had said, firmly. ‘You know he hardly ever comes up to town any more, and when he does it is only because he has heard that some rare book has finally come on the market.’ After all, she could not deny that Richard’s accusation was, in part, justified. She had not been a week in town before realising that because his cousin had married a man of business, she did not have, as Richard had so scornfully pointed out, the entrée into anywhere even remotely fashionable. ‘And anyway,’ she’d continued, loathe to admit to her disappointment, ‘if he did know, he would probably think it highly frivolous. He never judges a man by his rank or wealth, as you should know by now. How many times have you heard him say that a man’s real worth stems from his character and his intellect?’

She reached for another biscuit, feeling rather pleased with herself for taking that stance, even when she had still been Richard’s dupe. But then nothing would make her tolerate any criticism of her father, from whatever quarter it came.

Besides, he already felt badly enough about the discovery that she had somehow attained the age of two and twenty without him having done anything about finding her a husband.

The slightly bewildered look had crossed his face—the one he always adopted when forced to confront anything to do with the domestic side of life—when she had first tentatively broached the subject of having a London Season. ‘Are you quite sure you are old enough to want to think of getting married?’ He had then taken off his spectacles, and laid them on his desk with a resolute air. ‘But of course, my dear, if you want a Season, then you must have one. Leave it with me.’

‘You … you won’t forget?’ It would have been just like him. And he knew it, too, for instead of reprimanding her for speaking in such a forthright manner, he had smiled and assured her that, no, when it came to something as important as his only daughter’s future, he most certainly would not forget.

And he hadn’t forgotten. He just hadn’t got it quite right. But since she had not the heart to disillusion him about the wonderful time he hoped she was having, she had kept her letters home both cheerful and suitably vague.

Mrs Crimmer was still chattering away, but Henrietta had not heard a word for several minutes while she had been alternately woolgathering and munching her way methodically through the entire plate of biscuits. Her mind had not been able to do much more than go over and over the night of Miss Twining’s ball for days. It had all been so very much more painful, she had decided, because she’d pinned such hopes on it. And on Miss Twining herself. She really had hoped they might be friends. It hadn’t seemed to matter to her that she was staying with unfashionable relatives in the least. Miss Twining had even said she might call her Julia, she sighed, reaching for the last biscuit.

But the incident at the ball had destroyed any possibility that friendship could blossom between them, even if they’d had anything in common, which there hadn’t been time to find out, for she had left the ball before Miss Waverley, so that it would be Miss Waverley’s version of events that everyone would hear. And she knew such a schemer would not waste the heaven-sent opportunity to blacken her enemy’s reputation.

Not that she cared. She had no wish to step outside her aunt’s social circle ever again.

What was the point?

‘I say, what a bang-up rig,’ remarked Mr Bentley, who was lounging against the frame of the other window, amusing himself by watching the passing traffic. He was a friend of Mr Crimmer junior. She rather thought his role today was not only to provide moral support during the gruelling ordeal of attempting to make Mildred smile on him, but also to bear him company to the nearest hostelry, once they had stayed the requisite half-hour, to help revive Mr Crimmer’s battered spirits.

‘Pulled up right outside, as though he means to pay a visit here. By Jove, he does, too. He’s coming up the steps.’

On receipt of that information her aunt, to everyone’s astonishment, leapt from the sofa upon which she had been sitting and reached the window in one bound.

‘Oh, my goodness,’ she exclaimed, having thrust Mr Bentley aside and peered out. ‘He said he would call, but I never dreamed for one moment that he meant it. Even though he asked so particularly for our direction.’

Henrietta froze, the last biscuit halfway to her mouth. From her vantage point she, too, had seen the stylish curricle pull up in front of the house and had already recognised its driver.

‘Henrietta, my dear,’ said Aunt Ledbetter, whirling round to face her, ‘perhaps I should have mentioned it before, but …’ She paused at the sound of the front door knocker rapping. ‘Lord Deben said he might call, to see how you were, after …’ She checked, as though only just recalling that her drawing room was full of visitors. ‘After you were taken ill at Miss Twining’s ball.’

Voices in the hall alerted them to the fact that Lord Deben had entered the house.

Aunt Ledbetter sprinted back to her sofa and sat down hastily, arranging her skirts and adopting a languid pose, as though she had earls dropping in upon her every day of the week.

All conversation ceased. Every eye turned towards the door.

‘Lord Deben,’ announced Warnes, their butler.

Lord Deben strode into the room and paused, looking about him down his thin, aristocratic nose.

Henrietta’s hackles rose. He’d walked into Miss Twining’s house wearing just the same expression, as though he couldn’t quite believe he’d graced the place with his presence. Back then, she hadn’t known who or what he was, but the impression he had made on the others, his knowledge of it and his contemptuous reaction, had given her an instant dislike of the man.

His gaze swept her aunt’s drawing room with an air that somehow conveyed the impression he did not see anyone until his eyes came to rest on her.

‘Miss Gibson,’ he said, crossing the room to where she sat, ‘I trust I find you in better health today?’

It was all Henrietta could do to bite back an enquiry as to whether he had ever had any manners, or whether he just did not see the need to employ them today. What kind of man ignored his hostess, let alone the other occupants of the room?

But then Richard had behaved just like this when he’d come here, too. Richard had thought himself too good for this company. Richard had not deigned to speak to any of them either, dismissively referring to them as a bunch of clerks and shopkeepers. Though even he had, in deference to good manners, at least given Aunt Ledbetter a perfunctory bow before giving his undivided attention to Henrietta.

So she was not in the least bit flattered by the way Lord Deben bowed over her hand. When it looked as though he meant to kiss it, she raised it to her own mouth instead, shoving the last of the biscuits defiantly between her teeth.

She heard Mildred gasp.

Lord Deben’s expression did not alter one whit.

‘You still look a trifle peaked,’ he informed her, shutting out the other occupants of the room by the simple pretext of standing with his back to them all. ‘I shall take you out for a drive in the park. That should put the bloom back in your cheeks.’

‘You will take me out for a drive,’ she repeated. What unmitigated gall! Did he think she was so stupid she couldn’t see how he was snubbing her poor dear aunt? Besides, what if she didn’t want to go out? What then? She was just about to inform him that nothing on earth would induce her to leave this room, in the company of a man who clearly thought he was too good for it, when Mr Bentley burst out,

‘My word, what I wouldn’t give for a chance to tool that set-up round the park. Or even sit up beside you, my lord.’ He shot Henrietta a look loaded with envy. ‘You lucky, lucky girl!’

Lord Deben’s heavy lids lowered a fraction. He turned towards Mr Bentley, his lip curling. ‘I do not generally invite young gentlemen to escort me in the park during the fashionable hour,’ he remarked in a crushing tone that instantly reduced his admirer to red-faced silence.

He hadn’t invited her, either. Issued an order, more like.

‘And it is very generous of you to invite Henrietta,’ said her aunt, shooting her a look loaded with meaning. ‘Such an unlooked-for honour. It will not take her but a moment to run upstairs and put on a bonnet and coat.’ She made shooing motions towards Henrietta behind Lord Deben’s back. ‘Will it, my dear?’

No, it wouldn’t. And it would be better, much better for her aunt if she got him out of the house to tell him what she thought of his manners, than create a scene in her aunt’s drawing room.

‘Make haste,’ he said to Henrietta brusquely, finally succeeding in grasping her hand and using the hold he gained upon it to lift her to her feet. ‘I do not want to keep my horses standing.’

His horses! Well, that put her in her place. He rated their welfare far higher than such a paltry consideration as her sensibilities!

Who did he think he was? To come in here and comprehensively insult everyone like that?

Henrietta swept out of the room on a surge of indignation that completely banished the lethargy that had made even walking require a huge effort of will-power since Miss Twining’s ball.

Not keep his horses waiting, indeed! She marched up the stairs and flung open the door to her room.

And to crush poor Mr Bentley, she fumed as she strode across to the armoire and yanked it open, who’d only been expressing the kind of boyish enthusiasm for the splendour of his horses that any of her brothers might have done.

And to ignore her aunt and her cousins like that! Just because they were connected to trade! Because he thought they were common.

Well, she’d show him common.

She stuffed her arms into the sleeves of her mulberry redingote, then marched along the corridor to her aunt’s room, where she ruthlessly plundered her selection of furs until she found the fox. She slung it round her shoulders, pausing before the mirror only long enough to assure herself that it did indeed clash with her coat as horribly as she’d hoped, before making for Mildred’s room and the high-crowned bonnet, topped with a pair of bright red ostrich feathers, which had only arrived the morning before.

When she reappeared in the drawing room, not five minutes after she’d left it, Mildred’s jaw dropped. Her aunt made a faint choking noise.

Lord Deben, who was standing at the window, next to Mr Bentley, cocked his head to one side as his lazy brown eyes scanned her outfit.

‘More colour already,’ he drawled with a perfectly straight face, ‘just at the mere prospect of taking the air.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed with a smile as she stalked towards him. ‘I am so looking forward to being seen driving round the park with you, at the fashionable hour.’

This would serve him right! He looked just the type of man who would hate being seen driving about with someone who looked positively vulgar. He might have lowered himself by inviting a girl to drive with him who was well outside the circles in which he normally moved, but he had taken the greatest care over his own outfit. She knew enough about male fashion to guess that his clothing hailed from the most expensive, exclusive tailors. And he had shaved, very recently. His cheeks had that sheen that only lasted an hour or so after the event, and besides, when he had bent over her hand to attempt to kiss it, she had smelled oil of bergamot.

‘How little did I think,’ she simpered, ‘when I came up to town that I should have the honour of being taken driving by such an important man. In such a … a bang-up rig, too.’

His face, she noted with savage pleasure, was growing more wooden by the second.

‘I shall be sure to give you a full account of my treat, Mr Bentley—’ she beamed at the youth whose eyes were swivelling from the immaculately clad earl, to the ostrich feathers adorning her borrowed hat with something like horror ‘—next time you call upon us.’

Lord Deben gestured for her to precede him into the hall and, with her ostrich plumes bobbing in time to her martial stride, they set off.

Chapter Three

So what if he had finally found some semblance of manners and opened the door for her? It meant nothing. Except, perhaps, that he couldn’t wait to escape the presence of people he considered so far beneath him.

So what if he was a good driver? Just because he could weave in and out of the heavy traffic with an ease of manner that made it look effortless, when she knew it required great skill, did not make him any less unlikeable.

She was almost glad when, having swept through the park gates, he repeatedly cut people dead who were trying to attract his attention. It made it so much easier to cling to her bad humour, which the thrillingly rapid drive through the teeming streets had almost dispelled.

‘You are not an easy person to run to ground,’ he said suddenly, just when she was beginning to wonder whether the entire outing was going to take place in silence. ‘I looked for you at the Cardingtons’ and the Lensboroughs’ on Tuesday, the Swaffhams’, Pendleboroughs’, and Bonhams’ last night. And I regret to say that I do not have much time to spare on you today, even though it is imperative that we have some private conversation regarding what happened at that débutante’s ball whose name escapes me for the moment. Hence the abduction.’ He turned and bestowed a lazy smile upon her.

She felt a funny jolt in her stomach. There was something in that look that almost compelled her to smile back. Which was absurd, since she was very cross with him.

Reminding herself that he could not even recall the name of the girl she’d hoped might have become a friend was just what she needed to bolster her resentment.

‘On Tuesday night,’ she therefore retorted, ‘I was at a dance held by the Mountjoys. They are vintners. I don’t suppose you know them. And last night we went to the theatre in a party with most of the people who were sitting around the drawing room just now.’

‘Mountjoy …’ he mused. ‘I think I do know of them. I have a feeling they supply my cellars at Deben House.’

‘I shouldn’t be a bit surprised. They boast of having the patronage of several of the more well-heeled members of the ton, though not the entrée into their homes.’

‘Ah,’ he said.

‘And before you ask how I came to be at such an exalted affair as Miss Twining’s come-out ball, it was entirely due to the offices of my brother Hubert, who serves in the same regiment as her brother Charlie. Charlie wrote to her, asking if she wouldn’t mind calling on me, because I wasn’t likely to know anyone in town just at first.’

Not that he’d thought of it as an exalted affair. To judge from the look on his face, he’d regarded attendance as a tedious duty, probably undertaken out of some kind of obligation to the elderly lady he’d been escorting.

While for her it had been an evening that should have brought nothing but delight.

Well, neither of them had got quite what they’d expected.

At the time he’d walked in looking all cynical and bored, she’d still been full of hope she might run into Richard there. Miss Twining was bound to have sent him an invitation, since he, too, was friendly with her brother Charlie. And she was fairly sure that he would have called in for half an hour, at least, to ‘do the pretty’, even if he did not stay to dance. She had so hoped that, seeing her all dressed up in her London finery, with her hair so stylishly cut, her brother Hubert’s best friend would at long last see that she had grown up. See her as a woman, to be taken seriously, and not just one of his childhood playmates that he could casually brush aside.

‘Had I known how you are circumstanced,’ said Lord Deben, interrupting her gloomy reflections of that fateful night, ‘I would have called upon you sooner.’

‘But you did know how I am circumstanced. Lady Chigwell took great pains to let you know that she considered I was intruding amongst my betters.’

‘I assumed that was spite talking and discounted it. Particularly when I looked you up and discovered that you have a much more impressive pedigree than Lady Chigwell, whose husband’s title, such as it is, is a mere two generations old.’

‘You looked me up …?’

‘Of course. I had no intention of asking around and raising people’s curiosity about why I wished to know more about you. When I found that you are Miss Gibson of Shoebury Manor in Much Wakering and that your father is Sir Henry Gibson, scientist and scholar, member of the Royal Society, I naturally assumed you would be attending the kind of events most débutantes of your age enjoy when they come up to town for their Season.’ His mouth twisted with distaste. ‘Had I known that you would not, no power on earth would have compelled me to attend any of them.’

He’d spent two consecutive evenings haunting places he did not want to go to, merely because he had thought she might be there? And now she was obliging him to drive round the park, at the fashionable hour, while she was dressed in such spectacularly vulgar style?

For the first time in days, she felt almost cheerful.

‘What a lot of time you have wasted on my account,’ she said, with a satisfied gleam in her eye.

‘Well, it is not because I have been struck by a coup de foudre,’ he said sharply. ‘Do not take it into your head that I have an interest in you for any sentimental or … romantic reason,’ he said with a curl to his lip as he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

‘I wouldn’t!’ The coxcomb! Did he really believe that every female in London sighed after him, just because Miss Waverley had flung herself at him?

‘Let me tell you that I wouldn’t want to attract that kind of attention from a man as unpleasant and rude as you,’ she retorted hotly. ‘In fact, I didn’t want to come out for a drive with you today at all. And I wouldn’t have, either, if it wouldn’t have meant embarrassing my aunt.’

His full lips tightened in displeasure. Nobody spoke to him like that. Nobody.

‘It is as well I gave you little choice, then, is it not?’

‘I do not see that at all. I do not see that there is any reason for you to have looked for me, or investigated my background, or dragged me out of the house today …’

‘When you were clearly enjoying the company so much,’ he sneered.

She blinked. Had her misery been that obvious?

‘It was nothing to do with the company. They are all perfectly lovely people, who have very generously opened their home to me …’

He frowned. He had dismissed the suspicion that she had taken him in aversion on that accursed terrace, assuming she was just angry at the whole world, because of some injustice being perpetrated upon her. But he could not hold on to that assumption any longer. From his preliminary investigation into her background, and that of her father, and the people with whom she was living, he could find no reason why anyone should attempt to coerce her into marriage. He had not yet managed to find out why she was living with a set of cits in Bloomsbury, when she had perfectly respectable relations who could have presented her at court, but she clearly felt no ill will towards them for not being able to launch her into society. She had just referred to them as perfectly lovely people, putting such stress on the pronoun that he could not mistake her implication that she excluded him from the set of people she liked.

In short, his first impression had been correct. She really did not like him at all. His scowl landed at random upon the driver of a very showy high-perch phaeton going in the opposite direction, causing the young man such consternation he very nearly ran his team off the road.

‘Then I can only deduce that whatever is still making you look as though you are on the verge of going into a decline had its origins at Miss Twining’s ball.’

His scowl intensified. He was inured to enduring this level of antagonism from his siblings, but he had no experience of prolonging an interaction with a person to whom he was not bound by ties of family who held him in dislike. It was problematical. He was not going to rescind his decision to provide a bulwark against whatever malice Miss Waverley chose to unleash upon her, but he had taken it for granted she would have received his offer of assistance with becoming gratitude. After all, he was about to bestow a singular honour upon her. Never, in his entire life, had he gone to so much trouble on another person’s behalf.

The usual pattern was for people to seek him out. If they didn’t bore him too dreadfully, he generally permitted them limited access to his circle, while he waited to discover what their motives were for attempting to get near him.

He turned his glare sideways, where she sat with that beak of a nose in the air, completely shutting him out.

The corners of his mouth turned down, as he bit back a string of oaths. What the devil had got into him? He did not want her to fawn over him, did he? He despised toadeaters.

It must just be that he was not used to having to expend any effort in getting people to like him. He didn’t quite know how to go about it—

Hold hard—like him? Why the devil should he be concerned whether this aggravating chit liked him or not? He had never cared one whit for another’s opinion. And he would not, most definitely not, care about hers either.

Which resolve lasted until the moment she turned her face up to his, and said, with a tremor in her voice, and stress creasing her brow, ‘I don’t, do I? Please tell me I don’t look as though I’m going into a decline.’

‘Well, Miss Gibson—’

‘Because I am not going to.’ She straightened up, as though she was exerting her entire will to pull herself together. ‘Absolutely not. Only a spineless ninny would—’ She shut her mouth with a snap, as though feeling she had said too much.

Leaving him wishing he could pull up the carriage and put his arms round her. Just to comfort her. She was struggling so valiantly to conceal some form of heartbreak that his own concerns no longer seemed to matter so very much.

Of course, he would do no such thing. For one thing, he was the very last person qualified to offer comfort to a heartbroken woman. He was more usually the one accused of doing the breaking. And the only comfort he’d ever given a female had been of the hot and sweaty variety. With his reputation, and given what he knew of her, if he did attempt to put his arms round her Miss Gibson would no doubt misinterpret his motives and slap his face.

‘This is getting tiresome,’ he said. ‘I wish you would stop pretending you have no idea why I sought you out.’

‘I do not know why you should have done such a thing. I never expected to see you again, after I left that horrid ball. Especially not when I found out that you are an earl.’

‘Two earls, if you count the Irish title. Not that many people do.’

‘I don’t care how many earls you are, or what country you have the authority to lord it over, I just wish you had left me alone!’

‘Tut tut, Miss Gibson. Can you really believe that I would not wish to take the very first opportunity that offered to thank you for coming so gallantly to my rescue?’

‘To thank me?’ He had gone to all this trouble to express his thanks?

He watched her subside on to the seat, her anger visibly draining away.

‘Oh, well …’

‘Miss Gibson, I do thank you. From the bottom of what passes for my heart. It is not an exaggeration to say you saved me from a fate worse than death.’

‘Having to get married, you mean?’

‘Oh, no, never that. Had you not intervened, I would merely have repudiated Miss Waverley, stood back and watched her commit social suicide by attempting to manipulate me,’ he corrected her. ‘Absolutely nothing would have induced me to tamely fall in with her schemes. I would rather take a pistol and shoot myself in the leg.’

‘Oh.’ To say she was shocked was putting it mildly. She had grown up believing that gentlemen adhered to a certain code of morals. But he had just admitted he would have allowed Miss Waverley to ruin herself, without lifting so much as a finger to prevent it.

‘Oh? Is that all you have to say?’ He had just, for some reason, confided something to her that he would never have dreamed of telling another living soul. Though for the life of him he could not think why. And all she could say was Oh.

‘No. I … I think I can see now why you wished to speak to me privately. That … kind of thing is not the … kind of thing one can talk about in a crowded drawing room.’

‘Precisely.’ He didn’t think he’d ever had to work so hard to wring such a small concession from anyone. ‘Hence the ruthless abduction.’ Well, he wasn’t going to admit that a large part of why he’d detached her from her family was because he still harboured a suspicion there could be some sinister reason for her having been sent to them. It would make it sound as though he read Gothic novels, in which helpless young women were imprisoned and tyrannised by ruthless step-parents, and needed a daring, heroic man, usually a peer of the realm, to uncover the foul plot and set them free.

‘I had hoped to find you at the kind of event where I could have drawn you aside discreetly and thanked you before now.’

‘Oh.’ She wished she could think of something more intelligent to say, but really, what was there to say? She had never met anyone so utterly ruthless. So selfish.

Except perhaps Miss Waverley herself.

‘I regret the necessity of being rather short with your estimable relation and her guests, but I am supposed to be working on a speech this afternoon.’

‘A speech?’

‘Yes. For the House. There is quite an important debate currently in progress, on which I have most decided views. My secretary knows them, of course, but if I once allowed him to put words into my mouth, he might gain the impression that I was willing to let him influence my opinions, too. Which would not do.’

He frowned. Why was he explaining himself to her? He never bothered explaining himself to anyone. Why start now, just because she was giving him that measuring look?

On receipt of that frown, Henrietta shrank in shame. Her aunt had positively gushed about what an important man Lord Deben was, and how people had stared to see him being so gracious to them when Henrietta was ‘taken ill’, and the more she’d gone on, the more Henrietta had resented him. She’d thought he was just high and mighty, looking down his nose at them because he had wealth and a title. But now she realised that he really was an important, and probably very influential, man. And he was telling her that he took his responsibilities quite seriously.

She could not wonder at it that he looked a little irritated to be driving such a graceless female around the park when he ought to be concentrating on matters of state.

And she supposed she really should be grateful for the way he was handling his need to thank her. She most certainly did not want to risk anyone overhearing anything that pertained to the events that had occurred on the terrace either.

Nor the ones that had propelled her out there.

‘I apologise if I have misconstrued your, um, behaviour,’ she said. ‘But you need not have given it another thought. And I still don’t see why …’

‘If you would just keep your tongue between your teeth for five seconds, I might have a chance of explaining.’

There was a tightness about his lips that spoke of temper being firmly reined in. A few minutes ago, she would have been glad to see that she was nettling him.

But not now, for she was beginning to suspect she might have misjudged him. And deliberately chalked up a list of crimes to his account, of which, if she were honest with herself, it was Richard who was guilty.

It had started when he’d come out on to the terrace just when she’d most needed to be alone. As she’d dived behind the planters, she’d banged her knee and roundly cursed him. And then, recalling the look he’d had on his face when he’d arrived at the ball, she’d promptly decided he was exactly like Richard. From then on, resentment had steadily built up, when to be truthful, she really did not know anything about this man’s character at all.

It was about time she gave him a chance to explain himself. So she made a show of closing her mouth and turned her face to look up at him, wide-eyed and attentive.

A slight relaxation about his mouth showed her that he had taken note of her literal obedience.

‘You made an enemy of Miss Waverley that night,’ he said. ‘And since you came to my defence, I felt I owed it to you to warn you. If she can find any way to do you harm, be assured, she will do it.’

‘Oh, is that all?’ Henrietta relaxed and leaned back against the back of the bench seat.

‘Do not take my warning lightly, Miss Gibson,’ he said. ‘Miss Waverley is a most determined young woman. Well, you saw it with your own eyes.’ Eyes that were an incongruously bright shade of blue. He’d been thinking of her, ever since that night, in shades of autumn, because, he supposed, of her windswept hair and the way her temper had blown itself out, leaving the atmosphere behind it scoured clean. Her eyes therefore should have been brown. Brown as a conker. It was typical of her that they should not conform to his assumptions. Whenever he felt as though he had her classified, she did or said something to set him guessing all over again.

But not Miss Waverley. The Miss Waverleys of this world were entirely predictable.

‘She will go to any lengths in pursuit of her ambition. I would not like to see that single-minded determination turned upon you, for harm.’

‘There is nothing further she can do to me,’ Henrietta replied gloomily.

Miss Waverley had already done her worst. Without even knowing it.

Henrietta had not been in the ballroom ten minutes before she had seen Richard. In spite of warning her that he had no intention of squiring her to any balls during her sojourn in town, there he was, all decked out in the most splendid style. His coat fit his broad shoulders to perfection. The knee breeches and silk stockings clung faithfully to the muscular form of his calves and thighs. He had turned, smiled in recognition, and crossed the floor to where she was standing.

Her heart had banged against her ribs. Was this the moment? The moment when he would tell her she had never looked so pretty, and why had he ever thought dancing was a tedious waste of time and energy? There was nothing he would enjoy more than taking her in his arms …

Instead, he’d said how surprised he was to see her. ‘The Twinings a bit above your aunt’s touch, ain’t they? Now, don’t be disappointed if nobody much asks you to dance, Hen. People here set more store by appearances than they do in the country.’

‘But you will dance with me, won’t you?’

‘Me!’ He had pulled a face. ‘Whatever gives you that idea! Beastly waste of time, if you ask me.’

‘Yes, but you did tell Hubert you would look out for me while I was in town.’

He had frowned and stroked his chin. ‘Aye. I did give Hubert my word. Tell you what I’ll do,’ he said, his perplexed expression clearing, ‘I’ll escort you in to supper. But I can’t hang about jawing with you now, because some fellows are waiting for me in the card room. But I will see you later, at supper, and that’s a promise,’ he had said, backing away swiftly.

So swiftly, he had collided with Miss Waverley, who happened to be walking past.

‘I say, dashed sorry!’ he’d said, leaping back and landing on Henrietta’s foot. She had tried not to yelp, for she detested cowardice in any form. Besides she’d taken far greater knocks from her boisterous brothers and their friends, growing up.

Afterwards, she wished she had made more of a fuss.

‘Hope I didn’t alarm you, Miss …’ he said, while Miss Waverley had looked him up and down, coldly.

‘So clumsy of me …’ he’d blustered. Then he bowed. ‘Allow me to make amends. Fetch you a drink.’

He had not offered to fetch her a drink, Henrietta had seethed. He’d said he had more important things to do than dance attendance on her. But when Miss Waverley had smiled at him, a tide of red had swept up from under his collar. When she had held out her hand and cooed that of course she forgave him, that a glass of lemonade would be wonderful, because wasn’t it hot in here, and dancing made her sooo thirsty …

And he had dashed off to do her bidding.

As if that hadn’t been bad enough, not twenty minutes later, from her seat on the sidelines with the other wallflowers, Henrietta had seen him take Miss Waverley on to the dance floor with an expression of besotted admiration on his face.

That was when she’d seen what a colossal fool she’d made of herself. She had followed Richard to town, thinking she could make him notice her. She had gone to stay with people who’d been strangers until she’d walked into their house, spent a small fortune at various modistes and outfitters, endured all kinds of painful procedures in the name of feminine beauty—and it had all been a complete waste of time. He simply did not see her as a woman. But he’d only had to take one look at the beautiful Miss Waverely to fall prostrate at her feet!

As she had watched them skipping down the set together, she had felt her heart breaking. At least, there was a pain, a very real pain in the region where she knew that organ beat. And her eyes began to smart. Bursting into tears in a ballroom was the very last thing any lady should do, but she was very much afraid she would not be able to hold her emotions in check if she sat there, watching Richard dance with another woman when he would not even condescend to escort her anywhere! Or waste his precious time talking, when he could have been in the card room with his friends.

Not that he even appeared to remember his prior commitment to them any more. His entire being was focused on Miss Waverley.

Swiftly, before anyone could notice her emotional state, she’d dashed from the ballroom, running she knew not where, pulling open doors and slamming them behind her, in an effort to drown out the noise of the orchestra, whose cheerful strains seemed to mock her.

Somehow she had ended up outside. But she could still hear the music they were dancing to. She had gone to the windows that threw light on to the stone flags, even though she knew that if she looked inside, she would see them … still together, uncaring that she was out here, in the cold and damp, a sheet of glass between what she wanted and where she actually was in life.

She had let the tears flow then, but only once she was completely certain that nobody could see her.

Once she’d had her cry, and pulled herself together, she had planned to go back and act as though nothing was the matter. The very last thing she wanted was to have anyone know that she was suffering from unrequited love. It sounded so pathetic. If she had come across a girl crying because the man she had set her heart on was dancing with another, prettier girl, she would have no sympathy for her whatsoever. She would counsel this fictitious love-lorn girl to have a bit of pride. Show some backbone. Dry her eyes and go back with her head high, and dance the rest of the night away as though she had not a care in the world.

Perversely, the notion that she was betraying all her own principles over Richard made her tears start to flow afresh. How could she let him affect her like this? She despised herself for running after a man. But most of all, she despised herself for her total, abject failure at being feminine. It wasn’t enough to put on an expensive gown and have her hair styled. She didn’t have anything like the … allure of a Mildred, or a Miss Twining, let alone a Miss Waverley.

It was just as she had reached her lowest ebb that he had sauntered out on to the terrace. Lord Deben.

And she’d seen that if there was one thing worse than bursting into tears in a crowded ballroom, it would be being caught weeping, alone, by a man like him. She’d recoiled, earlier, from the way his hooded eyes had swept round the entire assembly with barely concealed contempt. She’d had no intention of handing him an excuse to sneer at her, personally, just when she was least able to deal with it.

And yet, now she cast her mind back, there had been one moment, when he’d turned that jaded face up to the rain, as though he needed to wash something away, when she’d wondered if he was facing some sorrow as great as her own. But then he’d pulled out his watch and turned to what little light there was. It had been enough to throw his harsh features into stark relief. She did not think she had ever seen a man who looked more jaded, or weary, or so very, very hard.

The brief pang of sympathy that had made her wonder what sorrow could have driven him out here in the rain, as well, withered and died. She was just thankful he had not noticed her. A man like that would never understand why she would run outside and weep over the notion her heart was broken. On the contrary, he would very likely laugh at her.

‘Miss Gibson,’ he now said firmly. ‘Will you kindly pay attention?’

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said contritely. ‘I was miles away.’

‘I noticed,’ he snarled. He had not only noticed, but been incensed by her inattention. He was used to people hanging on his every word. Particularly females.

‘I can only assume you were re-living whatever it was Miss Waverley has done to make you believe there is nothing further she can do, but believe me, you are wrong.’

‘I am wrong, but you are right, is that what you mean? And do not presume you know what I was thinking about.’

‘It was not difficult. You have a very expressive face. I watched every emotion flit across its surface. Yearning, despair, anger, and then came a resolute lifting of your chin that told me you refuse to let her win.’

‘It was not … nothing like …’ she sputtered.

‘Then you have not had your heart bruised? You have not decided that only a perfect ninny would go into a decline?’

She winced as he flung her own words back at her.

‘I may have said more than I should have, about matters which are quite private and personal …’ She had not told anyone about Richard and, if she had her way, she would keep the whole sorry episode secret to her dying day. ‘But that does not give you the right to taunt me …’

‘Taunt you?’ He shot her a sharp look. She looked upset. And his irritation at her preoccupation with other matters, when she ought to have been paying him attention, promptly subsided.

‘Far from it. I admire your fighting spirit. If anyone tries to knock you down, you come out fighting, do you not? In just the same way that you erupted from behind your plant pots, taking up the cudgels on my behalf when you thought the odds were stacked against me.’

Which nobody had ever done before.

And though she was now giving a shrug of her shoulders, as though it was nothing, she had not denied that she had felt some kind of … empathy towards him and had wanted to help.

It gave him a most peculiar sensation. He ought, most properly, to have taken offence at her presumption he was in any way in need of anyone’s assistance. But he wasn’t offended in the least. Whenever he looked at her, when she wasn’t annoying him, that was, he couldn’t quite stem a feeling of warmth towards the only person who had ever, disinterestedly, attempted to stand up for him.

‘And now I fear that the odds might be unfairly stacked against you. I repay my debts, Miss Gibson. I shall be your ally.’

She blinked up at him in surprise.

‘Miss Waverley will try to harm you if she can,’ he explained. ‘She is the kind of person who would have no compunction about using her social advantages to prevent you from achieving whatever it was you hoped to achieve by coming to town for a Season.’

Henrietta let out a bitter laugh.

Lord Deben glanced at her sharply. ‘You remarked that there was nothing further she could do. Has she already exacted some form of revenge? Damn! I had not thought she would move so swiftly.’

‘No. You do not understand …’

And he would not understand if she explained it, not a man like him. He might say he would be her ally, but this was the same man who’d just told her he could stand back and watch a woman commit social suicide rather than do the gentlemanly thing.

‘Please, just accept the fact that there is nothing Miss Waverley can do that she has not already done. And I thank you for your concern, but I assure you that there is no need to prolong this … excursion.’

They were just approaching the turn before the exit.

Before they’d set out Lord Deben had decided to spare Miss Gibson only as much of his time as it would take to express his thanks, deliver the warning and offer his assistance. He’d assumed it would take him no longer than it would take to drive her just the once round the ring.

But instead of steering his vehicle through the gate, he commenced another circuit.

He was the one who would decide when this excursion was at an end, not the impudent, ungrateful … unfathomable Miss Gibson.

Chapter Four

‘You went straight home that night,’ he drawled, refusing to let her guess he could be motivated by anything more than mild curiosity. ‘You have not shown your face at any of the events attended by the set of which she thinks herself the queen. Therefore, whatever she did, she did before you came to my rescue on the terrace.’

Queen? Oh, yes, that described Miss Waverley’s attitude exactly. Henrietta had only observed her that one evening, but she had certainly regarded male homage as her due. And she seemed to have susceptible, country-born boys like Richard queuing up to pay it.

Her mouth twisted into a moue of disgust.

‘Aha! I have hit the nail on the head. Pray do not bother to deny it. It was something Miss Waverley did that sent you outside to cry that night.’

She had never seen such a cynical smile as the one which curled his lordship’s lips.

‘And when you saw your chance to thrust a spoke in her wheel,’ he said, his upper lip curling with contempt, ‘you took it.’

She was just about to deny having done any such thing, when she recalled what she had thought, earlier, about her not wishing to let Miss Waverley get her claws into another poor, unsuspecting man.

She sat back, a frown pleating her brow. Had she really put a stop to Miss Waverley’s attempt to compromise Lord Deben out of jealousy and spite? She was appalled to think she could act from such base motives.

Shaken, she attempted to replay the scene, with another woman in the place of Miss Waverley.

It was hard to be completely objective, because she had not been thinking, so much as reacting to events that night. On first recognising Miss Waverley, she had wondered why she had not noticed the music had ceased, for her presence outside must mean her dance with Richard was ended. And her eyes had then flown to the door through which she’d come, in horror. Surely she’d suffered enough for one night! She could not bear it if Richard were to follow Miss Waverley on to the terrace and she had to witness a nauseating display of lovemaking between them.

By the time she’d realised that nobody had followed Miss Waverley outside, the brazen hussy had already sidled up to Lord Deben and was trying to get him to respond to her.

With about as much success as she’d had with Richard. The man was just not interested. In fact, he had looked as though he was finding Miss Waverley’s persistent attempts to interest him repellent. She had felt like cheering when he had reproved her for her behaviour.

Then, when the door had burst open and Miss Waverley’s mama had come out a split second after the girl had flung herself into Lord Deben’s arms, she had felt as angry as the earl had looked and had reacted on instinct. All her resentments had come to the boil and ejected her from her hiding place in a spume of righteous indignation.

‘You are quite wrong about me.’ For a moment, he had made her doubt herself. But, having carefully examined her motives, she had made a reassuring discovery.

‘I would have acted the same, had I come across any woman attempting to trap a man into marriage, in such a beastly, underhanded way as that,’ she said hotly. ‘It was deplorable!’

He glanced at her keenly.

‘I note that you do not deny that you were crying because of something she had done, though.’

How annoying of him to read her so well. And to look at her as though not only was she an open book, but also one that he found fairly contemptible. She drew herself up and attempted to look back at him with a level of contempt to match.

‘I knew it,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘What did she do, steal away the man with whom you fancied yourself in love?’

Lord Deben was beyond annoying. He was hateful. She had known, from the sneer that was never far from his mouth, that he would mock anyone foolish enough to suffer from the softer emotions.

‘F-fancied myself in love?’ She tossed her head and attempted a laugh. ‘Do not be ridiculous.’

The smile that lifted the corners of his mouth now was positively triumphant.

‘I am not the one being ridiculous here.’ He eyed her nodding ostrich plumes with open amusement. ‘Though perhaps you can take consolation from the fact that a lot of girls of your age have their heads stuffed full of romantic nonsense,’ he said patronisingly.

‘My head is not—’

But he continued, regardless. ‘And I knew, five seconds after becoming acquainted with Miss Waverley, that she is used to having men fall at her feet.’

Yes, thought Henrietta gloomily. While her own head was stuffed full of romantic nonsense about ancient Greek heroes, the beautiful Miss Waverley was cutting a swathe through real-life, modern men.

She looked away from the mockery in Lord Deben’s lazy brown eyes.

‘She is welcome to them all,’ she replied, her voice quivering with emotion. ‘If a man can’t see beyond her beautiful face, then they are idiots. A man who can be taken in by a cat like that is not the kind of man I would ever want to … well …’ her voice faded to a whisper ‘… marry.’

‘You should not,’ he said firmly. ‘Any man who can so easily switch his affections from you to a scheming jade like that is not worthy of your regard.’

She supposed he was trying to make her feel better, but his words only reminded her that she had never been certain of Richard’s feelings towards her. He had never given her any indication he was interested in her, other than as his best friend’s sister, until the previous Christmas, when he had grabbed hold of her, tugged her underneath a bunch of mistletoe and kissed her very thoroughly.

All her daydreams about him had stemmed from that one, surprising interlude. Before then she had never considered him as much more than Hubert’s impossibly handsome friend.

After that … She shrank down inside her furs in the faint hope they could somehow shield her from Lord Deben’s penetrating gaze. After that, when he had not followed up on what she had seen as a declaration of intent, she had shamelessly pursued him, that was what she had done.

Well, that was all behind her now. She was not going to waste any more time over a man who was too stupid to see what was right under his nose. There was plenty to keep her amused in London: lectures, exhibitions and all sorts of interesting people to converse with. People with good brains, who put them to practical use in the world of commerce, rather than idly frittering away their inherited fortunes on frivolous pastimes.

But she couldn’t help sighing. ‘Well, Miss Waverley is exceptionally beautiful. And poised. She only has to smile on a man to dazzle him …’

Lord Deben did not like to see her looking suddenly so dejected. It did not seem right that she should compare herself unfavourably to a female of Miss Waverley’s stamp. ‘Well, she did not dazzle me,’ he said firmly. ‘I was singularly unimpressed by her.’

Yes, Henrietta reflected with some satisfaction. He’d had no trouble whatsoever in repulsing her.

Encouraged by the way she perked up, he continued, ‘In fact, I would go so far as to say she is no more dazzling than you.’ Her confidence had suffered a knock, so he would give it a well-deserved boost.

‘What!’

When Henrietta turned a puzzled face towards him, she found herself on the receiving end of a long, hard stare.

‘Not that I am saying that you are a real beauty. Just that you are by no means less capable of dazzling a man, should you put your mind to it.’

‘Not a beauty …’ she managed to gasp before her breath caught in a lump somewhere in her throat, making speech impossible.

‘You only have to compare yourself with Miss Waverley to know I speak nothing but the truth. But let me tell you, as an expert on what makes a female attractive to a man, that you are not completely lacking in potential.’

‘You mean by that, I suppose, that I am not a complete antidote?’

‘Far from it.’ He turned his lazy perusal over her face once more. ‘You have a remarkably good complexion. No superfluous facial hair. A fine pair of expressive eyes and a set of good, straight teeth. As a connoisseur of beauty, I cannot help regretting that your nose is out of proportion to the rest of your features, but I see no reason why you could not, to use your own words, “dazzle” a man who is not so nice in his tastes.’

‘You …’ She clenched her fists, struggling to keep her temper. ‘You are the rudest man I have ever met.’

‘Not rude. Honest. But how typical of a female,’ he said with a curl to his lip, ‘to latch on to the one item, out of a whole catalogue of genuine compliments, which you can construe as an insult and take umbrage.’

‘And how like a man to deliver a lacklustre compliment in such a way that no female with an ounce of pride could take it as anything but an insult!’

‘Miss Gibson, I have just complimented you on your complexion, your eyes and your teeth, told you that with the right attitude you could successfully dazzle a susceptible male, and you fixate on the one flaw that you cannot deny you have.’

They were approaching the Cumberland Gate for the second time.

‘Take me home,’ she said. ‘I demand that you take me home right this instant. And never, ever call on me again.’

Lord Deben looked down at her in disbelief. Women sought him out. They fawned over him. They sent him languorous looks across heated ballrooms and slipped him notes to let him know where they could be found should he wish to avail himself of their charms.

They even waylaid him on terraces in the attempt to force him into marriage.

They did not tell him he was rude, dismiss him with a haughty toss of their head and demand to be taken home.

So naturally he steered his team right past the gate and commenced upon a third circuit of the park.

‘This outing will end when I decide it will end,’ he informed her curtly. ‘And if I wish to call on you, who is to prevent me? Your aunt? She would not dare,’ he drawled with contempt.

Henrietta could not believe what he was saying. At the start of this outing, he had informed her himself that he had no intention of wasting more of his precious time on her than was absolutely necessary.

‘You are abominable,’ she hissed. ‘You no more wish to prolong this outing than I. Nor can I believe you have any intention of calling on me again. You just like throwing your weight around. You … you bully.’

‘A bully, by definition, oppresses those weaker than himself for his own pleasure,’ he snapped. ‘At no time have I attempted to oppress you. No, and what is more, everything I have done in your regard has been for your benefit. And the longer I spend with you, the more convinced I become that you need somebody to watch over you. You do not appear to have any instinct for self-preservation at all. You say whatever comes into your head, without giving thought to the consequences, never mind the way you act. You leap into situations that are well beyond your comprehension, with a naïveté that is truly stunning.’

‘You have only seen me act impulsively the once,’ she retorted. ‘And believe me, I regret interfering …’ She faltered. ‘No, no, actually …’ she lifted her chin and looked at him defiantly ‘… no, I don’t regret it. I cannot like Miss Waverley and I don’t suppose I ever shall. But I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if you really had ruined her, not knowing that I’d witnessed the whole thing and could have stopped it if I’d acted.’

‘What?’

‘I think you heard me. But to make it even clearer for you, I admit I may have acted in a way you think was naïve and foolhardy, but at least my actions that night ended in good.’

‘Ye gods, you sound like some kind of … Puritan. As though you were brought up to believe in some antiquated code of fair play that went out with the restoration of the monarchy.’

‘I was brought up to tell the truth, and value honour and decency,’ she said. ‘There is nothing unusual in that.’

He laughed mirthlessly. ‘Now that just goes to prove how naïve you really are. And how much you stand in need of a protector. I have lived far longer than you and moved in wider circles, and so far I have not met anyone else who would put such values above their own self-interest. If it wasn’t for the fact you allowed your feelings about Miss Waverley to show enough to call her a cat, I would wash my hands of you entirely. For if there is one thing I cannot abide, it is a sanctimonious hypocrite.’

‘I am not sanctimonious! Nor a hypocrite. I—’

‘Very well,’ he bit out. ‘I absolve you of that sin. Sin,’ he laughed bitterly. ‘Who am I to absolve anyone of sin? Since, according to one who considers himself an authority on the subject, I am the most blackened sinner of this generation.’

‘Are you?’ She flushed guiltily at having the temerity to say such a thing, and hastily attempted to cover her blunder. ‘I mean … I wonder that anyone dared to say it.’

‘A vicar tends to think his pulpit gives him a certain measure of authority,’ he said. ‘And since the vicar in question also happened to be my brother, he felt no compunction in haranguing me in public for a change.’

For a change? She frowned. ‘If he is in the habit of, um, haranguing you, what on earth made you go and sit in a church where he was preaching?’

‘An idiotic notion that my presence at his first appearance in the parish where he went to take up his living might go some way to mending the breach between us.’ Instead, he’d learned that the seeds of hatred his father had sown during their childhood had taken such deep root not even his brother’s so-called Christianity was sufficient to make him forgive and forget. Will’s face had been contorted with spite as he’d moralised about the sins of fornication and adultery, culminating with a look of total malice as he’d rounded off by proclaiming that the meek would inherit the earth.

Well, that was as may be, but one thing Will would not be inheriting—no, not even though he’d already managed to get his wife with child—was one inch of his father’s property. His father’s property. He’d always known he would have to marry and produce an heir, but reluctance to end up tied to a woman like his mother, in a relationship like the one his parents had endured, had made him drag his feet.

That woman! He might have had real siblings if she’d had any sense of decency at all. If she’d even bothered to defend any of her brood from his father’s malice, they might now be able to tolerate one another. Instead of which, the olive branch he’d extended to Will, by going to support him in his new parish, had been taken out of his hands and used as a weapon to beat him with.

Well, if it was war Will wanted, war he should have. He’d decided there and then that he must put aside his aversion to women in general, and wives in particular, and set up his nursery. One legitimate son, that was all he needed. One male child, sired indisputably by him.

The look on Lord Deben’s face made Henrietta’s heart go out to him, even as her hand went out to clutch at the handrail. His brother had evidently hurt him by denouncing his morals from the pulpit. Not that men ever admitted to being hurt. But it certainly explained why he’d whipped up his horses and was suddenly driving them at such a demonic pace.

She braced her feet against the footboard as he put his curricle through a gap that was so slender she was almost convinced he would lock wheels with one of the other carriages. When they made it through, with what looked like barely an inch to spare, and he urged his horses to even greater speed, she bit down on her lower lip and the craven urge to beg him to take care. He had already accused her of various defects in her character. She was not going to let him add the feminine one of timidity to the list and give him another excuse to sneer at her.

Besides, men needed a way to work through their feelings, since they would scorn to go away somewhere quiet and weep. She’d seen it often enough with her brothers. They went out and shot something, or got into a fight—or rode their horses at breakneck speed.

‘You can wash your hands of me with a completely clear conscience,’ she declared, surreptitiously taking a tighter hold on the handrail. In the event they did collide with anything, at least she might avoid the ignominy of being pitched on to the grass verge like a sack of grain.

‘I do not consider that you owe me anything.’

‘Well, that is just where you are wrong, Miss Gibson. I owe you more than you can imagine.’ His search for a wife would not have prospered with the scandal Miss Waverley had almost unleashed upon him. Oh, he had no doubt that there would have been women still prepared to overlook what they would perceive as a lack of gentlemanly behaviour, but the encounter with Miss Waverley had taught him he would, indeed, rather shoot himself in the leg than shackle himself to one such. ‘And for that reason, I have decided to help you.’

He smiled. In a way that made him look cruel.

She shivered. And admitted, ‘I am not sure I like the sound of that.’

From the look on his face, whatever form this ‘help’ might take did not stem from any sense of altruism. He’d already told her he did not care what anyone thought of him, or might say of him. So, if he was planning anything, it was not because he wanted to help her, not really, but because in some way it would benefit him.

‘Come, come, wouldn’t you like to win your suitor back from Miss Waverley?’

‘Not particularly.’ She was not about to tell him that Richard had never, technically, been her suitor. But anyway, she was done with trying to get him to notice her. All it had accomplished was her humiliation.

‘Well, even if that were true,’ he said in a derisive tone, not taking his eyes from his team, ‘I think you would enjoy taking the wind out of Miss Waverley’s sails. And I certainly would. I have a strong aversion to letting people think they can manipulate me.’

She knew it! This was nothing to do with protecting her, or helping her. He was trying to use her to take his own revenge upon Miss Waverley.

‘So do I,’ she retorted. She was not going to let him use her, or involve her in any of his schemes.

‘Well, then, let us discuss what is to be done.’

‘No, you don’t understand, I—’

‘To begin with,’ he cut in before she could even start explaining, ‘I do not think the case is as hopeless as you seem to think.’

Amazingly, his dark mood seemed abruptly to have lifted. He’d slowed his horses to a steady trot and he was smiling—although the smile that played about his lips was so cruel that it sent a shiver down her spine. This was not a man to cross. How on earth had Miss Waverley thought she could get away with it? He was downright dangerous.

‘Miss Waverley obviously does not want him herself, or she would not have set her sights on me. Perhaps, once she had snared him, she discovered he is not as wealthy or well connected as she had first supposed.’

Henrietta did not think it had been as calculated as all that. It just seemed to be in Miss Waverley’s nature to want to make a conquest of every good-looking male who crossed her path. And Richard was more than just good looking, he was downright handsome. Far more so than Lord Deben, whose features were marred by being always set in a kind of sneer. Or twisted by whatever inner demons had made him take such risks with his team, and his carriage, not to mention his passenger, by setting such a pace.

It was a shame really, she mused, darting him a swift glance, because if he didn’t look so cross all the time, he might be very attractive. He had the full, sensual lips, and the lazy hooded eyes, that put her in mind of portraits she’d seen of Charles II.

Not that he would be foppish enough to sport ringlets, or disguise that fit, muscular body in yards of lace and velvet.

‘That is half the battle,’ he said, giving Henrietta a brief vision of him leading a cavalry charge against a solid square of soberly dressed roundheads, wearing just the expression he wore now.

‘The other half is demonstrating that you are far superior to Miss Waverley, in every way. That you are a woman worth pursuing.’

She snorted. She could not help it. Richard would never pursue her. She was the one who’d done all the pursuing thus far.

‘Come, come, Miss Gibson,’ he said when she did not make him any answer apart from that derisive snort. ‘Have you no pride? Would you not like to see him realise the error of his ways?’

‘I have plenty of pride,’ she retorted. The trouble was, it had already taken enough of a battering. ‘Which is exactly why I will do nothing to attempt to make him change his mind.’

‘But at least,’ said Lord Deben, ‘you are no longer attempting to deny that there is an admirer, that Miss Waverley has poached him and that you were so upset you ran out of a ballroom to hide behind a set of planters to weep your little heart out.’

He’d tricked her! He’d spoken of things she’d wanted to keep private in such a way that she’d inadvertently confirmed everything!

‘Are you satisfied? Now that you’ve pried all my secrets from me?’

‘Not yet,’ he replied calmly, as though he was impervious to her mounting rage. ‘But before I am done, we shall both be, I promise you.’

‘I … I …’ She clenched her fists. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’

‘It is really very simple. If I were to appear to find you fascinating, other men would want to discover what I see in you. If I swear that I think you are a diamond of the first water, you could have your pick of the rest of the herd, if you find you no longer wish to take up Miss Waverley’s leavings.’

‘Oh, for heavens’ sake! I have never heard such arrogance in my whole life.’

‘It is not arrogance, merely knowledge of human nature. Most people are like sheep, who follow mindlessly behind their natural leaders. Besides, you are from a good family and comfortably circumstanced. Once I have brought you to public notice and cleared up the misconception about your connection to the Ledbetters, there is no reason why you should not acquire a bevy of genuine suitors.’

Henrietta hated to admit it, but she could see exactly what he meant. She had often observed that a man with strong convictions could persuade others to follow their lead. And also that what several men liked, others would claim to as well, or risk being thought odd. His stratagem might actually work.

‘No, really …’ she began, but even to her own ears her voice lacked conviction. So she was not surprised by his answer.

‘You are tempted, I can tell. Wouldn’t you like,’ he said, his voice lowering to a seductive tone, ‘to outshine Miss Waverley? Would you not like to be the toast of the ton? Have your hand sought after? Your drawing room full of suitors?’

The toast of the ton.

That … that did sound tempting.

It wasn’t that she wanted Richard any more, not really. But he had said such hurtful things. And, ignoble though it was, she would dearly love to show him she was more than just a country mouse. To prove that London was not too rackety for her, but, on the contrary, that she could become one of its leading lights. Just imagine what it would be like to have London society at her feet!

The thing was, Lord Deben moved in the very best circles, not on the fringes where Richard had worked so hard to secure a foothold. He was an earl, with the right to go wherever he pleased, not the son of a country squire who needed to watch every step he took, every friend he made, for fear of being laughed out of countenance.

For a few moments she indulged in a daydream of attending some glittering ton event, where she danced all night with a succession of earls and marquises. And Richard would be gnashing his teeth in the doorway, because they wouldn’t let him in to tell her how much he regretted missing his chance with her. Miss Waverley would not have even been invited to the event either. Or, no, even better, she would be there, but sitting on the sidelines, ignored as she had once been ignored …

It was so tempting. She knew Lord Deben was not offering her this chance for her sake, but out of his own desire for revenge, yet if she played along …

But then she suddenly recalled her father telling her that if she could ever apply the word temptation to something she wanted to do, then she knew she oughtn’t really to be doing it. And felt like Eve reaching out to take that shiny, delicious apple from the serpent.

‘You … you are a devil,’ she gasped.

He chuckled. ‘Because I am tempting you to give in to a side of your nature you do not wish to admit you have?’

Oh, there was that word again.

‘Yes,’ she whispered, ashamed though she was to admit it.

‘But you will do it.’

The glittering vision he’d shown her wavered and took a new form. The faces of the people in it were haughty and cruel. And she, by joining them and giving former friends like Richard the cold shoulder, of inflicting the same misery that she’d borne on Miss Waverley, made her as cruel and hard as they were.

She didn’t want to become such a person.

She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. She would not become that sort of person.

‘No,’ she said firmly. Then, a little louder, ‘No. It would not be right.’

‘You are refusing my offer?’

‘Most certainly.’

The ungrateful baggage. He had never exerted himself to such an extent for anyone else, or promised so much of his time to aid their cause.

It was Will all over again. Spurning the hand of friendship which he’d extended and spitting in his face.

His face shuttered. ‘On your own head be it, then.’

‘What do you mean?’

She frowned up at him, those ridiculous feathers bobbing in the breeze. She really had no idea. Over the next few days, society would beat a path to her door, whether she wanted them to or not.

There was nothing she could do to prevent it. Everyone had seen him driving an unknown female around the park not once, but three times, and all the while engaged in animated conversation. He had taken care not to acknowledge anyone, which would stoke their curiosity about her to fever pitch. Why, they would want to know, would such a renowned connoisseur of female beauty have paid so much attention to this rather vulgarly attired little nonentity?

They would want to know who she was, what her connection was to him and where she had come from. They would not leave her be until they had pried every last one of her secrets from her. She would very soon regret her stubborn refusal to make her a reigning queen of society. Then—oh, yes, then he would have this proud little Puritan crawling to him.

‘You will find out. And when you do, don’t forget that I offered my protection.’

When they reached the gates the next time he put his team straight through them and took the turn out on to Oxford Street.

Henrietta could see she had offended him by turning him down, but really, after only these two encounters with him, she was sure it would be better never to tangle with him again. He was too autocratic. Too far out of her social sphere. Too clever and tempting, and worldly and, oh, altogether too much!

She bade farewell to that vision of a glittering ballroom and all those nobles who’d wanted her to dance with them. She was going home, to her dear aunt and uncle, to Mildred and Mr Crimmer. Back to the world of pantomimes at Covent Garden, and dinners in the homes of businessmen, and balls where she would dance with the sons of aldermen and merchants.

And when she went home to Much Wakering she would at least do so with a clear conscience.

Lord Deben remained silent with that expression of displeasure on his face all the way back to Bloomsbury. But when she alighted outside her aunt’s house, to her surprise he tossed the reins to his tiger, sprang down and caught up with her before she’d set foot on the first step.

‘Miss Gibson,’ he said sharply.

She sighed. What now?

‘You are such a simpleton,’ he said, glancing down the street as though he was already itching to be away. ‘You don’t know what you are saying, to turn down my offer of assistance. And though you have made me very angry, I cannot leave things between us like this.’ He wouldn’t mind making her pay for her rudeness to him by leaving her to the mercy of the gossipmongers. But he did not want her to come to complete shipwreck. She was so naïve, and … and green, believing in goodness and decency, and telling the truth and shaming the devil.

He seized her hand and looked directly into her eyes, his expression, for once, neither mocking nor dismissive, but earnest.

‘You came rushing to my help, that night on Miss Twining’s terrace, even though I did not need it. I find,’ he said with a perplexed frown, ‘that I cannot turn my back on such a foolhardy, gallant gesture.’

More than half of his anger with her, he had realised during the drive back to Bloomsbury, was due to the fact she did not appreciate how rare it was for him to want to put himself out for anyone. The rest, well …

‘I think,’ he said, ‘that in some ways we are very much alike. You have a good deal of pride. It is why you hid behind the plant pots to cry, rather than go running to your aunt. Why you spurn the offer of help from me, a man you hardly know, rather than admitting you stand in need of it.’

He was doing it again. Assuming he knew all about her.

And the most annoying thing of all was the fact that he was pretty near the mark.

‘Do not be too proud,’ he said with an infuriatingly sympathetic smile, ‘to turn to me should you ever really need it.’

‘Oh, I’m sure I shan’t.’

‘Yes, but if you should, I will be there. Remember that.’

‘Well, then, thank you, my lord.’ She pulled her hand from his and nodded to him, setting her ostrich feathers quivering wildly.

‘And good day.’

She turned and pounded up the steps to the front door as though the devil himself was after her.

That was clearly what she thought. He frowned. It was perhaps better for her to stay away from a man like him. They came from different worlds.

If she stepped into his, she would soon lose that delightful innocence, that childlike belief in good and evil.

His face set in harsh lines, he mounted up behind his team and set his curricle in motion. The best way for him to protect her probably would be to stay well away from her.

Upon reflection, he supposed he should not have taken her out in public and exposed her to speculation today.

Damn it all, but now he’d set the ball rolling, there was nothing he could do to call off the hounds that would surely pursue her for their sport.

He had told her he would keep away from her and he would do so. But that did not mean he could not exert his influence discreetly. There were plenty of ways he could ensure she was protected, now he came to think of it, which would not involve direct contact.

His lips lifted into a smile of utter devilment, as he began to draw up his plans. How long would it be before she began to detect his hand, gently pulling the strings behind the scenes, and came to him to express her gratitude?

He chuckled at the unlikelihood of her ever doing anything so tame. Knowing her, it would be far more likely she would come marching up to him, ostrich feathers bobbing in indignation, to demand that he leave her alone.

Either way, he would have made her come to him the next time. And for some reason he didn’t care to examine too closely, that was what mattered the most.

Chapter Five

It was two weeks before she saw him again.

She had been some twenty minutes in the house of Lord Danbury, where she’d been invited, much to her surprise, by his daughter Lady Susan Pettiffer. Her party had spent most of that time removing their coats and changing their shoes in the ladies’ withdrawing room, greeting their host, and wandering through as many rooms as they could—on the pretext of seeing if there was anyone they knew—so that her aunt could examine how each and every room in the earl’s sumptuous town house was decorated and furnished.

They had just secured a place on a sofa in one of the upstairs drawing rooms when the entire atmosphere became charged. It was a bit like the tingle she sometimes felt in the air when she was out walking on the hills and a thunderstorm was fast approaching. Then the ladies started discreetly preening and several of the men checked their neckcloths in the glass over the mantel, if they were near enough, and those who weren’t began to speak in more ponderous tones.

Lord Deben had entered the room.

Her aunt gripped her wrist. Ever since he had taken her out for that drive, Aunt Ledbetter had been expecting him to call again. Or, at the very least, to send a posy. In vain had Henrietta assured her there had been nothing romantic about him showing interest in her. ‘But you are just the sort of girl a man like that would like,’ she had said, over and over again. ‘They live a lot in the country, the aristocracy.’

‘Please, do not refine too much upon the fact that he happens to be here tonight. He has probably forgotten all about me by now,’ she turned to her aunt to say.

‘Nonsense. He just has not noticed you yet,’ replied her aunt.

‘Don’t wave, don’t wave,’ Henrietta hissed out of the corner of her mouth, when it looked as though her aunt was about to do just that. ‘If he wants to pretend he has not seen us,’ she muttered angrily, for how he could have failed to see them, when the sofa upon which they sat was in full view of the door through which he had just walked, she could not imagine, ‘then he must not want to recognise us tonight.’

Her aunt subsided immediately. It was one thing for a member of the ton to call at one’s house, quite another for that same aristocrat to deign to recognise one in public.

Henrietta flicked open her fan and plied it over her aunt’s heated cheeks. The excitement of getting an invitation to a household such as this quite eclipsed the coup of getting her Mildred into a mere Miss Twining’s come-out ball. Although, in a way, they owed that, too, to Julia. She had called, with Lady Susan in tow, only a day or so ago, to enquire whether she had quite recovered from whatever had afflicted her during her come-out ball. ‘Because,’ Julia had said disingenuously, ‘I was beginning to fear it might be something serious, since I have not seen you anywhere since.’ As they’d been leaving, Lady Susan had asked if she would be interested in attending what she described as ‘a very informal rout’.

Aunt Ledbetter had very nearly expired from excitement on the spot.

‘Shall I fetch you some lemonade, aunt?’ There were so many more important people thronging the house that the footmen circulating with trays of refreshments had bypassed them several times. And she was only too willing to leave the room in which Lord Deben was holding court, to go in search of a waiter willing to serve them.

‘No, dear, I need something considerably stronger,’ said her aunt. ‘Lemonade for Mildred, though.’

Henrietta snapped her fan shut and deliberately avoided looking in Lord Deben’s direction. She hadn’t liked the way he’d kept invading her thoughts over the past fortnight. She hadn’t liked the way her spirits had lifted when she detected some sign that he might have been working on her behalf, in the background, in spite of the way they had parted. Although he’d probably, no, definitely had more important things to think about than a badly dressed, shrewish country miss. For in what other light could he regard her? When she looked back on the two occasions they had met, she realised that she had made a spectacle of herself both times. On that first occasion, her face had been all blotchy with tears, and, she’d discovered to her horror when she’d got home and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, there was more than a handful of dead ivy in her hair. The second time, she’d deliberately made herself look as vulgar as she possibly could, and, because she’d still been recovering from Richard, had been very far from gracious.

Shrewish, to be perfectly blunt. And whenever she tried to justify herself by reminding herself of all the rude things he’d said, too, her conscience pointed out that he had at least tried to rein in his temper. Several times. Only for her to provoke him into losing it again.

All the poor man wanted was to express his thanks in the only way he knew how—by offering her the chance at retribution. And she had thrown it all back in his face.

She especially did not like the fact that just now, when he’d walked into the room, she had reacted exactly the same as her aunt had done. The only difference between them was that her pride had kept her from showing it—that, and the fact that she would not for the world expose her aunt and cousin to ridicule by having a man like that snub them, if he should choose to do so.

It was bad enough that at the moment even the waiters would not deign to notice them.

If only she hadn’t turned down his offer to make her the toast of the ton, if only she hadn’t been so ungracious, so ungrateful, everything might have been so different.

So deep had she fallen into a spirit of self-chastisement that she very nearly walked right into the large male who stepped into her path.

‘Lord Deben!’

How on earth he’d managed to intercept her, she had no idea. Last time she had permitted herself to look at him he had been on the other side of the room.

‘Miss Gibson,’ he said, inclining his head in the slightest of bows. ‘Trying to avoid me, perchance?’ He spoke softly, his lips scarcely moving.

‘N-no, not at all! I thought you were …’ She felt her cheeks heat.

His lids lowered a fraction. A satisfied smile hovered briefly about his sensual mouth. ‘I have merely been complying with your wishes. You made it very plain you wanted nothing further to do with me. I was not, especially, to pollute your family’s drawing room with my sinfully tempting presence …’

Her cheeks grew hotter still. ‘I was angry and upset. I spoke hastily. I was rude. And …’ she lifted her chin and looked him full in the face ‘… I apologise.’

The smile stayed in place, but it no longer reached his eyes. It was almost as though he were disappointed in her.

‘But then you have had your revenge upon me, haven’t you?’ she continued gloomily. ‘So I suppose that makes us even.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know exactly what I mean,’ she snapped. She hated it when he put on that supercilious how dare you speak like that to me? look.

‘When you said “On your own head be it,” it was because you knew just what would happen after you took me out driving in the park. Ever since that afternoon, my aunt’s drawing room has been besieged by the most dreadful people all wanting to know who I am and how we are related.’

The smile returned to his eyes.

‘No doubt you quickly put them in their place. I only regret not having been there to witness their discomfiture at your masterly control of the cutting comment.’

‘I did not make any cutting comments to anyone. I told you, they were in my aunt’s drawing room. I simply explained …’ she continued, encouraged by the fact that he was smiling, even if it was at her expense. For he looked like another man altogether when he smiled like that, with genuine amusement. Younger, and an awful lot more approachable. ‘… that I was two and twenty.’

‘Which naturally put paid to the initial rumour that you must be my long-lost love child, conceived during my reckless youth.’

Her eyes widened. She had not thought he would speak quite so frankly. Although to be fair, she was the one who had started alluding to the scurrilous things that were being said about her.

‘You heard that one as well?’

He nodded, gravely. ‘For my part, I said that although I appreciated the compliment, even a man with my reputation with the ladies was unlikely to have begun my amatory career at the age of nine.’

‘And speaking of your reputation,’ she said darkly, ‘I had no idea when I accepted your invitation to drive in the park that you had never done so before with a woman who is not your mistress.’

His smile vanished completely. ‘Who told you that?’

‘That you only take a mistress up beside you?’

He nodded grimly.

‘I don’t think I’d better tell you his name,’ she said, suddenly fearful for the vengeance a man who could look so cold might take on the bacon-brained youth who’d let that piece of information slip. ‘Besides, another of the … gentlemen present soon stopped that line of speculation by declaring that he wouldn’t credit it unless he also heard that you had developed some kind of problem with your eyesight.’

‘He said what?’

‘Hearing failing now, too, hmmm? Perhaps you ought to sit down. At your age, you need to start being careful.’

‘At my age? I am hardly into my thirties, you impudent …’ He took her by the arm, steered her out of the room and up to a buffet, manned by a brace of footmen who had so far been ignoring her with masterly aplomb. With a few terse words, he arranged for them to take a tray of refreshments to her aunt and cousin, then whisked her into a small recess beyond the end of the last sideboard.

‘You will inform me, if you please, the name of the man who insulted you in your drawing room …’

‘But why?’ She opened her eyes wide, in mock surprise. ‘He only echoed what you yourself said in the park.’

‘Nothing of the sort. I made a list of your best features, in an attempt to persuade you that you had as much chance of dazzling a man as Miss Waverly, should you care to …’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, because Mr Crimmer soon settled his hash.’

‘Who is Mr Crimmer?’ His eyes narrowed on her intently. ‘Is he the suitor you were crying over at Miss Twining’s?’

‘Oh, no. He’s not my suitor at all. It was when Lord … I mean, the man who had said your eyesight must be deteriorating said that he could have understood it if it had been Mildred up beside you, because she was a … I think his exact words were a game pullet, that Mr Crimmer, who is in love with my cousin Mildred, you know, lifted him off his chair by his lapels, bundled him out of the house and threw him down the front steps.’

She paused, peeping up at him cheekily over the top of her languidly waving fan. Her eyes were brimful of laughter.

She was not angry about the incident. If anything, he would have said she was vastly amused by the antics of the boors who had invaded her aunt’s house. He leaned back against the wall and folded his arms across his chest.

‘Pray continue,’ he drawled. ‘I simply cannot wait to hear what happened next.’

It was, he realised, completely true. He was affecting boredom, but he did not think he had enjoyed a conversation with any other female half so much during the entire two weeks he had been deliberately avoiding her. Not that he’d had anything that could accurately have been described as a conversation. He had definitely attempted to start several, with various young ladies who could lay claim to both impeccable lineage and trim figures, but they always petered out into a sequence of ‘yes, my lord’ and ‘no, my lord’ and ‘oh, if you say so, then I am sure you must be right, my lord’. It had been like consuming a constant diet of bread and milk.

Running into Henrietta Gibson was like suddenly finding a pot of mustard on hand, to lend a piquancy to the unremittingly bland dishes he’d been obliged to sample of late.

‘Well, the man who’d called Mildred a game pullet was rather annoyed to be treated with such disrespect by a mere cit,’ Henrietta continued, ‘and informed Mr Crimmer of the fact in the most robust terms. And Mr Crimmer replied that a real gentleman would never speak of a lady with such disrespect, to which that man replied that Mildred was no lady, only a tradesman’s daughter.’

‘You heard all this?’

‘Oh, yes. Though I had to throw up the sash in the front room and lean out, because the front steps were a bit crowded with all the other, erm, gentlemen who had come with the man who’d called Mildred a name he oughtn’t. And I had the pleasure of seeing Mr Crimmer plant a nice flush hit that sent the so-called gentleman reeling right out into the road. After that, though,’ she said with a moue of disappointment, ‘it descended into the kind of scrap that little boys of about eight get into.’

He raised one eyebrow again. He had never, ever heard a female of good birth use boxing cant as though it were perfectly natural.

‘Oh, you know the kind of thing,’ she replied, completely misinterpreting the cause of that raised eyebrow. ‘Kicking and grappling, and flailing arms without anyone really doing the other any damage.’

‘No science,’ he said, to see if she really understood what she was saying.

‘None whatever,’ she said with a rueful shake of the head. ‘Although the other spectators appeared to enjoy it tremendously. There was a great deal of wagering going on.’

‘May I ask what your aunt was doing while this impromptu mill was taking place on her front doorstep and you were hanging out of the window cheering on your champion?’

‘I was not cheering,’ she said, adopting a haughty demeanour. ‘And he was not my champion. And as for my aunt, well,’ she said, the laughter returning to her eyes, ‘she thought about having the vapours, I think, but only for about a minute or two, because nobody was taking any notice of her. And she is a very practical person, too. So once she had got over the shock of having her drawing room taken over by a pack of yahoos, she sent the butler to fetch some of the male servants from the houses round and about, to make them all go away.’

So she had read the works of Dean Swift. Of course she had, with a father like hers. And the way she was chattering away now, taking his own knowledge of literature for granted, showed that she was well used to holding conversations that assumed all participants had a high level of education.

He’d been correct to tell her that with a few tips from him, she could learn to dazzle a man. Even without the benefit of his tuition, tonight, she was quite captivating. The way she was smiling at him, for instance, inviting him to share her amusement, was well nigh irresistible. He would defy any man not to smile back.

He would swear she was nowhere near so unappealing as he recalled, either. While she chattered on he surreptitiously scanned her outfit. The dress she was wearing tonight complemented both her colouring and her slender form. The accessories were not the least bit vulgar, so that anyone who didn’t know better would never dream she was being sponsored for this Season by a cit. But he rather thought it was the sparkle in her eyes that made her look so very different from the last times he’d seen her.

In fact, if she could but learn to keep a rein on her temper, she could very easily become a hit, without him having to make people think she had some hidden fascination which so far only he had discerned.

‘Why, then, have I not heard of this riot?’ It was time he made some contribution to the conversation. ‘Because if the thing escalated into a public brawl, involving the male servants of several houses and a pack of … yahoos …’

‘Oh, it didn’t come to that. Fortunately Mr Crimmer’s foot slipped on a cobble and he went down with his opponent on top of him. He was stunned for a few moments. Or he might just have been winded, I suppose, because … well, let us say that his opponent is no lightweight.’ She sparkled up at him.

He laughed outright at the picture she had just painted. And it struck him how very rarely he laughed, genuinely laughed, with amusement. Very few people shared his sense of humour. Or suspected he even had one. Miss Gibson, he realised, had looked right past the outer shell, which was all most people wanted to see, and reached right to the man he … not the man he was, or even the man he wanted to be, but perhaps the man he might have been had things been different.

‘But anyway, before he recovered the power of speech, the yahoo claimed it as a victory and went away, taking his friends with him.’

‘In short,’ he said, inspecting his fingertips with an air of feigned innocence, ‘far from exacting any kind of revenge, I have furnished you with no end of entertainment.’

‘You … I …’ She shut her mouth with a snap. ‘I absolutely refuse to allow you to goad me into losing my temper with you again,’ she said resolutely. ‘Because you did, at least, warn me what it would be like. And it has all ended rather well for Mildred and Mr Crimmer, at least.’

‘Good God,’ he said with disgust. ‘Are you really the kind of person who detects silver linings within even the darkest clouds? Not only have you completely outdated notions of morality, but it now appears that you also suffer from an incurable case of optimism.’

‘Oh, well,’ she said airily, ‘if you do not wish to hear the end of the tale, then naturally, I shall not bore you any longer.’ She made as if to leave the alcove.

‘Oh, no, you don’t.’ He seized her arm, just above the elbow, and turned her back. ‘You know full well that there is much more I want to hear. Oh, not about this Crimmer person, or your pretty little hen-witted cousin Mildred. It is obvious that once he leapt to her defence she has now cast him in the role of hero and his suit will prosper. No, what interests me is how you managed to wring social victory from what might have so easily been a crushing defeat.’

She pretended not to understand him.

‘I want to know,’ he persisted, ‘how you got an invitation to this house, of all houses. Lord Danbury has a reputation for being very exclusive. Just being seen here will do your credit no end of good.’

‘Well, it all stems from that incident, you know. Because after that, my aunt became far more discerning about who she would permit into her drawing room. Nobody gets in just because they have a title, any more. A visitor has to have some valid reason, apart from vulgar curiosity, before Warnes will allow them past the hall. Which meant that those wishing to have their curiosity satisfied had to send their sisters, or cousins, or aunts to ferret out what information they could.’

‘And yet you still did not apply to me for aid? My God, once the tabbies get their claws into you, it can be far worse than anything a boorish young fop can achieve.’

‘I did not think I needed to apply to you for aid. I thought you had already sent it.’ She gave him a speculative look. She couldn’t quite understand why she had hoped that in spite of the way they’d parted, the visit from his godmother had been a sign that he was still watching out for her, from afar. ‘I … I thought you might have spoken to Lady Dalrymple and asked her to intercede.’

‘Indeed?’

Henrietta’s heart sank a little. She had forgotten the vast social gulf that existed between them for a few moments, but now he had erected the barriers again, with that one lazily drawled word, that repressive lift to one eyebrow.

‘Well, yes. I am sorry, it is just that she is your godmother and she was there at Miss Twining’s ball …’

‘And she is as eaten up with curiosity as any of them. Perhaps more, given her relationship to me.’

‘Well, however it came about, she did a great deal of good. Because she declared, straight off, that she’d come to scotch the rumour that I was a vulgar nonentity, thrusting my way in where I didn’t belong.’

‘I can almost hear her saying it.’

Henrietta giggled. ‘I should think you might have done. She has a very carrying voice, does she not? Nobody who was in the drawing room the afternoon she called round could have failed to hear a single word of her conversation with me about my maternal grandmother and how they were such bosom bows, and how appalled she was not to have seen me at any of the kind of gatherings where Lavinia’s granddaughter ought to have been invited.’

He smiled with satisfaction. His godmother was one of those persons who knew everyone and everyone’s antecedents to at least three generations, and thoroughly enjoyed showing off the extent of her knowledge.

‘Did she restrict herself to merely mentioning your maternal antecedents?’

Henrietta shook her head.

‘My father’s connection to the Duke of Harrowgate came up very early on. Nor did she leave out my Uncle Ledbetter’s lineage, which she followed by lecturing us all, at length, about the difference between the middle classes, who may truly be called vulgar mushrooms who push themselves up from nowhere, and younger sons of good families who are obliged to take up a profession. And since then, the invitations to, well, to be frank, rather tonnish events such as this have begun to trickle in.’

It had only been after Lady Dalrymple’s visit that Julia Twining had called again, which was what had made her take both her repeated protestations of friendship, and her concern about her health, with a large pinch of salt.

‘I am only surprised,’ he sneered, ‘that nobody has yet started a rumour that you and I are on the verge of matrimony. Given that her appearance in your drawing room will have dealt the fatal blow to speculation that any kind of scandal could be brewing between us.’

‘Oh, dear, would people really …?’ She whisked her fan shut and tapped it absentmindedly in the palm of her other hand. Poor Lord Deben must be regretting his association with her even more. The last thing he wanted was to have his name connected to any innocent, eligible female. He disliked the entire notion of marriage so much that he’d told her he would rather shoot himself in the leg than enter into one.

‘No, no, I’m quite sure nobody suspects anything of that nature,’ she said, a rather worried frown puckering her brow. ‘A-at least …’ She glanced about the room, looking rather alarmed. ‘Perhaps we ought not to be standing apart in this corner, in this … intimate fashion.’

It felt as though she had forcibly thrust him into a stuffy room and slammed the door on him, while he’d been enjoying taking a walk on a particularly fresh and bracing October day.

‘Do you dislike the notion so very much?’

His whole being swelled with indignation. Just because those bucks had let slip a few indisputable facts, and he’d admitted that even his own brother had publicly condemned his licentious lifestyle, the little Puritan was recoiling from the prospect of her name being linked with his.

How dare she? He was a good marriage prospect. Any other woman would be thrilled, not look as though she’d just inadvertently trodden in something unpleasant.

But instead of turning on his heel, and putting her out of his mind, the thought that was uppermost in Lord Deben’s mind was a burning desire to force her to recant.

‘Me?’ Goodness, but he looked cross. He was probably regretting talking to her so freely now and coming to stand in this rather private little recess. Oh dear, but she hoped he did not now suspect she was trying to entrap him, too. She had better put him straight, at once.

‘No! I mean, I had not thought about it at all. And I wouldn’t.’

She could not believe that women would actually try to entrap a man who’d rather shoot himself in the leg than settle down to marital fidelity. Were they mad? Although perhaps they didn’t know as much about him as she did.

‘Why? Because you consider me an irredeemable rake?’

Well, he was one. She knew that now. The bucks who’d swarmed into her aunt’s house had been incredibly indiscreet, letting slip all sorts of unsavoury facts about him. She hadn’t been able to believe how coarse their conversation had been. It demonstrated not only a lowness of mind, but also an insulting disregard for her sensibilities. They were so keen to discuss the latest exploits of the Devilish Lord Deben, that they’d reminded her of a pack of baying hounds, chasing down a poor unfortunate hare.

It had been years, they’d revealed, since he’d kept a mistress in the conventional sense. Since they’d seen him take one of them driving in the park. They’d been slavering to guess what this queer start of his might mean. Was he changing his tactics once more? For, after he’d severed connections to the last of his high flyers, he’d methodically worked his way through the willing married ladies of the ton. When he’d sampled all the most beautiful, he’d cut a swathe through the wanton widows. Had he now decided to pursue unmarried girls of questionable birth for sport? After all, everyone knew how easily he grew bored, once he’d made a conquest. His affaires, apparently, never lasted very long.

Yes, they concluded, he would have far more sport attempting to seduce respectable virgins. He must be looking for a challenge to pique his jaded appetite. A virgin was bound to attempt to hang on to her virtue for as long as possible.

Only the fat young lord had voiced a protest, so blackened was Lord Deben’s reputation. And then only to point out that if it were the case, surely he would at least start on a pretty girl.

Her cheeks heated, half with chagrin at not being thought pretty enough to warrant seduction, and half with guilt at knowing far too much about the man who stood so close to her. She ought not to know such things about him. Or about any man.

‘I beg your pardon. It is not my business to comment upon your behaviour. I … I think I had better return to my aunt,’ she said, lowering her eyes.

‘Yes, run back to the safety of a crowded room,’ he sneered. ‘You do not want your spotless reputation sullied by loitering too long in my presence.’

She glanced up at him in confusion. For a few moments she had felt as though she could say anything to him and he would understand. It had been an age since she had just been able to talk freely like this. Not since she’d left the all-male household in Much Wakering. Her aunt and Mildred set such store by only discussing acceptable topics that it had felt wonderful to let down her guard and just say whatever came into her head.

But of course he wasn’t one of her brothers. Or a man she had known all her life. He was practically a stranger.

‘You are correct, of course,’ she said woodenly. The one thing she did know about him was that he was a rake. No, make that two things. He was a rake and an earl. And she was a nobody. ‘A woman’s reputation is a fragile thing.’

‘Which you believe I am quite capable of casually destroying.’

‘No!’ Very well, she knew three things about him. The nonsense those bucks had spouted was so very far from the truth it was laughable. He had no intention of seducing her. His reasons for taking her out for a drive were completely honourable.

No, she corrected herself. She could not claim that anything Lord Deben did would be completely honourable, not in the way she meant it. He’d tempted her to take a course that she considered most dishonourable. But he had not suggested it to make sport of her, or ruin her. In his own way, he had extended the hand of friendship to her.

‘Not on purpose, anyway. I am quite sure that I have nothing to fear from you.’ He did not pursue innocent girls. ‘But don’t forget, I have already been subjected to a deluge of unpleasant gossip just because you singled me out for attention the once.’

She looked up at him again and what he saw in her eyes struck him like a blow over the heart.

Not on purpose, she had said, and she had meant it.

She trusted him.

And if she felt it was wiser to keep away from him, she did so with regret. It was all there in those eyes that were as transparent as the sky on a cloudless day.

‘I could put a stop to all the unpleasant gossip,’ he said, ‘by allowing it to be known that I do intend to make you my wife. And then, if I appear to pursue you, they will be falling over themselves to become your friends.’

Even as he uttered the words, it occurred to him that he could do worse than really marry Miss Gibson. At least she would not bore him. He would not wish to limit his intercourse with her to the bedroom. She would be a charming companion. The prospect of marrying her was so very appealing that when she laughed it was all he could do not to flinch.

‘Oh, heavens. You cannot really think that anyone would believe I am the kind of girl who would really tempt a man of your … well …’ She felt herself blushing as she thought of some of the remarks the yahoos had made about his love life. ‘Your … experience, shall we say? If you ever do decide to marry, they will expect you to pick someone … exceptional. She will be beautiful, at the very least. Probably wealthy, too, and with far better connections than mine.’

A wonderful feeling came over him as he saw that he had absolutely no need to make her recant. It was her own powers of attraction she was calling into question, not the entire concept of marrying him.

With any other woman, he would have wondered if she was fishing for compliments. But Miss Gibson was honest. Brutally honest, at times. So he could just take her remark at face value.

God, what a novel experience that was!

Another thing she had said he could take at face value … what was it she’d said, earlier? She had never considered the thought of marrying him. She really had not. There had been no speculative gleam in her eye when he’d taken her out driving. There was no coquettishness about her now. No, Miss Gibson was treating him as though he was her friend.

‘Come, now. In the spirit of our friendship, what say you we have a little fun at the expense of all those yahoos,’ he said, ruthlessly using her own terminology to bring her round to his way of thinking. She was not ready to think of him in terms of marriage. But he could soon change her mind, had he unlimited access to her. There had never yet been a woman he could not bring to eat out of his hand.

‘I have already told you that you are eminently marriageable. And now that my godmother has made your connections known, people will be ready to believe in our courtship. Next to scandal, it is the one thing people love to think they can see brewing.’

She shook her head. ‘I have already told you, I have no interest in playing such games. Though,’ she admitted, ‘I am flattered that you think I could figure as the kind of woman you might lose your heart to.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted with a delightful blush. And then ruined it all by adding, ‘Because even an ignorant girl from the country like me can see what a coup it would be, socially, to get an offer from a man of your rank and wealth.’

A coup. Socially. Had ever a man been so neatly put in his place?

And there was he thinking she’d actually started to like him.

His disappointment was out of all proportion to the slap she’d administered, particularly since she’d not done it deliberately.

‘Then you had better,’ he said coldly, ‘return to your aunt, had you not, Miss Gibson?’

He watched her scurry away, like a mouse relieved to have escaped the paws of the kitchen cat. And he pretended the same indifference as would the kitchen cat, balked of its legitimate prey.

But behind his lazily hooded eyes his mind was racing. There had to be some way of making her change her mind about marrying him. He just had to discover what that might be. He would have to observe her closely, surreptitiously if need be. Until, like a hunter stalking its prey, he would find the optimum moment to pounce.

And take her.

Chapter Six

‘Miss Gibson!’

Henrietta faltered to a stop at the malice evident in the speaker’s tone, turned, and saw Miss Waverley emerge from the doorway from where she must have been watching her tête-à-tête with Lord Deben.

‘I might have known you would seize this opportunity to corner Lord Deben and thrust yourself upon his notice yet again.’

‘It was rather the opposite,’ retorted Henrietta, recalling how Lord Deben had accosted her on her way to the refreshment room.

‘You would say that, you brazen hussy,’ hissed Miss Waverley, bearing down upon her. ‘I know what you are about. But it won’t work.’ She raked Henrietta with a contemptuous look. ‘You are making a spectacle of yourself by pursuing him like this. Lady Susan only invited you here so that we could all watch you trotting after him, like some lovesick puppy. So that we could all laugh at you.’

She did laugh then and it was one of the most unpleasant sounds Henrietta had ever heard.

‘He is not really interested in you,’ she said. ‘How could he be? You are just an ugly … nobody. He is very choosy about the females he permits into his bed, you know. They all have to be titled, for a start, and incredibly beautiful. And accomplished, too.’

‘Then,’ said Henrietta quietly, ‘that certainly rules you out, does it not?’

‘You impudent little … vulgar mushroom!’ As Miss Waverley’s face contorted with fury it occurred to Henrietta that she must not have heard about the way Lady Dalrymple had gone to such lengths to prove she was most emphatically not a mushroom of any variety.

Or if she had, she’d chosen not to believe it.

‘I could have you thrown out of this house for daring to speak to me like that.’

Henrietta very much doubted it, but Miss Waverley did not give her an opportunity to speak, so determined was she to give vent to the frustrated spite that had clearly been building up while she waited for just such an opportunity as this.

‘But I shan’t bother. You are not worth bothering with,’ she said, almost as though she was repeating something another person had dinned into her. ‘And Lady Susan may have taken you up, temporarily, the way she often does with odd people who capture her fancy …’

Strangely, although she’d been able to discount everything else Miss Waverley had said so far, recognising it as an outpouring of spite, the remark about Lady Susan struck home, for she’d been suspicious of her motives from the start.

‘There won’t be any dancing,’ Lady Susan had informed her when she’d told her about this evening. ‘Just the opportunity to mingle with interesting people and indulge in stimulating conversation. My father has read your father’s treatise on the potential uses of de-phlogisticated air,’ she’d said, leaning slightly forwards as though about to deliver a confidence. ‘He was most impressed. And for my part, I am just longing to having one female amongst my acquaintance with whom I can hold an intelligent conversation. There are precious few in town this season.’

Henrietta had not missed the way Lady Susan’s eyes had flickered briefly towards Julia, who had been sipping a cup of tea and staring vacantly at nothing in particular. And had decided on the spot she did not like her. Not at all.

And yet it still hurt, somehow, to realise that everyone would now regard her as one of the ‘odd’ people that sometimes caught Lady Susan’s fancy. As odd as some of the other guests present tonight. The wild-haired poetess who’d been pointed out to her in one of the receiving rooms, for instance, or the penniless inventors, grubby artists and belligerent self-made men one would not normally see at a ton event, but who were tonight rubbing shoulders with peers and politicians.

And Lord Danbury, forcing himself to be polite to people he only tolerated in his house because they amused his daughter.

It made her feel a bit like one of those performing monkeys in a travelling circus. Especially when Miss Waverley added, ‘But once the novelty has worn off, she will drop you again and you will sink back into obscurity where you belong.’

Like those performing monkeys, shut back in their cages once the show was over.

With that, Miss Waverley lifted her skirts and swirled away, leaving Henrietta standing stock still in the corridor. She was rather shaken by that display of venom, which was, in her view, completely out of proportion. Miss Waverley, she mused as she pulled herself together and set out for the drawing room where she’d left her aunt and cousin, must be all about in her head. For one thing, had Henrietta not intervened, she would have been at the centre of the most almighty scandal. Though she was not to know that. She had no idea what kind of a man she’d attempted to manipulate. That she’d done the equivalent of poking her hand through the bars of a lion’s cage.

And as for predicting that she would sink back into obscurity—well! If the members of the ton were all like Miss Waverley, and those yahoos who’d invaded her drawing room and flung insults left, right and centre, then the sooner they lost interest in her the better. She had only accepted the invitation here tonight because she’d seen it would mean so much to her aunt and cousin. And they, she observed from the doorway, were now enjoying themselves immensely. Not only had Lord Deben convinced the waiters to serve them, but in the short time she’d been out of the room, Mildred had managed to acquire a brace of admirers. One of them was leaning over the back of the sofa and trying to murmur in her ear, and the other, who had pulled up a spindly chair to her side, was shooting him dagger looks.

Neither of them were in earnest, she didn’t suppose, and anyway, Mildred had learned a salutary lesson the afternoon of the brawl. Men of this class did not take women of her class seriously. They might flirt with her, but behind all the flattery lurked a contempt for her background that would prevent any but the most desperate fortune hunter from offering her anything more than carte blanche. Whereas Mr Crimmer, for all that he was cursed with a stutter and a fatal tendency to blush, had more than proved the strength of his feelings with his fists.

She took her place on the sofa on the far side of her aunt from Mildred, so as not to interrupt her light-hearted flirtation, and flicked open her fan. How soon would they be able to go home? And how soon after that would she be able to return to Much Wakering, and the very obscurity Miss Waverley had taunted her with as though it would be some kind of punishment? She sighed. Although she wrote regularly to her father, it seemed an age since she had seen him.

Perhaps he would come up to town for a meeting, or a lecture. He often took off at a moment’s notice, after having read an advertisement in the paper.

Her hand slowed and stilled, as she imagined him going to one of his meetings, and unexpectedly hearing her name bandied about in the way Miss Waverley had just described, for Miss Waverley was never going to let the matter drop. She was so angry about having her plan to entrap Lord Deben thwarted that she would most likely take every chance she got to blacken Henrietta’s name. And she was so popular with the men that she would never lack an audience.

A cold sensation gnawed at the pit of her stomach. She did not care for herself, but her father would be terribly upset to find he’d pitched her into such an uncomfortable situation.

Not to mention her brothers. When they returned home on leave, what would it do to them to find their sister talked about in that horrid way?

Oh, they would understand without having to be told how it was that their absent-minded father had come to send her to stay with the Ledbetters, which was what had led to the general assumption that she had a background in trade, but it would not make their chagrin on her behalf any the less. And even though Lady Dalrymple had enlightened some people, there were others, like Miss Waverley, who would prefer to believe the worst.

But it wasn’t that, so much, which would worry her whole family. It was the nature of her entanglement with Lord Deben. She had done absolutely nothing wrong, but Miss Waverley was sure to make it sound just as bad as it could be.

It was a kind of poetic justice. Because she had rashly pursued Richard up to London, she was going to be branded as the kind of girl who chased after all men. She felt a bit sick. By pushing her father into hastily arranging what he thought was a Season for her, she might well have dragged her entire family into the mire.

She could still hear the drone of Mildred’s two admirers buzzing in her ears, and see gorgeously apparelled people milling about the room, but she felt strangely detached from them all, guilt roiling through her like a poisonous miasma so thick that it practically blotted them all out.

Until Lord Deben strolled across the part of the room into which she was staring sightlessly.

Giving her a faint ray of hope. People were going to gossip about her, now, whatever she did. And that being the case, she would much rather they did so because she had become, mysteriously, the toast of the ton, than a byword for vulgarity.

She was not giving in to base temptation. She was not doing this because she wanted to put Miss Waverley’s nose out of joint. She was not thinking of how often it would mean she would have to spend time in Lord Deben’s stimulating company. It would just be far better for her male relatives to believe she’d had a successful Season, than pain them by becoming a laughing stock.

Rising to her feet, she walked across the room to Lord Deben’s side and, when he did not at first notice her hovering on the fringes of the crowd that had gathered round him, she reached through the throng and tugged at his sleeve.

A matron put up her lorgnettes and stared at her frostily. One of the men nudged another and they both smirked.

Lord Deben eyed the little hand that had just creased the immaculate sleeve of his coat, and then, slowly, followed the line of her arm to her face.

‘Miss Gibson,’ he said.

For one terrible moment, she thought she might just have committed social suicide. If he chose to snub her now, she really would be finished. Silently, with all her will-power, she begged him to help her. And after what felt like an eternity, but was probably only a second or two, his face broke into a charming smile.

‘My dear, I completely forgot. You are quite right to remind me.’ He took her hand and pulled her into the charmed circle. ‘You will excuse us, gentlemen? Ladies? Only I did give my word that …’ He trailed off, pulling his watch out of his pocket and examining it. ‘And I am already overdue. We were so deep in conversation,’ he said to Henrietta, ‘that I quite forgot the time.’

He tucked her hand firmly into the crook of his arm and gave it a reassuring pat. The others moved aside as he led her out of the door and along a corridor. After only a few paces, he opened another door, peered inside, then pushed her into a deserted room, shutting the door firmly behind them and turning the key in the lock.

‘Thank you.’ She breathed a sigh of relief. A brace of candlesticks stood upon the mantel over the empty grate, so that although the room was not very inviting, at least they were not in complete darkness.

‘Did you doubt me?’ He folded his arms and leaned back against the door. ‘I gave you my word that should you apply to me for aid, I would be there.’

But he’d never really thought she would come to him so quickly. His heart was only just returning to its regular rhythm, after the surge of jubilation that had set it pounding when she’d pleaded with him, mutely, to help her. It went some way to compensating him for having made the first move this evening. He’d still been rather annoyed with himself for doing so when two weeks earlier he’d sworn that the next time they spoke it would be because she had come to him. And yet the moment he’d seen her, feigning indifference, he’d been compelled to confront her, even going to the lengths of barring her way when she would have left the room.

‘Yes, that is why I came straight to you. It was only that I was not sure you would understand.’

‘My dear, you would not approach me, push through a crowd who fancy themselves the most important people in the land, and tug on my coat sleeve unless it was a dire emergency.’

Which was why he had not been able to resist making her wait for his response. For a few moments, he’d had the supreme satisfaction of having her exactly where he wanted her—metaphorically, if not literally, on her knees before him—and it had been so sweet a feeling that he’d prolonged it as long as he could. It had been just punishment for the damage she’d unwittingly caused his pride.

‘The most important people in the land? Oh, dear!’

‘They only think they are,’ he said with contempt. ‘But never mind the conversation you interrupted. I am far more interested in learning what has occurred to induce you to abandon that fierce pride of yours and come to me as a supplicant. Not that I object, you understand.’

‘Sometimes,’ she said, observing the smugness of the smile that curved his lips as he referred to her as a supplicant, ‘I really, really, dislike you.’

He took one step sideways. ‘The key is in the lock. You may turn it and leave, if you so wish.’

‘You aggravating man,’ she seethed. ‘You know very well I’m not going anywhere. Do you have to make it so hard for me?’

‘Make what hard?’ His smile was positively predatory now.

She glowered at him.

‘To tell you that I have changed my mind. That if you would be so kind, I should like to take you up on your offer.’

‘My offer?’ His smile froze.

‘To make me the toast of the ton,’ she snapped. ‘They are all going to gossip about me. I cannot stop it now. And at least if you … I don’t know … do whatever it is you had in mind to make them think I’m … fascinating … then at least my brothers won’t be ashamed to own me.’

A strange look came over his face. ‘You are doing this for your brothers?’

She’d done something very like this before. When Lady Chigwell had been berating her, she’d borne it all with weary indifference. It had only been when the old harridan had cast aspersions on her family that she had flung up her chin and answered back.

Because she loved them.

Love was the key that he’d been searching for. If she believed she was in love with him, he would have it all. Her compliance to his wish she should marry him and, most of all, her loyalty. He didn’t know why he hadn’t seen it before. But now he had, he couldn’t see her marrying anyone unless she fancied herself in love with him.

And once she’d made the commitment, she would remain loyal to the bitter end. No matter what she thought of him once she knew him well enough to realise he was not the kind of person anyone could really love, she would remain loyal. He might have mocked her for that streak of Puritanism she so frequently displayed, but that very morality would spare him many of the distasteful aspects of marriage that had made him avoid it for so long. She would not be the kind of woman to take a lover the moment she’d presented him with an heir. On the contrary, any children she bore would undoubtedly be his.

Just think of that. Having two or even three sons that were indisputably legitimate. It was far more than he’d ever dared to hope for. But with Henrietta as his wife …

He sucked in a deep breath as he imagined married life, with Henrietta Gibson as his countess.

Their marriage would not be in the least bit fashionable. She would be unfashionably loyal, unfashionably faithful and, most likely, with her open, honest nature, probably given to unfashionable displays of affection in public. Which would be a tad irritating, particularly as people would mock her.

Still, he had never imagined marriage would be without problems, and at least having a wife who was a bit gauche in public was far preferable to enduring one who played the whore.

He made a decision. Not only would he not reprimand her, should she be demonstrative towards him in public, he would actually defend her. It would be a shame to crush those traits of honesty and openness that made her unique. Any affection she felt for him initially would wither away and die eventually anyway, but he could at least not do anything to hasten her disillusionment. By the time she realised that love was a fairy tale, that it had no place in the real world, they might have reached a state of understanding which would enable them to at least present a united front to their children. He would do whatever it took to ensure that his own offspring would not become casualties of the kind of bitter war that had raged between his own parents.

All these thoughts flashed through his mind in less time than it took him to breathe in and out a couple of times.

That was all the time it took to decide that he would have Miss Gibson at his side, and on his side, no matter what he had to do to ensure he won her.

Completely oblivious to the fact that Lord Deben was undergoing something of an epiphany, Henrietta had turned away and flung herself on to a convenient sofa.

‘For Hubert and Horatio, to be precise. When they come home on leave I don’t want them to hear the kind of gossip that Miss Waverley says will go round if I just sit back and do nothing. Oh, how I wish I’d never come to town. In doing so I’ve already let Humphrey and Horace down. I should have been at home when they had their school holidays. Mrs Cook is a very capable housekeeper, and very kind in her own way, but one cannot expect her to play cricket with them.’

She slumped forwards and buried her face in her hands. ‘I’ve made such a mull of it all.’

Her despair over not being present during her brothers’ school holidays only proved that he’d just made the right decision. Miss Gibson would make an exemplary mother. He could just see her playing cricket with his own sons on the East Lawn, not caring about ruining the turf. And more than that, he could see her protecting all the children he would get upon her with the ferocity of a tigress guarding her cubs. Unlike his own mother who, once she’d whelped, had scarcely looked over her shoulder as she returned to her relentless pursuit of selfish pleasures.

A lesser man might have blurted it all out, there and then, perhaps claiming to have been struck by a coup de foudre. His upper lip curled in contempt as he considered the outcome of speaking such fustian to Miss Gibson while she was so upset and angry. Particularly since some of her anger was directed at him. She resented having to apply to him for aid. Especially since, now he came to consider it, he had not been all that gracious about it.

And then, something about the term coup de foudre niggled at the back of his mind. Hadn’t he, on that drive round the park, warned her that he was not the kind of man who would suffer from that complaint? He had.

In fact, he had been less than tactful with Miss Gibson on several occasions. And brutally honest about his views on love and romance.

He would have the devil of a job getting her to believe he was now receptive to the whole idea of love, within marriage, especially as he only expected her to be the one ‘falling in love’. He could just picture how it would go, should he commence a courtship after the accepted mode. If he presented her with posies, started making pretty speeches, or gave her respectful yet meaningful glances across the set as they danced with each other, she would simply laugh at him. Frustrate him at every turn. In short, make him look like a fool.

There followed what he found a slightly awkward pause as it occurred to him that he could not have made a worse start with his intended bride.

To cover the awkwardness, and to give her something to think about while he grappled with a solution to the dilemma he’d caused himself, he said, ‘Your parents gave you all names beginning with the letter H?’

If he appeared to be interested in the family she held so dear, that might at least start to smooth her ruffled feathers.

She looked up at him sharply. ‘That has nothing to do with anything.’

‘On the contrary,’ he said, making a swift recovery and making damned sure he would not let her glimpse his true state of mind, ‘I utterly refuse to do anything at all until you have divulged the reason behind such an eccentric example of parenting.’

‘It was a bit of a joke between my father and mother, if you must know,’ she said mulishly. ‘Since their names both started with the letter G, they decided the next generation must all take the next letter of the alphabet.’

They had agreed on the names of their children between themselves. A pang of yearning shot through him. What would it be like to hang over a cradle, and discuss with his wife the naming of each and every one of the children she bore him? His own father had decreed that his name should be Jonathon Henry and had not cared what his mother chose to name any of the successive siblings that she periodically deposited in the family nursery.

He squeezed his eyes shut. He was letting his imagination run away with him. He could not start filling his nursery until he got Miss Gibson to accept a proposal of marriage from him and, judging by her present demeanour and what he already knew of her, she was not going to seize upon it with the delight he might expect from any other female present in town this Season.

He opened his eyes and regarded her slumped posture thoughtfully. For one thing, she had just told him she didn’t particularly like him. Unlike the other débutantes he’d been discreetly interviewing for the position, rank did not mean anything to her. Then there was the mysterious suitor who’d abandoned her for Miss Waverley’s surface charm. She might still have some lingering feelings for him. She’d claimed she had come to him because she did not want to disappoint her brothers, but he would wager it was more complicated than that. He could not leave the mysterious swain out of the equation.

But nor could he risk allowing her to slip through his fingers.

Then it hit him.

There was a way, just one way, he could definitely get her to accept a marriage proposal—and that would be if he asked her precisely one minute after taking her virginity.

For once she’d yielded to him, sexually, she was the kind of woman who would salve her conscience by telling herself she’d only succumbed because she was in love with him. She wouldn’t be, of course, but that was immaterial. He did not need her to really love him, only to believe she did.

His blood stirred. The moment he started to think in terms of bedding her he couldn’t help noticing what wonderfully clear skin she had. Her cheeks were soft as rose petals. And the upper slopes of her breasts, just visible above the modest neckline of her gown, looked so luscious he was already salivating at the prospect of closing his lips around them.

He took a deep breath, reminding himself he needed to keep a clear head. Though he was pleased she aroused the lust necessary to make her an acceptable bed partner, most of the desire he felt towards her had very little to do with the physical. Not that it was sentimental in nature. No, he was not such a fool that he would permit mawkish sentiment to cloud his judgement. It was just that there were so many things about her that made the prospect of marriage entirely … palatable.

As he eyed her dejected form an intensity came to his eyes, like that of a hawk hovering over its prey. For all her protestations of dislike, for all her rigidly held morals, she was not immune to him. He’d caught the occasional glimmer of appreciation in her eyes as she examined his face, or the set of his shoulders, or the skill with which he handled the ribbons. And if he wasn’t mistaken, she had deliberately set out to make him laugh in the recounting of the tale of Crimmer and the yahoos. She’d wanted to impress him, at least, if not to enchant him.

Which was a start.

He wouldn’t mind wagering that during the entire two weeks he had held aloof, she had been thinking about him, too, for she’d as good as admitted she’d wanted him to have been the one to send Lady Dalrymple to clear her name.

And she had not returned the handkerchief he’d pressed upon her, the first night they’d met. If she was completely indifferent to him, she would have had it laundered and returned via one of her wealthy uncle’s footmen.

Yes, she was susceptible.

So, the only question remaining was how best to embark upon her seduction. In some ways it was a pity he’d already put the notion in her head that he was only going to pretend to find her fascinating. It was another reason why he’d seen it would be damned difficult to make her believe he was in earnest when he began to pursue her.

On the other hand, it would give him opportunities to sneak beneath her guard which she would never yield to a real suitor. All he needed was a plausible explanation for why he would push her beyond the bounds of what she would consider acceptable behaviour from a make-believe suitor.

All kinds of interesting possibilities occurred to him …

It felt like getting back on to familiar, firm ground after wading through a patch of quicksand. Because, even though she would no doubt make a spirited attempt to preserve her virtue, he had complete confidence that he could breach her walls. She was such an innocent she would not have a hope of maintaining a lengthy resistance to the range and sophistication of weapons he could wield. He knew how to lure a woman so stealthily that she thought she was the one doing the enticing. How to tease, and arouse, and torture a woman with sensual delights until she was begging him for the mercy of release.

And not once, in his entire amatory career, had any woman ever objected to his methods, or his technique. Even the married ones purred that he was a tiger in bed. And when he ended an affair, they had all, without exception, let him know they would welcome him back.

Though, he frowned, none of them had been cut from the same cloth as Miss Gibson. Nor was his interest in her merely sexual and temporary. What he wanted from Miss Gibson was something entirely new. In some indefinable way, he wanted more from her than just her body.

But taking possession of her body was where he was going to start.

‘Well,’ she said impatiently, after he’d been staring at her in complete silence for some minutes, ‘are you going to keep your promise, or not?’

‘Oho, Miss Gibson, that sounds like a challenge.’ He stalked towards her, but instead of taking a seat beside her, he bent and took her hands, tugging her to her feet. ‘Turn around,’ he said, letting go of her hands.

‘What? Why?’

‘Just do it,’ he said, affecting irritation. ‘I need to see what material I have to work with.’

Shooting him just one look loaded with resentment, she turned, then plumped herself back down on the sofa and crossed her arms.

‘Completely graceless.’ He sighed. ‘And far too thin to be fashionable,’ though hers was not the pared-down, weakened frame that poets described as ethereal. She had the whipcord leanness of a girl who led an energetic lifestyle—playing cricket with her brothers, for one thing.

‘The quickest way to make you fashionable would be to procure you vouchers for Almack’s. And attend myself …’ He had never set foot in the marriage mart before, and to do so now would be such singular behaviour that everyone would understand his intent. People were already beginning to speculate about his sudden interest in débutantes. When he began to devote himself entirely to Miss Gibson everyone but she would understand that he’d got her in his sights. It would afford her the kind of protection he would never otherwise be able to provide. Though his own treatment of her from now on must be utterly ruthless, he would make damned sure nobody else dared to so much as look at her sideways.

She was going to be his wife. His countess. Everyone needed to understand that and accord her due respect.

‘If people suspect you are about to become the next Countess of Deben, they will be falling over themselves to win your goodwill,’ he predicted.

It was just typical of her that instead of taking the lure he’d dropped into the conversation, about the potential for gaining a title, she wrinkled her nose, and said, ‘Almack’s? Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Ridiculous?’ Why would she consider going to Almack’s ridiculous? Did she care so little for the superficial glamour of the society in which he moved that she would eschew the highest honour it could bestow on a girl with limited connections?

It would, he saw, take a very, very long time before Miss Gibson ever began to bore him. She was like no other female he’d ever encountered. Every time he thought he’d begun to grasp the essence of her, she’d surprise him all over again. But never in a bad way.

She was, in fact, just like his favourite season of the year, when summer began to ebb away, but winter did not yet hold his estates in the grip of its frosty fingers. When he could never tell, on waking, whether the day would be balmy as June, heavy with fog, or ripped to shreds by a bracing gale. When the undulating hills would flush with a last glorious burst of colour, as though each tree had absorbed every sunset and dawn that had tinted the summer skies, only to flaunt them in defiance of the approaching season of dormancy.

‘In what way? Do you not believe I am capable of procuring you vouchers, perchance? Oh, ye of little faith. I am in possession of a certain piece of information for which Lady Jersey would give her eye teeth …’

‘It isn’t that,’ she said with a touch of impatience. ‘I don’t care how many people offer to procure me vouchers to Almack’s, I shan’t go, and that’s that.’

‘I share your reluctance to set foot in anywhere so stuffy, but, Miss Gibson …’

‘No,’ she repeated firmly. ‘It’s all very well to talk about social advancement, and Aunt Ledbetter agreeing not to stand in my way, but I shall not turn my back on her and my cousin. I will not go anywhere that they will not be received, too. And you know very well they would never admit Mildred.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘It sounds as though you are referring to a conversation you have already had, so I can only surmise that Lady Dalrymple has already offered to use her influence to promote you.’

She nodded.

‘But only if you play down the fact that the people with whom you are currently residing are not quite the thing.’

She nodded again, glumly.

He clucked his tongue. ‘How foolish of her to suggest you should turn your back upon your relatives in order to feather your own nest.’

She looked up at him sharply. ‘You do understand, then?’

‘Of course.’ He gave an insouciant shrug. ‘You are too fiercely loyal to anyone you consider family to do anything so shabby. I only wish I’d been there to hear your reply,’ he said, a gleam of appreciation in his eyes. ‘Hampered as you were by the fact that you were, no doubt, in your aunt’s drawing room at the time.’

‘And,’ she pointed out, ‘by my own innate good manners. Heavens, your godmother had just offered to go out of her way to bring me into style. I would never, ever want to offend someone who’d just done that.’

He raised one eyebrow. ‘Anyone but me, you mean. After all, have I not just offered to do the same?’

‘Oh, you are different,’ she said, slamming her hand down on the arm of the sofa.

‘Am I?’

‘You know very well you are. This is all just a game to you. So stop pretending to take offence,’ she said, folding her arms and glaring up at him. ‘And concentrate on coming up with some other solution.’

He planted his hands on his hips and examined her, head tilted to one side. He did his best to look stern, but no matter how hard he tried he could not quite prevent a smile from playing about his lips. He was glad she’d turned down his offer to procure vouchers for Almack’s. Delighted with the reasons she’d done so. And thoroughly enjoying the spirited way she was sparring with him.

‘It would have been quite a sacrifice, you ungrateful wretch,’ he said with mock reproof, ‘getting me to attend Almack’s. Any of the lady patronesses would have been thrilled to think they’d seen me finally brought to heel.’

‘Well, you shan’t need to make that sacrifice now,’ she pointed out.

He shook his head ruefully. ‘No, instead I shall be obliged to pursue you through the lower echelons of society.’

‘But … how will that answer?’

‘You goose. Once people discover that I am prepared to go anywhere that you attend in the hopes of making you smile upon me, you will get invited everywhere. All you will have to do is ignore any invitation that does not include your chaperon and companion. Before long, the more astute hostess will understand what she needs to do to get you, and therefore me, to attend her party.’

Her face lit up.

‘Oh, how clever of you. Yes, that would answer.’

He had never thought that a woman’s smile could have such an exhilarating effect upon him.

Though it was simultaneously rather sobering to reflect that if she knew what he was planning for her, she would shrink from him.

But he was not going to let minor matters like scruples hold him back, not now. Miss Gibson was going to marry him and he would do whatever it took to get her to the altar. Even if it meant deceiving her.

‘In part,’ he said gravely. He made as if to sit on the sofa beside her. Henrietta shifted slightly to give him room, her eyes fixed on his with open curiosity. Another pang of something like remorse shot through him.

Again, he thrust it aside.

‘At the risk of you accusing me of being rude, Miss Gibson, I have to remind you of the one factor which may give the lie to our little game.’ He took her hands in his, without breaking eye contact. ‘My reputation.’

‘Y-your reputation? As a rake, you mean? Y-yes, I know that you do not normally pursue innocents …’

He shook his head. ‘Even among those who could never have been described as innocent have I ever had to pursue any female. At the most, all I have ever had to do is drop a few subtle hints. If the woman in question did not respond, I saw no reason to persist. After all, there have always been plenty who were willing to pursue me. Thus, I have been able to avail myself of the ones who are …’

‘The most beautiful!’ She tried to draw her hands away, but he held on to them firmly.

‘It is not that you are not beautiful, Miss Gibson. I have already told you that you have many good features. Clear skin, speaking eyes and a perfectly acceptable mouth. Your problem, my dear, is, as you yourself have already pointed out, that you do not have what you call the “charisma” to attract the notice of a man such as myself. Though I would call it allure. Feminine allure. That elusive factor which draws men to some females like moths to a candle flame.’

She frowned. ‘You aren’t going to suggest I suddenly start apeing all those girls who flutter their eyelashes at men and say how clever they are, and agree with whatever nonsense they spout?’ She wrinkled her nose in disgust. ‘Even if I restricted my fluttering and fawning to you, I don’t think I could be very convincing …’

She faltered as he began to chuckle.

‘God, no! You must remain your own, refreshingly honest self at all times. Only a more feminine version of yourself.’

‘How can I become more feminine? You aren’t going to advise me to wear low-cut gowns and paint my face, I hope?’

‘That would be to make you look desperate,’ he replied drily. ‘As though you are out to snare any man who will throw the handkerchief your way. No, what I plan to do is make you aware of yourself as a woman. Only when you understand and embrace your own sexuality will other men understand what it is that attracts me to you.’

‘Embrace my s-s—’ She tugged her hands free, a tide of red sweeping over her cheeks. ‘What,’ she said primly, ‘exactly, are you suggesting?’

‘Do not look at me like that,’ he said frostily. ‘Do you think I intend to ravish you upon this sofa?’

‘N-no, but—’

‘No buts, Miss Gibson. Either you trust me to turn you into the kind of woman who can have a man panting after her with one glance, or you do not.’

He could teach her how to have a man panting after her with one glance? Was that even possible?

Yes. Yes, it was. Hadn’t she seen Miss Waverley bewitching Richard? And even Mildred had the mysterious power to draw men to her side, and keep them fascinated, even whilst holding them at arm’s length. She had thought it was simply that she was beautiful. But Lord Deben was saying there was more to it than that.

‘Do you trust me, Miss Gibson?’

She looked into his stern features. If she said she didn’t trust him, he would get up and walk out, she could tell.

‘If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t be sitting here in this room, on the sofa with you, with the door locked,’ she pointed out. ‘I just don’t really understand how …’

‘I know you don’t understand. That is why you must trust me. Let me teach you about your body and the power it has.’

‘Teach me about my body? How will that help?’

‘You really have no idea, do you?’ His eyes, which could sometimes look as hard as polished jet, softened to something she felt she could drown in.

‘If you were more aware of yourself as a woman, the power to attract a man’s notice would flow naturally from that.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Why was it becoming so difficult to draw breath? ‘Of course I am aware that I’m a woman.’

He shook his head, almost pityingly. ‘No. Miss Gibson, though you inhabit the body of a fully grown woman, you are still, in many ways, just a little girl.’

‘I am not!’

‘Oh, but you are. You wield none of the weapons that other women employ upon the battlefield of the ballroom. You walk and talk more like a man than a gently bred female of two and twenty summers.’

He laid one finger upon her lips when she opened her mouth to make an objection.

‘And, my dear, it is quite obvious to every experienced male that nobody has ever kissed those innocent lips.’

‘Oh, but they have. I mean, they did. I mean, of course I have been kissed!’

‘Not to any great effect,’ he said with a slight sneer. ‘It was obviously a fumbling boy, not a man that kissed you, or you would not appear so untouched.’

Untouched? Richard’s kiss had flummoxed her so much she had chased after him all the way to London.

‘Whereas,’ he was continuing, silkily, ‘if I were to kiss you, you would never be the same again.’

‘You are the most arrogant man I have ever met!’

‘No. Just truthful. If I were to kiss you, I would take great care to ensure you would never be able to look at a man’s lips in quite the same way again. When you next spoke to a man, any man, you would not be able to help wondering if his lips could wreak the magic that mine did. Your eyes would linger on them, speculatively. And he would know that you were summing him up. Know that you were wondering what it would be like to kiss him. And then he would want, above all things, to show you.’

Magic? He was declaring that his lips would work some kind of magic upon her? And yet, it appeared, the magic was already beginning to work because as he spoke, she found it impossible to tear her eyes from his mouth. And wonder what was so special about it that one touch would change her into someone who could draw men to her like moths to a flame.

Of course, he had a vast amount of experience.

And he did have a reputation for being so very good at carnal things that any lady who’d been fortunate enough to attract his attention wanted it again. And suddenly it was not just his mouth she was thinking about, but his whole body, naked, in a rumpled bed, where he was rendering some faceless female delirious with desire.

He smiled, a lazy, sensuous smile that did funny things to her insides and made her heart race. Or had it been racing like this for some minutes already?

‘Exactly so,’ he purred softly. ‘You are wondering what my lips will feel like. So, naturally, I wish to oblige you.’

‘How can you tell what I’m thinking?’ Her voice came out in a horrified squeak. Goodness, if he knew she’d just been picturing him naked, she would never be able to look him in the face again.

‘It is the way you are looking at my mouth, Miss Gibson. With curiosity. And longing. And, best of all, with invitation.’

‘I … I wasn’t …’

‘Oh, but you were.’

He frowned. ‘At this point in the proceedings, with any other man but me, you would pull up the drawbridge and retreat behind it, since you do not wish to appear fast.’

‘P-pull up the drawbridge?’

‘Last chance, Miss Gibson. Stop me now, or I will kiss you. And I promise you, if I do that, you will never be the same again.’

Chapter Seven

She wasn’t the same already. She had never, ever, thought about what a man would look like naked, in bed. Or felt her lips tingle with expectancy. Nor had her heart raced like this while she was sitting completely still. And all he’d done so far was talk about kissing.

Heavens, no wonder women were queuing up for the privilege of taking him as a lover.

‘Do you wish to continue?’

‘Wh-what?’

‘With your lesson. Do you wish me to take it to its conclusion?’

Lesson. She blinked.

And although there was still a pool of lethargy where her knees had previously been, most of the haze cleared from her mind at his curt reminder that this was not real.

Not for him, anyway. He considered her a pupil, very much in need of tutoring in the arts of which he was a skilled practitioner.

It was a good job he’d recalled her to reality. It would never do to start thinking there was anything romantic about what was going to happen next. She’d read far too much into a kiss before—and look where that had ended up.

She must think of this merely as a practical demonstration from a master craftsman to his apprentice.

‘I cannot think of anyone better qualified to teach me about kissing,’ she said tartly, ‘than you, Lord Deben.’

And with that, she shut her eyes, tilted her head back and puckered up her lips.

‘Miss Gibson …’ he chuckled ‘… you are the most absurd creature.’

Well, that dealt with any last lingering shreds of girlish excitement she had not so far managed to squash. She opened her eyes and glared up into his mocking face.

It was all very well accepting she was ignorant and in need of tuition, but that did not mean she would sit back and tamely let him mock her.

‘That’s it,’ she snapped. ‘I have changed my mind.’

When she made as if to get up he reacted astonishingly swiftly, seizing her about the waist and pulling her back down. Then he took hold of her chin with his free hand.

‘Don’t fly into the boughs because I laughed,’ he said sternly. ‘You should not have pushed your mouth into that absurd little shape. It made you look ridiculous. Never do it again.’

‘How dare you speak to me like that!’

‘I dare because you asked me to teach you how to be more feminine, sweet tempest,’ he pointed out.

It was strange he should have spoken of a tempest, because it really did feel as if some kind of tempest was raging through her. It was making her breathless. Her heart was pounding against her ribcage. But it wasn’t, at least not all of it, the product of outrage at his high-handed attitude towards her. A good deal of it stemmed from the determined way he was holding her captive, which was having the peculiar effect of making her want to sink into his strong embrace rather than make any attempt to struggle free of the confines of those muscular arms.

‘You should let your lips relax,’ he instructed her. ‘Perhaps part them a little for me. Moisten them, if you wish.’

He licked his own, then, as if demonstrating what she ought to do.

She couldn’t have torn her eyes from his mouth if her life had depended on it.

‘R-relax,’ she stammered.

He smiled and gently caressed her lower jaw with his gloved hand. A flash of something very like electricity struck her midriff as he angled her head into a position of his own choosing.

‘By all means close your eyes, if you wish.’

He was lowering his head towards her. Any second now …

‘I find that absence of sight heightens the other senses.’

Immediately, she screwed her eyes tightly shut. Though it wasn’t about heightening her senses, since hers were pretty over-stimulated already, so much as hiding. She did not want him looking into her eyes when they kissed, in case he saw …

What? That she had never felt like this? Could never have imagined feeling like this? That, in short, he was right, damn him? That just having a man of his reputation holding her so close was making her all soft and melting and more aware of her femininity than she had ever dreamed possible?

Particularly since he was so hard and demanding, and masculine.

She swallowed.

And felt his breath, hot against her cheek. Then he nuzzled her ear. And breathed in, deep and slow, just as though he was … What was he doing? Smelling her? Why would he want to do that? Although, hadn’t he said something about heightening the other senses? And it was very … affecting, having him just breathe in and out like that, as though he was inhaling her very essence.

She couldn’t help being extremely aware of the scent of him, too. It was incredibly intimate—yes that was the word, intimate—to be so close to a man that she could identify the unique smell of the shaving soap he’d used, overlying freshly laundered linen and what she suspected was just him. Spice and musk. Masculinity.

Oh, bother the man. What was he waiting for? Why did he have to make such a meal of it? Why could he not just get on with it?

His hand went to the nape of her neck. His fingers speared upwards, into her hair, massaging her scalp. He nudged at her jaw line with his nose, as though he wanted her to tilt her head back still further.

And because it felt rather as though her spine was melting, she had no problem with letting her head loll against the back of the sofa.

He buried his face in her neck.

‘Oh!’ He was still not kissing her. Instead, he was very gently nipping along the length of her neck. And now not only her spine, but every single bone in her body was melting.

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