Henrietta unfurled her fan and raised it to her face to conceal her smile, which was bordering on a most unladylike grin. Richard was about to undergo a most fitting punishment. If he’d gone to the bother of offering to escort her anywhere, she would at least have chosen something he might enjoy too. Miss Waverley was too selfish to care whether he liked poetry or not. His purpose was merely to play the part of devoted swain. Which, she reflected with a mental sneer, he did to perfection.
‘Is this seat taken?’
She jolted out of her reverie to see Lord Deben standing before her, indicating the empty chair to her right.
‘No,’ she said, her cheeks burning. It had been almost three weeks since they’d last been together, and yet, because she’d relived that encounter so many times, it felt as though it had happened only yesterday. It was impossible to look him in the face, considering how wantonly she’d behaved. Yet she wanted to look. She’d been so parched of his company she wanted to drink him in. Yet all she dared do, since they were in such a public place, was sip by darting a series of thirsty little glances at him as he took his seat beside her. And when he had done so, his thigh was so close to her own that she could feel the heat from it. For a second, she relived, incredibly vividly, the sensations she’d experienced when that very leg had pinned hers beneath him as he unfastened her bodice. Oh, lord, she hoped nobody could tell that her heart was pounding. And were her cheeks as flushed as they felt? She plied her fan rapidly, hoping against hope to dispel at least some of the heat that was making her face burn.
‘My presence unsettles you,’ he observed.
‘Considering that nearly all the other chairs are as yet unoccupied, everyone must be wondering why you have chosen to sit on the one next to mine.’
‘Obviously,’ he said, draping his arm along the back of her chair, and leaning in to murmur in her ear, ‘I cannot bear to be apart from you one moment longer. Though I have nursed my broken heart in private, I cannot endure not to see you. Though you spurn me, I had to return to your side.’
‘Stop it,’ she hissed out of the corner of her mouth. His voice had shimmied all the way down her spine, making it almost impossible for her not to arch her neck in a silent invitation to him to nip it.
‘I cannot play such games any more,’ she said with a catch in her voice. ‘I told you...’
‘And yet you did not tell me I could not sit beside you. If you will give me such encouragement, you will never shake me off.’
‘As if it would do any good to tell you I didn’t want you to sit next to me. You would have just ignored my objections and sat down anyway.’
‘True. But you could have got up and walked away, quivering with indignation at my temerity. Instead of which, you are darting me hungry little looks out of the corner of your eye.’
Oh lord, she’d forgotten how good he was at interpreting her without her having to say a word. Could he tell that it was taking all her concentration to keep her unruly body in subjection? That she wanted to clamber on to his lap and shower his beloved face with kisses, whilst simultaneously wanting to slap that mocking expression from his face, and scream at him to stop tormenting her?
‘I have good reasons for staying exactly where I am,’ she retorted. ‘And they have nothing to do with you.’
‘You have painted your face,’ he said. ‘In an attempt to replicate the natural bloom I so admired, and which you appear to have lost. Does that mean you have spent some sleepless nights since we last met? Dare I hope it is because you have missed me?’
‘I think you would dare anything.’
‘I have missed you,’ he said silkily. ‘I only returned to town yesterday and have spent most of today discovering where I could find you tonight.’
‘Have you?’ Henrietta’s heart leapt. He’d done this before. Sought her out, when she had truly thought she would never see him again. But she dared not assume that he’d done it because she really meant something to him. She needed to find out why he’d so particularly wished to speak to her tonight before she said something stupidly revealing.
Knowing her attractiveness to the males of the species, it was more than likely that he wished to make quite sure that she really had relinquished all claims on him. That thought was so depressing that it had the effect of dousing nearly all the physical reactions that had been thrumming through her. But that was probably it. He’d been so keen to get her out of the room that he had not told her how he expected her to handle future meetings, should there be any. And he was so used to females pursuing him that he would probably need reassuring that she would not make capital of the intimacy they’d shared at their last meeting by...by... Well, actually, she couldn’t see how she could make capital of it, except by confessing to someone that she’d met him in private and let him...
Her physical reactions surged back. Every one of them.
She plied her fan with a hand that trembled.
‘Admit you have missed me, too,’ he said. ‘And ask me where I have been and what I have been doing.’
Her stomach tied itself into a knot. She’d ached to know where he was, every minute of the last eighteen days, and had tortured herself by imagining what he was doing, and with whom, every single one of those nights. She could not bear it if he confirmed all her worst fears. So she said, primly, ‘Your movements can be of no possible concern to me, my lord.’
‘Ah,’ he said, sitting back and frowning down at the programme, ‘I see.’
He removed his hand from the back of her chair and used it to crush the printed sheet into a tiny ball, while he gazed straight ahead, a muscle in his jaw working. There were a few moments of silence so tense she didn’t quite know what to do with herself. Yet she dared not break it with some inane piece of chatter. Not while Lord Deben had that particularly devilish look on his face. So she just sat and watched out of the corner of her eye, and fanned herself, while he smoothed the programme over his knee. And then began to methodically tear it into tiny strips.
After what felt like an eternity, but was probably no more than a minute or two, Lady Twining climbed up on to the dais and clapped her hands to try to attract everyone’s attention.
‘Honoured guests!’ Conversation became muted. ‘Honoured guests, friends, would you all be so good as to take your seats now, please?’
Those who were about to do readings strode forwards at once, trailing their satellites, taking their places on the front row, or on the edges of aisles. Others began to shuffle forwards more slowly.
Except for one person, who strode to the front of the room and came to a halt before Henrietta.
‘Get up, Hen,’ said Richard, for it was he. ‘And come with me. I am taking you home this minute.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Because Miss Waverley has just informed me that it’s all over town that you’re making a fool of yourself over this blackguard,’ he said, pausing to glower at Lord Deben. ‘And I promised Hubert I’d look out for you. I thought those people you are staying with would have done so, but it’s obvious they’ve been dazzled by his title. Or they just don’t know about his reputation. But I do, Hen. And I won’t stand for it.’
Most of the other guests had taken their seats by now. Lady Twining was shooting the back of Richard’s head a disapproving frown, though since he could not see it, it was having no effect upon him whatsoever.
‘You won’t stand for it?’ Henrietta snapped her fan shut.
‘That’s right,’ he said, grasping her wrist and tugging her to her feet. ‘We are leaving. Now.’
‘Mr Wythenshawe,’ said Lady Twining, loudly. ‘Would you please take your place at the lectern?’
To a smattering of applause, a portly young man climbed on to the dais.
‘Surely,’ Lord Deben said to Richard in that deceptively lazy drawl of his, ‘that is for Miss Gibson to d
ecide?’
‘Precisely,’ said Henrietta.
‘Mr Wythenshawe is to commence our evening’s entertainment,’ said Lady Twining, including Henrietta in the dark look she was shooting Richard’s way, ‘by reading his latest work, “Sylvia by Moonlight”.’
To the background of polite applause, Henrietta tried in vain to extricate her wrist from Richard’s determined grasp.
‘Do let go of me, Richard, you are hurting me.’
‘Now that,’ said Lord Deben, slowly uncoiling himself from his chair, ‘is something that I cannot permit.’
The portly poet laid his sheaf of paper on the lectern and cleared his throat noisily.
Richard let go of Henrietta’s wrist, but only to round on Lord Deben.
‘Who are you to say you cannot permit it? You have no authority over me, my lord.’
‘I claim the right of any gentleman to intercede when he sees a lady being mistreated.’
‘Hark!’ said the poet on the podium, shooting a dagger-like look in their direction.
‘Mistreated? Fustian,’ said Richard. ‘I’m doing the very opposite. I’m here to rescue her, same as any of her brothers would do if they knew the company she’d fallen into. We’ve known each other so long that a little tussle like that between us don’t signify.’
Lord Deben raised one eyebrow disdainfully. ‘You may have known her since she was in the cradle, but that does not mean you can take liberties with her person.’
‘And you would know all about taking liberties, wouldn’t you?’
‘Richard, will you keep your voice down,’ Henrietta hissed. ‘Everyone is staring.’
For they were. Nobody was paying the portly poet on the dais the slightest bit of attention. They were far more interested by the drama playing out on the front row.
‘And you shouldn’t pay any attention to gossip.’
‘Especially not if it originates from the scheming jade I saw pouring her poison into your ears earlier,’ said Lord Deben.
Richard opened and closed his mouth a few times, clearly trying to make up his mind whether to pursue the argument he’d started, or veer off to defend Miss Waverley.
Encouraged by the brief cessation in hostilities, Mr Wythenshaw started up again.
‘Hark!’ he said. ‘The vixen’s tortured cry...’
But Richard had decided where his priorities lay. ‘I don’t believe the bits about you, of course, Hen. I know you wouldn’t demean yourself by chasing after a man,’ he said, making Henrietta blush for shame, since she’d done exactly that in his case.
‘What I do believe is that he—’ he jerked his head in Lord Deben’s direction ‘—might have turned your head with a lot of insincere flattery. Stock in trade of a rake. Shouldn’t have to tell you that sort of thing, but there, you ain’t up to snuff. Not your fault. Led a very sheltered life.’
Henrietta couldn’t help bridling at his assumption that any flattery Lord Deben had poured into her ears must naturally have been insincere. But what was worse was the way he would keep talking to her as though she was about five and needed a nanny.
‘So you think it is your job to rescue me from him, do you?’
‘Well, obviously it is.’
Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Lord Deben’s lips twitch. Well, she was glad he was finding this funny. It was clearly her mission in life to provide him with entertainment.
Her eyes smarting, she let her frustration out on Richard.
‘So, where have you been then,’ she demanded, ‘all these weeks since I have been in town, if you think I am too hen-witted to defend myself from the wiles of all the rakes and rascals who stalk London’s ballrooms?’
‘A man has...a man...’ His eyes flickered guiltily to where Miss Waverley was sitting. ‘That is not your concern,’ he said pompously. ‘The point is that I happen to know that it is downright dangerous to permit a man like that to flirt with you. I can see how you might have been taken in. But it has to stop now.’
She lifted her chin and noticed Lord Deben’s mouth slide into an appreciative grin. In spite of feeling that at that moment she had never come so close to hating anyone, she kept her eyes fixed on Richard.
‘Well, it won’t,’ she said. ‘I shall flirt with whomsoever I wish,’ she said, making Lord Deben’s grin widen to something that looked, had she not known better, triumphant. ‘You do.’
Richard blinked and for a moment his mouth hung open.
Wythenshawe took the opportunity to deliver his next line. ‘Doth echo o’er the moonlit grass...’
Then a knowing look came over Richard, and he said, ‘You’ve been trying to make me jealous.’ He laughed. ‘And I never even knew about it until tonight. Don’t that beat all!’
That remark wiped the smile from Lord Deben’s face. It looked as though he’d realised that this was the man over whom she’d been weeping, the first night they’d met. And now, because of Richard’s arrogant assumption, he would think she had been using him all along.
No wonder he looked murderous.
‘I have not been trying to make you jealous,’ she denied hotly, for Lord Deben’s benefit as much as to puncture Richard’s over-inflated opinion of himself. ‘I have not spared you a thought for weeks and weeks.’ How could she, when she was completely obsessed with Lord Deben?
‘Of course not.’ Richard grinned. ‘You’ve probably been enjoying yourself immensely, too, while you haven’t been trying to make me jealous. Look, we’ll say no more about it, if you just come along nicely now. I only joined Miss Waverley’s court because it’s the thing to do. See? And as for the other—I’m not angry with you. Not a bit. Can even see how he might have turned your head. After all, a girl like you ain’t used to masculine attention.’
‘A girl like me? What, pray,’ said Henrietta in a dangerously polite voice, ‘do you mean by that, Richard?’
‘You, ah...well, you...’ Richard floundered for a few seconds, which was all the encouragement Wythenshawe needed to shout the next couplet.
While blanket-tossed I sleepless lie,
Pondering Sylvia’s peerless...
‘You ain’t a flighty piece,’ Richard burst out, apparently struck by inspiration. ‘That’s what I meant. And your brothers took good care you weren’t exposed to the wrong kind of men. His kind,’ he said, shooting a dark look at Lord Deben. ‘The kind that will steal an innocent girl’s heart for sport, then toss it aside when he’s sure of his conquest.’
He looked into her eyes with the kind of concern she had once dreamed of seeing.
And then shattered her by saying, ‘Face facts, Hen. It cannot go anywhere. Fellows like him don’t marry country girls with...well, let’s be honest, plain faces.’
This was not news to her. She’d always known Lord Deben would not stoop to marrying her. Yet to have somebody say it to her, in a crowded drawing room so that everyone could hear, was just about the nastiest thing anyone had ever done to her.
From the back of the room she heard someone snigger. She suspected it was Miss Waverley.
For a moment, she was so shattered, she was incapable of making any decisions as to how to handle this.
What did a girl do, when she’d just been completely humiliated in public? Walk out with her chin up? Faint?
But then Lord Deben spared her the necessity of having to do either of those things, by producing yet another handkerchief from his tailcoat pocket with a dramatic flourish, spreading it on the floor and kneeling down on it. On just the one knee.
‘Miss Gibson,’ he said, placing one hand over his heart, ‘if only I could steal your heart, I would consider myself the most fortunate man in London. For mine beats only for you.’
A collective gasp went up from the audience. With a strangled cry, Wythenshawe seized his pages of p
oetry and stormed from the dais.
Henrietta wanted to weep. Was Lord Deben mocking her? She hadn’t thought he could be so cruel.
But when she looked into his face, there was no trace of mirth. She had never seen him looking so deadly earnest.
A lump came to her throat. This must be his idea of coming to her rescue. He could see Richard had hurt her, publicly humiliated her, and he was trying to mitigate the damage by publicly denying he found her unattractive. And it was very sweet, but what good could it do?
‘Now that’s doing it much too brown,’ said Richard. ‘Don’t listen to him, Hen, he don’t mean it. Doing it for a wager, I’ll be bound.’
‘What a horrid thing to say,’ she said, rounding on him. And, though she’d never aspired to such dizzy heights, she was absolutely sick of Richard putting her down.
‘Why shouldn’t he wish to marry me?’
‘Well, ah, that is, nothing exactly wrong with you, Hen. But—’
‘Since the sight of me on my knees, telling you that my heart belongs to you, is not clear enough,’ Lord Deben interrupted, ‘let me clear up any misapprehension and put it in such plain words that even this chawbacon—’ he shot Richard a look of contempt ‘—could not misinterpret them. Miss Gibson, will you do me the very great honour of marrying me?’
For a moment, everything seemed a bit unreal. But at the back of the room, Henrietta noted the men who’d been sidling off into the card room come pouring back.
And then, as though from a very great distance, she heard Richard saying, ‘She can’t marry you. She’s going to marry me.’
The outrageous statement shocked her so much she recovered the power of speech.
‘How dare you tell such a lie, Richard? We are not betrothed!’
‘As good as. That is, everyone knows you’re going to marry me.’
Harlequin Historical February 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2: Never Trust a RakeDicing With the Dangerous LordA Daring Liaison Page 21
