Her aunt relaxed. ‘Well, it does not appear to have done you any harm, which is the main thing. Indeed, the interest he has shown, coupled with Lady Dalrymple’s visit to my drawing room, has had a most positive effect, to judge from all the invitations that have been arriving of late. So long as you do nothing, from now on, to cause any more speculation in that quarter, I am sure we will be able to see you happily settled before the Season is over. Now that my Mildred’s future is secure, I shall have more time to devote to you.’ Mr Crimmer had plucked up the courage to ask Mildred and, to his astonishment, she had accepted. ‘It would be such a coup,’ she said with a smile, ‘to be able to fire off the pair of you!’
Henrietta returned her a thin smile, but was spared the necessity of making a sensible reply as their coach finally reached the head of the queue and they went through all the business of bundling skirts, reticules and shoe bags in one hand to leave the other free to take that of a footman as they alighted.
He would not be there yet. After the first few nights, she had learned not to expect him until it was almost time for supper. During which period he would monopolise her, scandalising her hosts and her aunt in about equal measure, then disappear into the night, leaving her, well, wrung out.
She fixed a polite smile on her face as they went through the ritual of greeting their hosts, changing from their outerwear, and making their way through the crowded corridors to the ballroom. Tonight she would not, she promised herself, look towards the door until the first two sets of country dances were finished.
At least she never lacked for dance partners these days. Though she could not recall the names of the young men who sought her hand from one event to the next.
It was a shame, really, because she was sure that some of the younger sons of good birth clustering around her were genuinely interested in her. Or rather, in her portion, which she had a sneaking suspicion Lady Dalrymple might have advertised.
In Lord Deben’s eyes her fortune would not seem all that great. But for a young man obliged to make his own way in the world, it would be enough to make the difference between struggling to survive and moderate comfort.
Yet when he arrived, much later, it was as though she’d just been marking time through the earlier part of the evening. When he beckoned to her and indicated the pair of chairs he had secured on the edge of the supper room, she was halfway across the room before it occurred to her that she ought to have shown a little more restraint. Instead, to her disgust, she had just run to him like a spaniel trained to come to heel.
‘You appear a little vexed tonight,’ he said, handing her into her chair.
‘Not vexed,’ she denied hastily. ‘Merely baffled.’
‘Ah?’
‘Yes,’ she said, rapidly grasping at a topic she felt she could safely pursue with him tonight, for it would never do to tell him that he occupied far too much of her thoughts. That she chose her gowns with his approval in mind. That the evening had felt dull and flat until the moment he’d arrived.
‘I had the most remarkable conversation with Lady Jesborough earlier during which she introduced me to her three unmarried daughters and said she hoped we would all become firm friends.’
‘Why should it baffle you? I told you I would make you the toast of the ton,’ he said, handing her a glass of champagne which he’d managed to procure from a passing waiter.
Although waiters did not pass by him. They were always very attentive.
‘Yes,’ she replied, furling her fan and placing it in her lap while she sipped at her drink. ‘You did. But I did not think it would happen so soon. I thought it would take weeks. Yet every day more and more quite startling invitations arrive, and tonight, people came flocking round me the moment I walked through the door, just as though I was somebody interesting.’
‘You are somebody interesting. Have I not told you how fascinating I find our conversations?’
‘Oh, you, yes. I know you find me amusing. But that is only because I never mind what I say to you. When Lady Jesborough just complimented me on my gown, I only managed to stutter a few incoherent sentences about my aunt’s modiste and how much better she is than the dressmaker in Much Wakering. I must have sounded like a perfect ninny. And yet she patted me on the cheek, and said I would do very well.’
‘Did she? Hmmm. I had not thought she had such perception.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Only that your success is assured. From now on, I don’t doubt you will be receiving much more of the same sort of flattery. Not, you know, that she might have been completely insincere. The gown you are wearing tonight really does make you look utterly charming, in an innocent, unpolished way.’
Why could he not have stopped at utterly charming? But, no, he’d had to go on to qualify the praise by reminding her she was unpolished.
‘I do wish you would not keep doing that,’ she said.
He raised his eyebrow in silent question.
‘Dig about for something about me that does not meet with your disapproval, then toss it to me as though it is a compliment.’
He frowned. ‘Miss Gibson, I thought we had dealt with your inability to accept compliments. I have said nothing I do not mean. Indeed, every time but one, when we have met, I have thought how very charming your dress has looked. I said nothing, because I did not wish to draw attention to your glaring descent into bad taste, by remarking on the change. But I do approve of your style. For one thing, your elegance lends credence to the rumours flying about that I am enamoured of you.’
‘I cannot believe,’ she said crossly, ‘that people think you might really be developing a tendre for me, because of the way I dress.’
‘Don’t you? Surely you have not forgotten that they thought the very opposite, that day I took you for a drive in the park. You told me yourself that it would be quite impossible for me to take as a mistress any woman dressed as badly as you were that day.’
‘They cannot think you wish to take me as your mistress?’
‘Let us not worry about what anyone else thinks, Hen.’
‘I have to worry about it. Just on the way here tonight my aunt warned me to beware of you. And don’t call me Hen! I haven’t even granted you permission to use my given name, never mind shorten it to such a revoltingly unflattering word.’
He tapped her on the nose. ‘Then never again wear clothes that put me in mind of a chicken, my sweet. Really, with that nose, and all those gaudy colours, topped off with those red feathers, bobbing in the wind …’
‘Now you really are treating me as though I were your mistress.’ Or a doll, which he picked up and toyed with to distract him from the real business of his life. A doll that he would toss aside the moment he grew bored.
‘That is what you do, is it not? Dress them up to suit your whims? Well, for your information I only wore that ridiculous get-up to teach you a lesson.’
‘Ah,’ he said, leaning back with a lazy, knowing smile. ‘I suspected as much. At the time I was at a loss to comprehend why you were so cross with me that day. Perhaps you would care to enlighten me?’
‘You snubbed my aunt. You were insufferably haughty, refusing to speak to any of the guests in her drawing room. And you positively crushed poor Mr Bentley for daring to mention how much he liked your horses.’
‘And making yourself look ridiculous was supposed to punish me how?’
She glowered at him for a moment, before replying, ‘I thought you would hate being seen about in public with a woman dressed in such vulgar style. Though now I know you better, I see it was foolish of me to think you could be swayed by anything that another person can say or do. You are so arrogant that you would think it absurd to take notice of beings you consider so very inferior to you.’
His face hardened.
‘I do not know why you are in such an unreceptive mood tonight, Miss Gibson. My intention was merely to engage in a little light flirtation. Upon any other night I might have expected you to deal with my i
mpertinence in criticising your dress sense, and teasing you with a slightly derogatory pet name, by putting me neatly in my place, as is your wont.’
Was she as bad as that? Yes, she rather thought she was. She couldn’t think what came over her when she was with Lord Deben. Back home in Much Wakering, she’d hardly ever lost her temper. She stood up to her brothers when they were being particularly idiotic, it was true, but she managed to do so without acting like a harridan. Everyone said what a sunny nature she had.
But then she’d never had dealings with a person of Lord Deben’s stamp before. In the whole of creation, there could not be a more infuriating male. She’d been on tenterhooks all night, waiting for him, but did he care? No. This was all a game to him. He was enjoying making fools of other members of the ton. He’d only picked her for the game because doing so was guaranteed to put Miss Waverley’s nose out of joint. He had no compunction about using her to prevent people knowing he really was thinking about taking a wife. And the worst of it was she was letting him use her.
Where was her self-respect?
‘For some reason, tonight, your sense of humour seems to be entirely absent. Why is that, Hen? Has something occurred to distress you?’
‘You don’t think sitting there mocking me might have distressed me? Or ignoring my wishes about using that revolting abbreviation of my name?’
She snatched up her fan and got to her feet. ‘I refuse to sit here and let you use me so ill one moment longer.’ She turned and slammed her empty glass down on the window ledge behind their chairs.
When she turned he was startled to see tears of rage and humiliation in her eyes.
He, too, got to his feet. ‘I had intended only to tease, not to mock,’ he said grimly. ‘I forgot that you are not skilled in the arts of flirtation.’
‘Flirtation? You call it flirtation, to say I look like a chicken?’ She was glaring at him, her chest heaving with every breath she took, her fists clenching. ‘And what would you have said next, pray? That it must have been fate to have me so aptly named? To go on to making jokes about ruffling my feathers, or getting broody, or—’
‘None of those things. My word, but you are sensitive about your nose.’
She could have screamed with vexation. He was missing the point entirely. It was not the derogatory name, which she’d borne with fortitude for years. All her brothers’ friends went through phases of using it on her. Most of them with a rough sort of affection.
It was the patronising way he refused to take anything about her seriously.
It was the fact that he was at the very centre of her existence, while she was only on the periphery of his.
The way he was holding her in the palm of his hand, without even noticing.
Because he didn’t really care.
Whereas she …
Her breath hitched in her chest as the awful truth struck her.
‘I can only assume,’ he continued with a measuring look which reinforced her feeling that he regarded her as an experiment in progress, ‘that somebody in your past has teased you about it in such an unkind manner that you now have something of an issue with it. Miss Gibson, I have told you before, your nose is nowhere near large enough to detract from the attraction of your other features. It does preclude you from being described as a beauty, perhaps, but that is all.’
‘That. Is. All?’
How could he be standing there, calmly discussing the shape of her nose, when she’d just had a shattering revelation? She’d fallen in love with him. That was why she spent not just the early stages of a ball, but entire days marking time until she could see and speak to him again. Why she only felt fully alive when she was with him. Why her heart soared when he paid her compliments and plunged when she reminded herself he did not mean them. It was why she was so absurdly sensitive to every nuance of his voice and watched his face avidly, hoping to detect some softening, some sign of genuine emotion in his eyes. Nor could she recall the last time she had slept without waking at some point in the night, reliving those feverish moments on the sofa in the locked room at Lady Susan’s.
Richard’s kiss had not given her a single sleepless night. She’d been surprised when he’d kissed her. Too surprised to react to it physically in any way at all. She had been flattered, more than anything, when she’d worked out exactly what it was that had been pressing into her belly by the time he’d finished. And when he’d returned to London without making a declaration, she rather thought it was pique that had made her decide she wasn’t going to be left behind, for another whole Season, while he went off enjoying himself without her. It hadn’t seemed fair of him to assume she would still be there waiting for him when he’d tired of living the high life.
It had all gone on in her head.
Any emotions she’d felt for Richard were more of a girlish infatuation than anything. In fact, it had been more of a snatching at the hope of love. It was the difference between a little girl playing with a doll and a real mother with a live baby in her arms. One was pretence, play-acting, and more than a little bit of hope for something she was not really ready for.
But this—this entanglement with Lord Deben—was grown-up, messy, painful and all too real.
‘Don’t, whatever you do, attempt to speak until you have your anger under better control …’ he warned her.
‘Or what?’ Oh, him and his precious self-control! For two pins she would … she would … well, she didn’t know what she wanted to do. She was so furious with him for being so utterly calm and rational when her whole world felt as though it had just tilted on its axis.
How could she have let this happen?
And then her own words came back to mock her. You don’t plan to fall in love. It just happens.
Was there anything worse than falling victim to something you’d only just warned someone else about?
Yes. That person discovering you’d done it. So she would have to take jolly good care he never guessed.
‘Afraid I might try to peck you?’ In lieu of finding anything sensible to say, she found herself going back to the chicken analogy. ‘Even humble, ordinary farmyard chickens can defend themselves, you know.’ Which she was going to have to take great care to do. ‘In fact, they can be downright scary if you get on the wrong side of them.’
‘I am sure they can,’ he said. ‘Which is why men set such store by their fighting cocks …’
Her face went scarlet. ‘How dare you turn an innocent remark about chickens into something so … vulgar?’
Damn. He’d forgotten she had brothers. Apparently she was used to hearing epithets he would have thought her ears too innocent to recognise. ‘I was not being vulgar,’ he protested. He would never deliberately lead any conversation with her down such a dark alley. That kind of vulgar talk was the prelude to equally vulgar, not to say tasteless, couplings.
He’d only meant to say that he respected her opinion. What maggot in her brain had her taking everything he said the wrong way tonight? ‘And it is unjust of you to fly into the boughs with me over a perfectly innocuous remark …’
He was about to tell her that he now regarded the strength and prominence of her nose as indications of her character. That, in fact, he thought she would look quite nondescript without it. That he’d grown downright fond of it.
But her uncertain temper made him hesitate while he formulated the words. And when he was ready to speak, he found himself saying, ‘There is no saying anything to you tonight. You really should learn to master that temper of yours …’
‘And you should learn not to be so …’
‘So determined to have the last word?’ He reached out to run one finger down her face. ‘You won’t do so, however, because …’
With a little cry of vexation she lashed out at him with the hand that held her fan. The flimsy weapon splintered against his forearm. In utter shock that she should have reacted so dramatically, in such a public arena, she dropped the shattered bits of wood and paper on the floor
, turned on her heels and ran to seek out her aunt.
‘Now I know I told you not to encourage him, my dear,’ said Aunt Ledbetter, on the way home, ‘but you really need not have carried out my advice quite so strenuously, even if he was making improper advances. Which was bound to happen eventually, with a man of his stamp,’ she finished repressively.
‘I know and I am sorry to have caused you embarrassment,’ she said meekly, hanging her head. ‘But nobody makes me as cross as he does. It seems that every time I meet him I act in a way that I know I should not. Yet I cannot seem to help myself. First, I—’
‘Threw together that dreadful ensemble, to make him regret ordering you to go out for a drive with him.’ Her aunt nodded sagaciously.
‘You knew?’
‘Well, your taste was a little bit on the dull side when first you came to town, but you have always known what colours match, at least. Wearing a fox fur with a mulberry pelisse could only have been a deliberate decision to look as dreadful as you could. And, having observed the interaction between the pair of you since then, I can only conclude that …’ She paused, her face puckering into a troubled frown.
‘That what?’
‘Why, that unfortunately you appear to have fallen head over heels in love with the man.’
‘Oh dear. Is it that obvious?’ And how come everyone else had seen it before she had? Miss Waverley had accused her ages ago of trotting after him like a lovesick spaniel. But it had only been tonight that she’d castigated herself for behaving like a particularly well-trained dog of that specific breed.
‘Then it is true,’ her aunt continued in a worried voice. ‘I suppose I should have done something about it sooner, but then I have never seen anyone truly struck by the coup de foudre before. In fact, I thought it only happened in romance novels. So at first, when your reaction to him seemed to be doing you so much good, I was simply pleased for you.’
‘Doing me good?’
‘Yes. When you first came to town you were a little unsure of yourself. Instead of blossoming, you began to look downright moped. I was beginning to worry you would ask to return to Much Wakering. And then, all of a sudden, Lord Deben put a sparkle in your eyes. I know, on that first day, that it was from anger, but I thought at the time it was better to see you fire up like that than to see you dwindling from day to day into a shadow of the girl you ought to be.’
Never Trust a Rake Page 15