Regency Rumour: Never Trust a Rake / Reforming the Viscount. ANNIE BURROWS
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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