The Louise Allen Collection. Louise Allen
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would have to slow down to a decorous trot to pass him.
Spindrift tossed her head at the pressure on her bit, but slowed obediently, only to risk speeding up again when her mistress’s hands suddenly went slack on the reins.
It was Adam and there was absolutely no way to avoid him. ‘Steady!’ Decima brought the mare to a trot and then to a walk, reining in as she came alongside Ajax. ‘Good morning, my lord.’ Try as she might, that sounded cool. She was still angry with him, but the thought he might suspect why was hateful.
‘Good morning, Miss Ross.’ Adam halted Ajax. ‘We are very formal this morning,’ he observed, with a glint in his eyes that she could not read.
‘It seems appropriate,’ she rejoined.
‘You are angry with me.’ Damn him, why could he not have talked of indifferent things? Now what? To pretend not to know what he was referring to would only made her seem insufferably coy.
‘Are you surprised, my lord? I do not absolve myself from blame—to have returned your embrace was immodest and unwise, but you should have told me that you were engaged. Even if you did not tell me, it was outrageous of you to kiss me.’
‘I had forgotten,’ he said with such breathtaking simplicity she could only stare at him.
‘Forgotten? How could you forget you are engaged to be married? Poor Olivia—it is bad enough that she will have to put up with your mistress, but if she ever suspected that you could forget her so easily, to trifle with another woman…’
‘I was not trifling.’ Ajax shifted suddenly as though his rider had closed his hands hard on the reins. ‘I would never trifle with you. I simply forgot everything because I was so pleased to see you, and then I wanted to know what you were doing in London. If we had not been talking about Pru and Bates, I would have remembered to tell you about Olivia.’
‘Indeed?’ She wanted to believe him so badly. The thought that the man she loved might act dishonourably was intolerable.
‘Indeed,’ he echoed her haughty tone. ‘And, since you raise the subject, I have parted company with my mistress.’
‘Oh, good.’ Decima felt her face relax into a smile, only then realising just how tense she had been. ‘I knew I could not be mistaken in you, Adam. We will forget all about yesterday in your study.’ Not that she ever could forget it: the last time she would be in his arms, the last time his lips would crush down on hers, stealing her heart along with her breath.
The ironic twist of his lips filled her with a sudden doubt that he would forget it either, but she pushed the thought away. Provided Olivia never guessed for a moment that there had ever been anything between them, that was all that mattered.
‘I was speaking to Lady Brotherton,’ she said, anxious to move the conversation on along conventional lines. ‘Olivia’s relatives are all so very happy about this match.’
‘So I understand.’ The words were ordinary enough, his tone quite inoffensive, but Decima saw a flash of anger turning his grey eyes greenish with that betraying colour she had come to know, if not to understand. As she puzzled over it, Adam turned his head and she became aware of approaching hoof beats. It was Henry.
Henry made no concession to his stature in his choice of horses and his mount this morning was a raking hunter as high to the withers as Ajax. Decima smiled fondly at the sight of her friend’s approach; he was a fine rider.
‘You mended it?’ she called out as he drew alongside them.
‘Yes, I managed to make another hole with the knife in my saddlebag.’ Henry reined in and circled his bay alongside Spindrift. ‘Good day, sir.’
‘Henry, may I make you known to Viscount Weston? My lord, Sir Henry Freshford. Or perhaps you gentlemen know each other already?’ The air was crackling with tension, which was puzzling. Henry might well be poised to defend her against insult, but what was causing Adam to look down his nose with the air of a man about to issue a challenge?
‘His lordship is, of course, well known to me by reputation,’ Henry said smoothly with a pleasant smile that did not reach his eyes. Knowing him, Decima caught her breath. Oh, Lord!
Adam’s eyes narrowed. ‘I regret we have not met before. You are staying in London for the Season, Freshford?’
‘For as long as my mother, my sister and Miss Ross require my presence.’
‘You recall I told you I was staying with Lady Freshford, my lord,’ Decima intervened.
‘So you did, Miss Ross. And has there been any meeting yet between the star-crossed lovers whose cause you are championing?’ He met her gaze blandly, but Decima knew he was vividly conscious of Henry, his position by her side, of the way they spoke to each other. And beside her Henry still bristled with protectiveness under his urbane exterior.
‘Not that I am aware of, but I do not choose to interrogate my staff about their personal affairs,’ she replied coolly. ‘Nor do I find the situation as amusing as you apparently do. I would not have Pru made unhappy for the world.’
‘And love will make her happy?’ Adam’s tone was mocking, but Decima sensed a real edge beneath the surface. ‘This is something of a reversal of your previous position, is it not?’
‘You are accusing me of matchmaking, Lord Weston?’ She kept her tone as light as his. ‘Then you cannot have been listening to me before—I have been acting at the wish of one party and giving the other information only. Bates is free to act on it as he will.’
‘Lucky devil. I must bid you good day, Miss Ross, Sir Henry. I imagine none of us wishes to keep our horses standing in this chill.’ He touched his whip to his hat and turned Ajax to canter away across the grass towards the Serpentine.
‘My goodness, that was uncomfortable.’ Decima let out a long breath and tried to keep her voice light. Inside she felt slightly queasy from the tension that had been crackling between the three of them, and miserable that Adam seemed so distant.
Henry tore his eyes away from the figure vanishing into the mist and remarked, ‘He is jealous, of course.’ Meeting Decima’s puzzled eyes, he added, ‘Of us. With me mounted he probably doesn’t realise how short I am and thinks I’m courting you.’
‘That’s nonsense.’ Decima was instantly prickly, as she always was on Henry’s behalf if someone dismissed him because of his height. ‘My feelings for you would not be any different if you were six foot six or five foot nothing. We are friends. Anyways,’ she added firmly as they turned their horses’ heads and began to walk back down the drive, ‘he is in no position to be jealous of anyone except Olivia.’
Was Henry smiling? She looked hard at him and the quirk of his lips vanished. ‘Men are strange, possessive animals,’ he remarked. ‘You two were almost lovers. He feels he has put his mark on you, that’s all.’
‘All? That’s scandalous.’ Decima found she was truly shocked. ‘I am not a mare to be branded or a book where he has written his name on the flyleaf.’
‘Actually, the book is a very good analogy. Are you ever going to be able to open the volume of memories of this year without recalling him, seeing his name, as it were?’
Decima knew her cheeks were burning. ‘He can write his name in the wedding register, next to Olivia’s, nowhere else, and certainly not on anything of mine. Why, what you are suggesting is positively indecent—as if men really want to keep a harem of all the women they have ever…ever…’
‘Made love to?’ Henry supplied. ‘You are probably right. We are very unsatisfactory creatures compared to women.’ And he dug his heels into his mount’s flanks and cantered off, chuckling, before she could retaliate.
Decima dressed for Lady Cantline’s ball that evening in a spirit of half-terrified bravado. It must be—she counted on her fingers, frowning—almost five years since she had been to a large-scale dress