Regency Rumour: Never Trust a Rake / Reforming the Viscount

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.