Never Trust a Rake

Lord Deben’s expression did not alter one whit.

‘You still look a trifle peaked,’ he informed her, shutting out the other occupants of the room by the simple pretext of standing with his back to them all. ‘I shall take you out for a drive in the park. That should put the bloom back in your cheeks.’

‘You will take me out for a drive,’ she repeated. What unmitigated gall! Did he think she was so stupid she couldn’t see how he was snubbing her poor dear aunt? Besides, what if she didn’t want to go out? What then? She was just about to inform him that nothing on earth would induce her to leave this room, in the company of a man who clearly thought he was too good for it, when Mr Bentley burst out,

‘My word, what I wouldn’t give for a chance to tool that set-up round the park. Or even sit up beside you, my lord.’ He shot Henrietta a look loaded with envy. ‘You lucky, lucky girl!’

Lord Deben’s heavy lids lowered a fraction. He turned towards Mr Bentley, his lip curling. ‘I do not generally invite young gentlemen to escort me in the park during the fashionable hour,’ he remarked in a crushing tone that instantly reduced his admirer to red-faced silence.

He hadn’t invited her, either. Issued an order, more like.

‘And it is very generous of you to invite Henrietta,’ said her aunt, shooting her a look loaded with meaning. ‘Such an unlooked-for honour. It will not take her but a moment to run upstairs and put on a bonnet and coat.’ She made shooing motions towards Henrietta behind Lord Deben’s back. ‘Will it, my dear?’

No, it wouldn’t. And it would be better, much better for her aunt if she got him out of the house to tell him what she thought of his manners, than create a scene in her aunt’s drawing room.

‘Make haste,’ he said to Henrietta brusquely, finally succeeding in grasping her hand and using the hold he gained upon it to lift her to her feet. ‘I do not want to keep my horses standing.’

His horses! Well, that put her in her place. He rated their welfare far higher than such a paltry consideration as her sensibilities!

Who did he think he was? To come in here and comprehensively insult everyone like that?

Henrietta swept out of the room on a surge of indignation that completely banished the lethargy that had made even walking require a huge effort of will-power since Miss Twining’s ball.

Not keep his horses waiting, indeed! She marched up the stairs and flung open the door to her room.

And to crush poor Mr Bentley, she fumed as she strode across to the armoire and yanked it open, who’d only been expressing the kind of boyish enthusiasm for the splendour of his horses that any of her brothers might have done.

And to ignore her aunt and her cousins like that! Just because they were connected to trade! Because he thought they were common.

Well, she’d show him common.

She stuffed her arms into the sleeves of her mulberry redingote, then marched along the corridor to her aunt’s room, where she ruthlessly plundered her selection of furs until she found the fox. She slung it round her shoulders, pausing before the mirror only long enough to assure herself that it did indeed clash with her coat as horribly as she’d hoped, before making for Mildred’s room and the high-crowned bonnet, topped with a pair of bright red ostrich feathers, which had only arrived the morning before.

When she reappeared in the drawing room, not five minutes after she’d left it, Mildred’s jaw dropped. Her aunt made a faint choking noise.

Lord Deben, who was standing at the window, next to Mr Bentley, cocked his head to one side as his lazy brown eyes scanned her outfit.

‘More colour already,’ he drawled with a perfectly straight face, ‘just at the mere prospect of taking the air.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed with a smile as she stalked towards him. ‘I am so looking forward to being seen driving round the park with you, at the fashionable hour.’

This would serve him right! He looked just the type of man who would hate being seen driving about with someone who looked positively vulgar. He might have lowered himself by inviting a girl to drive with him who was well outside the circles in which he normally moved, but he had taken the greatest care over his own outfit. She knew enough about male fashion to guess that his clothing hailed from the most expensive, exclusive tailors. And he had shaved, very recently. His cheeks had that sheen that only lasted an hour or so after the event, and besides, when he had bent over her hand to attempt to kiss it, she had smelled oil of bergamot.

‘How little did I think,’ she simpered, ‘when I came up to town that I should have the honour of being taken driving by such an important man. In such a … a bang-up rig, too.’

His face, she noted with savage pleasure, was growing more wooden by the second.

‘I shall be sure to give you a full account of my treat, Mr Bentley—’ she beamed at the youth whose eyes were swivelling from the immaculately clad earl, to the ostrich feathers adorning her borrowed hat with something like horror ‘—next time you call upon us.’

Lord Deben gestured for her to precede him into the hall and, with her ostrich plumes bobbing in time to her martial stride, they set off.

Chapter Three

So what if he had finally found some semblance of manners and opened the door for her? It meant nothing. Except, perhaps, that he couldn’t wait to escape the presence of people he considered so far beneath him.

So what if he was a good driver? Just because he could weave in and out of the heavy traffic with an ease of manner that made it look effortless, when she knew it required great skill, did not make him any less unlikeable.

She was almost glad when, having swept through the park gates, he repeatedly cut people dead who were trying to attract his attention. It made it so much easier to cling to her bad humour, which the thrillingly rapid drive through the teeming streets had almost dispelled.

‘You are not an easy person to run to ground,’ he said suddenly, just when she was beginning to wonder whether the entire outing was going to take place in silence. ‘I looked for you at the Cardingtons’ and the Lensboroughs’ on Tuesday, the Swaffhams’, Pendleboroughs’, and Bonhams’ last night. And I regret to say that I do not have much time to spare on you today, even though it is imperative that we have some private conversation regarding what happened at that débutante’s ball whose name escapes me for the moment. Hence the abduction.’ He turned and bestowed a lazy smile upon her.

She felt a funny jolt in her stomach. There was something in that look that almost compelled her to smile back. Which was absurd, since she was very cross with him.

Reminding herself that he could not even recall the name of the girl she’d hoped might have become a friend was just what she needed to bolster her resentment.

‘On Tuesday night,’ she therefore retorted, ‘I was at a dance held by the Mountjoys. They are vintners. I don’t suppose you know them. And last night we went to the theatre in a party with most of the people who were sitting around the drawing room just now.’

‘Mountjoy …’ he mused. ‘I think I do know of them. I have a feeling they supply my cellars at Deben House.’

‘I shouldn’t be a bit surprised. They boast of having the patronage of several of the more well-heeled members of the ton, though not the entrée into their homes.’

‘Ah,’ he said.

‘And before you ask how I came to be at such an exalted affair as Miss Twining’s come-out ball, it was entirely due to the offices of my brother Hubert, who serves in the same regiment as her brother Charlie. Charlie wrote to her, asking if she wouldn’t mind calling on me, because I wasn’t likely to know anyone in town just at first.’

Not that he’d thought of it as an exalted affair. To judge from the look on his face, he’d regarded attendance as a tedious duty, probably undertaken out of some kind of obligation to the elderly lady he’d been escorting.

While for her it had been an evening that should have brought nothing but delight.

Well, neither of them had got quite what they’d expected.

At the time he’d walked in looking all cynical and bored, she’d still been full of hope she might run into Richard there. Miss Twining was bound to have sent him an invitation, since he, too, was friendly with her brother Charlie. And she was fairly sure that he would have called in for half an hour, at least, to ‘do the pretty’, even if he did not stay to dance. She had so hoped that, seeing her all dressed up in her London finery, with her hair so stylishly cut, her brother Hubert’s best friend would at long last see that she had grown up. See her as a woman, to be taken seriously, and not just one of his childhood playmates that he could casually brush aside.

‘Had I known how you are circumstanced,’ said Lord Deben, interrupting her gloomy reflections of that fateful night, ‘I would have called upon you sooner.’

‘But you did know how I am circumstanced. Lady Chigwell took great pains to let you know that she considered I was intruding amongst my betters.’

‘I assumed that was spite talking and discounted it. Particularly when I looked you up and discovered that you have a much more impressive pedigree than Lady Chigwell, whose husband’s title, such as it is, is a mere two generations old.’

‘You looked me up …?’

‘Of course. I had no intention of asking around and raising people’s curiosity about why I wished to know more about you. When I found that you are Miss Gibson of Shoebury Manor in Much Wakering and that your father is Sir Henry Gibson, scientist and scholar, member of the Royal Society, I naturally assumed you would be attending the kind of events most débutantes of your age enjoy when they come up to town for their Season.’ His mouth twisted with distaste. ‘Had I known that you would not, no power on earth would have compelled me to attend any of them.’

He’d spent two consecutive evenings haunting places he did not want to go to, merely because he had thought she might be there? And now she was obliging him to drive round the park, at the fashionable hour, while she was dressed in such spectacularly vulgar style?

For the first time in days, she felt almost cheerful.

‘What a lot of time you have wasted on my account,’ she said, with a satisfied gleam in her eye.