The Major Meets His Match

Her head flew up. ‘You know George? But you just said you didn’t.’

He shrugged as he whirled away from her to promenade up the outside of the set. By the time she reached the head of it on the ladies’ side, she was seething with impatience.

‘Well?’

‘I only said cavalry officers don’t normally hobnob with the infantry. I didn’t say I didn’t know him. Though, to be precise, I only know him by sight.’ He eyed her with amusement before adding, ‘And what a sight he is to behold.’

She flushed angrily. George was, indeed, very often a sight to behold. For he had his uniforms made by a top tailor, out of the finest fabrics, and never looked better than when mounted on one of his extremely expensive horses. From which he did tend to look down his aristocratic nose at the rest of the world. Including her. And to her chagrin, although he’d always used to concede she was a bruising rider when they’d been much younger, the last few times he’d come home there had been a touch of disdain about his lips whenever his eyes had rested on her. Which had also, she now saw, influenced her decision to buy the most elaborate and costly gowns she could.

‘What, no pithy retort?’ Ulysses shook his head in mock reproof. ‘I am disappointed.’

‘Yes, well, that’s the thing with swooping to someone’s rescue, isn’t it? They do tend to do things you didn’t expect and make you wish you hadn’t bothered.’

He threw back his head and laughed.

‘Touché!’

She glowered at him. Far from showing the slightest sign of contrition, he was clearly thoroughly enjoying himself. At her expense.

‘Come, come, don’t look at me like that,’ he said. ‘I conceded the point. And far from being sorry I swooped, I have to admit I am glad I did so. No, truly,’ he said, just as he whirled away from her.

‘Well, I’m not,’ she said as the interminable music finally gasped its last and everyone bowed or curtsied to everyone else in their set. ‘I’m tired of being baited.’ At least, she would very soon be if he kept this up for any length of time. It was just one more vexation she was going to have to endure. On top of everything else she was struggling with, it felt like the last straw. ‘Why don’t you just get it over with? Hmm? Go on. Tell Lady Tarbrook where you found me, two weeks ago, and what we were doing. And then...’

Her mind raced over Aunt Susan’s inevitable disappointment and her tears, and the scolding and the punishment. Which might well, if Uncle Hugo had anything to do with it, involve being sent back to Stone Court.

Which would mean her ordeal by London society would come to an end.

Which would be a relief, in a way.

At first. But then she’d have to live, for the rest of her life, with the knowledge that she’d failed. Which she most emphatically did not wish to do.

She lifted her head to stare at Lord Becconsall who, though being thoroughly annoying, had at least made her see that she was nowhere near ready to throw in the towel.

He was shaking his head. ‘I don’t know what I have done to make you think I would behave in such a scaly fashion,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Only that I would never betray a lady’s secrets.’

‘Not if it didn’t suit your schemes, no,’ she said uncharitably.

Which made him look a bit cross.

‘It wouldn’t be in either of our interests for anyone else to hear about that kiss,’ he snapped. And then went very still. And then he turned a devilish grin in her direction.

‘I’m beginning to wonder,’ he said, leaning close and lowering his voice to a murmur, ‘if you aren’t playing a similar kind of game to mine.’

‘Game?’

‘Oh, very nicely done. That touch of baffled innocence would have fooled most men. But I met you under, shall we say, very different circumstances. Revealing circumstances.’

‘Revealing?’ Her heart was hammering. What had she revealed? Apart from rather too much of her legs. And what game was it he suspected her of playing?

‘Oh, yes. You are a rebel, aren’t you?’

Well, that much was true. She had rebelled against Mama and Papa’s wishes to come to London for this Season.

And since she’d been here, she’d been rebelling against all the strictures imposed upon her behaviour.

‘Ha! I knew it. Your guilty expression has given it away. You are merely pretending to go along with all this...’ He waved his hand to include not only the ballroom, but by extension, the whole society it represented. ‘But the fact that you felt the need to go galloping round the park at dawn, unfettered by all the restrictions society would impose on you, coupled with the dreadful way you are dressed, hints at a cunning scheme to avoid falling into the trap of matrimony.’

‘Absolutely not,’ she retorted, stung by his continuing references to her poor choice of clothing. ‘If you must know...’ she drew herself to her full height, which meant she only had to tilt her head the slightest bit to look him straight in the eyes ‘...I dressed like this because...because...’

She paused, wondering why on earth Aunt Susan had permitted her to buy so many things that didn’t suit her. When she was doing so much to make her a social success.

And it came to her in a flash.

‘This is the first time I have ever been anywhere near a fashionable dressmaker and my aunt didn’t want to ruin the pleasure of being able to feel satin against my skin, or picking out lace and ribbons and feathers by objecting to every single gaudy thing I set my heart upon.’

‘But—’

‘And I do want to get married. That is why I’ve come to London. To find somebody who will...value me and...admire me and talk to me as if what I have to say is...not a joke!’

He flinched.

‘Oh, there is no need to worry that I will ever set my sights on you,’ she said with a curl of her lip. And, as a fleeting look of relief flitted across his face, she had another flash of insight. ‘That is what you meant, isn’t it, about playing a game? You are avoiding matrimony. Like the plague.’

He started and the wary look that came across his face told her she’d hit the nail on the head.

And then, because he’d had so much fun baiting her, she couldn’t resist taking the opportunity to turn the tables on him. It wouldn’t take much. He’d practically handed her all the ammunition she needed.

‘What devilish schemes,’ he said in alarm, ‘are running through that pretty head of yours?’

Pretty? She looked up at him sharply.

And met his eyes, squarely, for the first time that night.

And felt something arc between them, something that flared through all the places that he’d set ablaze when he’d crushed her to his chest and kissed her.

‘You think I’m pretty?’

What a stupid thing to say. Of all the things she might have said, all the clever responses she could have flung at him, she’d had to focus on that.

Fortunately, it seemed to amuse him.

‘In spite of those hideous clothes, and the ridiculous feathers in your hair, yes, Lady Harriet, you know full well you are vastly pretty.’

The words, and the way he said them, felt like being stroked all the way down her spine with a velvet glove. Even though they weren’t true. She’d had no idea anyone might think she was pretty. Let alone vastly pretty.