She glared at his gloved hand protruding from the gold-braided cuff. ‘Will you kindly unhand me? Nothing, believe me, will make me agree to be your mistress.’
‘You will not be so very respectable if word gets around that you are open to negotiation,’ he suggested. ‘I would only have to drop a word in a few ears that we have had this conversation and the damage would be done.’
Julia tried to shake off his hand, but he closed his fingers, drawing her towards himself. ‘Let me go, people will realize something is amiss,’ she hissed.
‘No doubt, any onlooker will merely deduce we are discussing the price.’ His face bore an expression of such self-satisfaction that she was tempted to strike it. But that could only make matters worse. She had to get rid of him before Phillip came back. But how, without creating an even worse scene?
‘Bet against Thomas’s mare over that distance? You must be all about in your head,’ Major Hal Carlow said to the man at his side who was earnestly explaining the merits of a chestnut gelding belonging to a certain Lieutenant Strong.
Captain Gregory launched into details lost on Hal as he watched the young woman on the upper walk—the apparently respectable young woman who had been staring at him as though she knew him. He had never seen her before, so far as he knew, although, as she could hardly be described as a Diamond of the first water, it was possible she had escaped his attention. In which case, what was so attracting him now?
‘Carlow?’ He ignored his companions, still watching the young woman. She had been joined by an officer in a scarlet coat. Foot Guards. He narrowed his eyes: 92nd Foot and not someone he recognized. And not someone she wished to recognize either, judging by her averted head and her stiff body. The man put a hand on her arm.
‘I’ll see you back at the Hôtel de Flandres,’ Hal said abruptly, abandoning his plans to go and catch up on his sleep. He took the steps up to the wide lawn at a stride and strode off to intercept the small boy with the ball. ‘Good morning.’ He hunkered down to eye level, managing the unwieldy length of his sabre without conscious thought. ‘Is that your governess in the green pelisse?’
‘My sister Julia.’ Big brown eyes stared back solemnly, grubby hands clasped his toy. ‘Are you in the cavalry, sir?’
‘Yes, 11th Light Dragoons. My name is Hal Carlow.’ Hal scooped the child up in his arms and began to walk towards the path. ‘And what is your name?’ He liked children—well enough to ensure his frequent adventures left no by-blows to haunt his somewhat selective conscience.
‘Phillip Tresilian and I’m four.’
‘A big boy like you? I thought you must be six at least.’ Hal stepped over the strip of marigolds and walked up to the couple on the path. Close-to he could see the flush on her—Julia’s—cheeks and the distress in her eyes, large and brown like her brother’s. The other officer still had his hand on her arm.
‘Miss Tresilian! You must have quite given me up, I do apologise,’ Hal said cheerfully as he came up to them. Her eyes widened but she did not disown him. ‘Shall we go on to the pavilion for tea? I expect Phillip would like an ice as usual.’
‘Not in the morning, sir! You know he is not allowed ices before luncheon,’ Miss Tresilian said in a rallying tone.
Good girl, he thought, as he extended his free arm for her to rest her hand on, then feigned surprise at seeing the other man was holding her. He let the good humour ebb from his face and raised one eyebrow. ‘Major? I believe I have the prior claim.’ Now what had he said to make her blush like that?
‘Miss Tresilian was walking with me, sir.’ The infantry officer bristled. He outweighed Hal by about a stone and had a good three inches of height on Hal’s six foot.
Hal met his eyes and allowed the faintest sneer to cross his features. ‘And now, by appointment, she is walking with me.’ The small boy curled an arm around his neck in well-timed confirmation of his friendship with the Tresilians. ‘I believe I do not have the pleasure of your acquaintance, Major? Nor, I suspect, have my friends.’ Hal let the slightest emphasis rest on the last word and saw his meaning go home.
The other man released Miss Tresilian’s arm. ‘Frederick Fellowes, 92nd Foot.’
‘Hal Carlow, 11th Light Dragoons.’ That went home too. Something of his reputation must have reached the infantry. ‘Good day to you.’
Miss Tresilian rested her hand on his sleeve. ‘Good day, Major Fellowes,’ she said with chilly formality. She waited until they were out of earshot before she said, ‘Please, sir, do put Phillip down, he is covered in dirt.’
Hal set the boy on his feet and threw the ball to the far end of the lawn for him to run after. ‘Are you all right, Miss Tresilian?’
She looked up at him, her face still flushed beneath the brim of her plain straw bonnet. He studied big brown eyes and a nose that had just the suggestion of a tilt to the tip, a firm chin and a neat figure. No great beauty, but Hal had the sense of a vivid personality, of intelligence and humour. He felt a desire to make her blush again, she did it so deliciously.
‘I am now, thanks to you, Major. I do not know what I would have done if you had not rescued me—hit him over the head with my parasol, I expect—and then what a figure I would have made of myself.’ Her eyes crinkled with rueful amusement as he smiled. ‘And how clever of you to get our names from Phillip. Did you really mean by that reference to your friends that you might call Major Fellowes out?’
She was quick on the uptake, this young lady. And lady she was, for all her lack of maid or footman and her simple gown and spencer.
‘Of course. Fellowes lacks address: it really is not done to persist where one is unwanted, even when a lady is so temptingly pretty.’
She ignored the automatic compliment. ‘Not with discreditable offers it is not,’ she said with feeling, then blushed again. ‘Oh dear, I should not have mentioned that, should I? But I feel I know you, Major Carlow.’
‘Is that why you were looking at me just now?’ he asked. ‘I hoped you wanted to make my acquaintance.’
She bit her lip in charming confusion. ‘I really do not know. It was very brassy of me, but there was something about you I thought I recognized.’ She recovered her composure a little and her chin lifted. ‘And you stared right back at me.’
‘True.’ Hal stooped to pick up the ball and sent Phillip chasing towards the fountain in its octagonal basin. ‘But then, I am a rake and we are supposed to stare at ladies and put them to the blush.’
‘You are? A rake I mean?’
‘Indeed. I am precisely the kind of man your mama would warn you about and, now I think on it, you may have leapt from frying pan to fire. I am absolutely the last man you should be seen walking with in the Parc.’
‘No, Major Fellowes is that,’ she retorted. ‘You rescued me.’
Hal was not given to flirting with young unmarried ladies. For a start, whenever he hove into sight, their mothers herded them together like hens with chicks on seeing a fox. And he had absolutely no intention of finding himself confronting a furious father demanding that he did the decent thing by his compromised daughter.
Society was full enough of carefree widows and dashing matrons—and the demi-monde of skilled light-skirts—to keep a gentleman of an amorous disposition amused without him needing to venture amongst the ingénues adorning the Marriage Mart.
But Miss Tresilian was not one of those young ladies either. She was, to his experienced eye, a good three and twenty, her manner was open and her wits sharp. She was not one of the fashionable set either: he did not recognize her name and her bonnet was a Season out of style. There was something about her that argued both virtue and a lack of sophisticated boredom.
‘My reputation is worse,’ he observed, reverting to Major Fellowes. ‘I have not heard of him—but he had heard of