dark he might well have imagined her beauty was far beyond that which really existed. But here they were, their faces mere inches away, and her utter perfection had just literally taken his breath away.
‘Your Harry … Lieutenant Kendell … must be so dazzled by you,’ he eventually managed to grate, ‘that he has completely lost his head.’
And perhaps that really was the truth. Perhaps he was no fortune-hunter at all. With those big blue eyes, that glorious mane of golden curls and that utterly kissable little mouth, she was capable of ensnaring just about any man she set her sights on. If she had given the lowly lieutenant the least bit of encouragement, she might easily have enslaved him.
But she wasn’t going to enslave him. He whipped his gaze away from her mouth to glare at a hapless matron whose own barouche happened to be passing theirs. He was not going to allow this attraction, no matter how strong, to deflect him from his primary objective. Which was to marry a paragon of some kind.
He was not only going to learn how to manage his estates to the admiration of his peers, he was going to marry a woman who would excite envy and admiration. Not a girl whose very nature meant she was bound to teeter permanently on the brink of one scandal or another.
‘Um … Actually …’ She faltered on the verge of confessing the truth. He had just said he admired the way she was not hanging out for a man with a grand title. It was so rarely she heard any praise for anything she did that she was loath to admit she didn’t deserve even that.
Not that she did think people should attempt to marry for social advancement.
‘I believe that people should only marry for love,’ she declared.
‘I might have guessed,’ he said, so scathingly her temper flared up all over again.
Her own family had been quite needlessly torn apart when her aunt Aurora had eloped with a man the Earl of Caxton had decided was beneath her, socially. Her grandfather would still not permit anyone to mention her name. Which had, according to Josie, wounded her mother deeply. Yet the man with whom she had eloped had been the son of a gentleman. There had been no need to banish them both and forbid any communication between the sisters, surely?
There had always been a sort of gaping hole in the family where Aunt Aurora and her husband ought to have been round which they all had to tiptoe. And she had long since come to the conclusion that her grandfather had behaved in a perfectly ridiculous fashion. Just because his daughter had fallen in love with a man of whom he did not approve.
‘If two people love each other—really love each other—then nothing should be allowed to stand in their way,’ she said vehemently.
His heart sank. For he’d hoped that in the light of day she’d somehow wake up and see that Harry was not worth the risks she was taking. And then he could forget about this detour and return his full attention to the important business of scouring London Society for his bride.
But the tone of her voice revealed a determination that no amount of arguing was going to be able to shake. She left him with no alternative. He was going to have to employ a little subterfuge so that he could limit her exposure to potential danger, whilst keeping close enough to protect her should it become necessary.
‘Then who am I to stand in the way of true love?’ he said, with such sarcasm she just knew she wasn’t going to like whatever he was going to say next. ‘Not that I condone your behaviour, young lady. Nor his. Especially not his.’
Ah, that was more like it. She knew how to deal with a man who spoke to her with just that tone of disapproval in his voice.
She lifted her chin and looked him straight in the eye.
‘You have no right to criticise my behaviour.’
He quite liked it when she squared up to him, he realized, leaning back against the squabs to study her mutinous expression. When she dropped the frigid mask she employed to deceive the rest of Society and revealed her true self. It made him feel privileged to get a glimpse of a facet of her nature she permitted nobody else to see.
He’d felt like this last night, too, when she’d been pleading with him to spare her maid. She’d completely forgotten all about acting as though she didn’t care about anything. Her eyes had glowed with a similar fervour, and those petal-soft lips had trembled with emotion….
It was only with a great effort that he tore his eyes from those tantalizingly tempting lips. It made his voice quite gruff when he said, ‘Catching you in the arms of your lover last night gives me every right to speak my mind. I know what you are capable of. I know what you are really like.’
He raised one gloved hand to silence her when she drew breath to object.
‘And I cannot, in all conscience, just allow you to carry on as you have been doing. Dammit, if anyone else had caught the pair of you together there would have been hell to pay. I have no confidence that if I do not, personally, put a curb on your behaviour you will not carry on sneaking out to meet him in secret. And it must stop. Do you hear me?’
She nodded, her lips pressed hard together on the reflection that there was nothing so infuriating as being ordered to do something she had already decided on doing.
‘Now, it will not be as bad as all that. If you do me one favour I am willing to arrange for you to see your young man, in circumstances which will compromise neither him nor you.’
‘You will do what?’ How could the man be so exasperating? She had been relying on him insisting she give Harry up completely.
‘I will arrange for you two to meet. But only when I, myself, will be your chaperon.’ He half turned towards her again. ‘Now, look. Everyone knows I have only very recently sold out. What could be more natural than for me to be seen about with other military men? Lieutenant Kendell will be accepted into certain situations if he is with me. And I seem to be exactly the sort of man your family would encourage you to mix with. The fact that we are here, riding out together, with only my own servants to chaperon us, is proof of that. It will be quite easy for me to ensure that you may see each other whenever his duties permit. In a properly managed, decorous fashion. Not in this sneaking way in which you have so far engaged.’
She felt ready to explode. The last thing she could do was tell him he had got completely the wrong idea about her and Harry. He had already made her feel stupid and selfish. If she admitted that she had fallen into the relationship in a fit of pique with her grandfather, and was now quite keen to wriggle out of it again, she would never live it down!
She was going to have to appear to agree to his terms. Oh, Lord, and that meant that she would have to meet Harry again and tell him to his face that she did not love him. Could never marry him.
It would be painful. Very painful. But in a way would it not be a fitting punishment for the way she had led Harry on these past months?
Though she still could not understand why on earth Lord Ledbury was so keen to act as a go-between. Just when she had been relying on him to put an end to what was becoming an increasingly untenable situation, he was coming to their aid—as though he had every sympathy for what he assumed was a pair of star-crossed lovers.
‘Why are you doing this?’
He took a deep breath. ‘I am going to ask you to do something for me that means I shall have to take you into my confidence. I am going to trust you to keep what I am about to tell you to yourself. Just as you are trusting me to keep my mouth shut about your continuing relationship with Lieutenant Kendell.’
He was going to trust her with a secret? A great deal of her irritation with him ebbed away. Even if his words did contain that thinly veiled threat about him keeping quiet so long as she kept quiet, nobody had ever reposed any confidence in her upon any matter whatsoever. On the contrary—all her life her male relatives had been drumming it into her that she was completely useless.
‘I want you to help a … a friend of mine.’ He frowned. ‘Perhaps it is best I go back to the beginning. You know