And so he hadn’t got as far as working out what he could really do about her, even if he did run her to ground.
So, for a moment, all he could do was stand stock still, staring at her. Just staring at her. Until she bent to listen to something the short, ginger girl was saying, and laughed.
Laughed!
As though she hadn’t a care in the world. When he…
He flinched as a series of stark and dreadful images surged to the forefront of his mind. Images he kept firmly locked away behind a sort of door in his memory. A good portion of them relating to Lieutenant Gilbey.
Gilbey sitting with his head in his hands. Gilbey pacing back and forth, his face tortured, after reading one of those damned letters she’d sent him. Gilbey’s shattered body staining the snow scarlet…
He found himself stalking across the room, dazed to discover that Issy had been right. And, that being the case, he did have to do something. Even though he didn’t know exactly what. Because, even though the hostess, Lady Bunsford, was hardly a leader of society, if the Furnival girl had got in here she would not stop until she’d gained the objective Issy had painted in such lurid colours. And that he could not allow.
The very moment he began to stalk towards her, she turned, as though sensing his interest. Looked at him. Frowned a bit, as though trying to work out why his face looked familiar.
And then her face lit up. As though she was delighted to see him again.
The power of that smile almost, almost made him falter. It was so warm. So welcoming. And promised so much. For a moment or two it felt as if she’d cast some kind of net, formed from invisible gossamer threads, and that she was reeling him in rather than him marching across a crowded ballroom to challenge her because that was his choice. The same way she’d done the very first time he’d met her, at that assembly near where the regiment had been based for a time. All she’d had to do, that long-ago night, was to look over her shoulder at him, wistfully, as she went through a door that would take her to the stable yard, and he’d trotted after her like a…like a dog called to heel. Even though he’d resisted the temptation to ask her to dance before that moment. Even though she was too young for him. For any man, so he’d thought. She’d been all promise. Blossom. Not ready to be plucked. And yet, oh, so damned alluring.
It was her mouth. The way the top lip pouted, as though inviting a man to suck it into his own mouth and…
No, it was her eyes. The liveliness that danced in them, making a man yearn to drown in their greeny-brown depths…
No, it was her skin. Which wasn’t blandly perfect like that of so many debutantes who reminded him of brittle porcelain. It was creamy and warm, and dotted here and there with moles which made his fingers itch to trace the course of their intriguing pattern…
‘Colonel Fairfax,’ she said, holding out her hand with the practised grace of a seasoned seductress.
No man could have resisted taking it, bending over it and bestowing the kiss she demanded. Least of all, as it turned out, him. Which infuriated him.
‘How delightful to see you again,’ she cooed, ‘after all this time.’
He straightened up and dropped her hand. Just because he acknowledged her beauty, her allure, it did not mean he was going to fall under her spell. Thanks to Issy he knew what she was, now, what she was capable of. Saying she was delighted to see him again, for instance. Making him believe, with the radiance of that smile, that she meant it when he knew it must be impossible. She was too young, too lovely to genuinely have any interest in a dried-up husk of a man like him.
‘Miss Furnival,’ he said, his wounded pride smarting so much that his voice sounded harsh, even to his own ears. ‘Still up to your pretty little neck in mischief, I see.’
The hand he’d just kissed flew to that neck, as though inviting his eyes to follow. Inviting his lips to do the same, at some later date. Or perhaps his teeth. If she was everything Issy had said, then she wouldn’t care which.
Even though he’d just thrown down the gauntlet? Perhaps because he’d challenged her. Perhaps it was a declaration that she would fight back, with all the weapons in her arsenal. And a fight it was to be, now, he realised with a pang of what felt like loss. The warmth had gone from her smile. From a distance it probably looked the same, but this close to her, close enough to smell the floral fragrance she was wearing, he knew different.
‘Mischief?’ She gave a little frown, as though she could not understand what he could possibly be implying. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
For a moment, he wished she really didn’t have any idea what he meant. That they were not on opposing sides. That he’d been able to bask in the warmth of that first smile, rather than having to make it freeze in place. That he could have taken her hand without reservation and begun to converse with her the way any man would talk to a pretty woman he’d met and felt drawn to.
But that outcome had never been possible. When they’d first met, he’d known he would shortly be going abroad and that he might be away too long to even suggest, let alone hope, she might wait for him. Known that she’d been too young for him and now…now his mission made fraternising with her an impossibility.
He tore his eyes from her before her loveliness gained sufficient power to weaken his resolve and focused on the girl next to her. The girl Issy had told him was the daughter of a mill owner. ‘To begin with, foisting a girl like that,’ he said to Miss Furnival, though he kept on looking at the ginger girl, ‘on to a featherbrained creature like the Duchess of Theakstone.’
The ginger girl flinched. Scowled. And, as he’d regained command of his wayward tendency to wish for the impossible, he turned his head to address Miss Furnival directly. ‘I don’t know how you have managed to persuade her to take part in one of your schemes, but I do know that you are encroaching upon her good nature.’
‘One of my schemes?’ Miss Furnival added a shake of her head to the mystified frown she’d manufactured for his benefit. ‘What schemes?’
‘Don’t think you can fool me by that look of innocence,’ he snarled at her through a mixture of bitterness and disappointment that she had, apparently, already done so once. ‘Nor anyone else, not for very long. There are those who know what you have done, what you are…’
She flung up her chin. ‘And what am I?’
Where to start? ‘An adventuress. A heartbreaker.’ Not that she’d broken his heart. He’d only got as far as wishing she was older, wishing he could get to know her better before the regiment left England, wishing he could ask her to consider waiting for him…
Thank goodness. Otherwise, when she’d turned up on the quayside, clinging to Gilbey’s arm as the lad stammered out his intention to marry her and carry her on board with them like so much baggage…
But then, according to Issy, she was a baggage, wasn’t she?
‘Do you think,’ he said, ‘I could ever forget what you did to Lieutenant Gilbey?’ According to Issy, that was. Although he still wasn’t completely convinced. And it wasn’t just because she was acting so surprised. Part of him really didn’t want to believe she could look so lovely, yet be so hard-hearted. Perhaps, if he flung her supposed crimes in her face, she would refute them in such a way that he could go back and inform his sister she’d been mistaken. ‘You cajoled him to make a runaway match of it,’ he ventured. ‘And then when I believed I’d managed to extricate him from your clutches, you still managed to wheedle his fortune out of him.’
‘You…got him out of my clutches?’ Her eyes widened, briefly, then turned hard.
His heart sank as she revealed a side of her he’d kept on hoping, right to this very minute, had been a figment of Issy’s