‘I am wrong, but you are right, is that what you mean? And do not presume you know what I was thinking about.’
‘It was not difficult. You have a very expressive face. I watched every emotion flit across its surface. Yearning, despair, anger, and then came a resolute lifting of your chin that told me you refuse to let her win.’
‘It was not … nothing like …’ she sputtered.
‘Then you have not had your heart bruised? You have not decided that only a perfect ninny would go into a decline?’
She winced as he flung her own words back at her.
‘I may have said more than I should have, about matters which are quite private and personal …’ She had not told anyone about Richard and, if she had her way, she would keep the whole sorry episode secret to her dying day. ‘But that does not give you the right to taunt me …’
‘Taunt you?’ He shot her a sharp look. She looked upset. And his irritation at her preoccupation with other matters, when she ought to have been paying him attention, promptly subsided.
‘Far from it. I admire your fighting spirit. If anyone tries to knock you down, you come out fighting, do you not? In just the same way that you erupted from behind your plant pots, taking up the cudgels on my behalf when you thought the odds were stacked against me.’
Which nobody had ever done before.
And though she was now giving a shrug of her shoulders, as though it was nothing, she had not denied that she had felt some kind of … empathy towards him and had wanted to help.
It gave him a most peculiar sensation. He ought, most properly, to have taken offence at her presumption he was in any way in need of anyone’s assistance. But he wasn’t offended in the least. Whenever he looked at her, when she wasn’t annoying him, that was, he couldn’t quite stem a feeling of warmth towards the only person who had ever, disinterestedly, attempted to stand up for him.
‘And now I fear that the odds might be unfairly stacked against you. I repay my debts, Miss Gibson. I shall be your ally.’
She blinked up at him in surprise.
‘Miss Waverley will try to harm you if she can,’ he explained. ‘She is the kind of person who would have no compunction about using her social advantages to prevent you from achieving whatever it was you hoped to achieve by coming to town for a Season.’
Henrietta let out a bitter laugh.
Lord Deben glanced at her sharply. ‘You remarked that there was nothing further she could do. Has she already exacted some form of revenge? Damn! I had not thought she would move so swiftly.’
‘No. You do not understand …’
And he would not understand if she explained it, not a man like him. He might say he would be her ally, but this was the same man who’d just told her he could stand back and watch a woman commit social suicide rather than do the gentlemanly thing.
‘Please, just accept the fact that there is nothing Miss Waverley can do that she has not already done. And I thank you for your concern, but I assure you that there is no need to prolong this … excursion.’
They were just approaching the turn before the exit.
Before they’d set out Lord Deben had decided to spare Miss Gibson only as much of his time as it would take to express his thanks, deliver the warning and offer his assistance. He’d assumed it would take him no longer than it would take to drive her just the once round the ring.
But instead of steering his vehicle through the gate, he commenced another circuit.
He was the one who would decide when this excursion was at an end, not the impudent, ungrateful … unfathomable Miss Gibson.
‘You went straight home that night,’ he drawled, refusing to let her guess he could be motivated by anything more than mild curiosity. ‘You have not shown your face at any of the events attended by the set of which she thinks herself the queen. Therefore, whatever she did, she did before you came to my rescue on the terrace.’
Queen? Oh, yes, that described Miss Waverley’s attitude exactly. Henrietta had only observed her that one evening, but she had certainly regarded male homage as her due. And she seemed to have susceptible, country-born boys like Richard queuing up to pay it.
Her mouth twisted into a moue of disgust.
‘Aha! I have hit the nail on the head. Pray do not bother to deny it. It was something Miss Waverley did that sent you outside to cry that night.’
She had never seen such a cynical smile as the one which curled his lordship’s lips.
‘And when you saw your chance to thrust a spoke in her wheel,’ he said, his upper lip curling with contempt, ‘you took it.’
She was just about to deny having done any such thing, when she recalled what she had thought, earlier, about her not wishing to let Miss Waverley get her claws into another poor, unsuspecting man.
She sat back, a frown pleating her brow. Had she really put a stop to Miss Waverley’s attempt to compromise Lord Deben out of jealousy and spite? She was appalled to think she could act from such base motives.
Shaken, she attempted to replay the scene, with another woman in the place of Miss Waverley.
It was hard to be completely objective, because she had not been thinking, so much as reacting to events that night. On first recognising Miss Waverley, she had wondered why she had not noticed the music had ceased, for her presence outside must mean her dance with Richard was ended. And her eyes had then flown to the door through which she’d come, in horror. Surely she’d suffered enough for one night! She could not bear it if Richard were to follow Miss Waverley on to the terrace and she had to witness a nauseating display of lovemaking between them.
By the time she’d realised that nobody had followed Miss Waverley outside, the brazen hussy had already sidled up to Lord Deben and was trying to get him to respond to her.
With about as much success as she’d had with Richard. The man was just not interested. In fact, he had looked as though he was finding Miss Waverley’s persistent attempts to interest him repellent. She had felt like cheering when he had reproved her for her behaviour.
Then, when the door had burst open and Miss Waverley’s mama had come out a split second after the girl had flung herself into Lord Deben’s arms, she had felt as angry as the earl had looked and had reacted on instinct. All her resentments had come to the boil and ejected her from her hiding place in a spume of righteous indignation.
‘You are quite wrong about me.’ For a moment, he had made her doubt herself. But, having carefully examined her motives, she had made a reassuring discovery.
‘I would have acted the same, had I come across any woman attempting to trap a man into marriage, in such a beastly, underhanded way as that,’ she said hotly. ‘It was deplorable!’
He glanced at her keenly.
‘I note that you do not deny that you were crying because of something she had done, though.’
How annoying of him to read her so well. And to look at her as though not only was she an open book, but also one that he found fairly contemptible. She drew herself up and attempted to look back at him with a level of contempt to match.
‘I knew it,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘What did she do, steal away the man with whom you fancied yourself in love?’
Lord Deben was beyond annoying. He was hateful. She had known, from the sneer that was never far from his mouth, that he