‘I assumed that was spite talking and discounted it. Particularly when I looked you up and discovered that you have a much more impressive pedigree than Lady Chigwell, whose husband’s title, such as it is, is a mere two generations old.’
‘You looked me up …?’
‘Of course. I had no intention of asking around and raising people’s curiosity about why I wished to know more about you. When I found that you are Miss Gibson of Shoebury Manor in Much Wakering and that your father is Sir Henry Gibson, scientist and scholar, member of the Royal Society, I naturally assumed you would be attending the kind of events most débutantes of your age enjoy when they come up to town for their Season.’ His mouth twisted with distaste. ‘Had I known that you would not, no power on earth would have compelled me to attend any of them.’
He’d spent two consecutive evenings haunting places he did not want to go to, merely because he had thought she might be there? And now she was obliging him to drive round the park, at the fashionable hour, while she was dressed in such spectacularly vulgar style?
For the first time in days, she felt almost cheerful.
‘What a lot of time you have wasted on my account,’ she said, with a satisfied gleam in her eye.
‘Well, it is not because I have been struck by a coup de foudre,’ he said sharply. ‘Do not take it into your head that I have an interest in you for any sentimental or … romantic reason,’ he said with a curl to his lip as he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.
‘I wouldn’t!’ The coxcomb! Did he really believe that every female in London sighed after him, just because Miss Waverley had flung herself at him?
‘Let me tell you that I wouldn’t want to attract that kind of attention from a man as unpleasant and rude as you,’ she retorted hotly. ‘In fact, I didn’t want to come out for a drive with you today at all. And I wouldn’t have, either, if it wouldn’t have meant embarrassing my aunt.’
His full lips tightened in displeasure. Nobody spoke to him like that. Nobody.
‘It is as well I gave you little choice, then, is it not?’
‘I do not see that at all. I do not see that there is any reason for you to have looked for me, or investigated my background, or dragged me out of the house today …’
‘When you were clearly enjoying the company so much,’ he sneered.
She blinked. Had her misery been that obvious?
‘It was nothing to do with the company. They are all perfectly lovely people, who have very generously opened their home to me …’
He frowned. He had dismissed the suspicion that she had taken him in aversion on that accursed terrace, assuming she was just angry at the whole world, because of some injustice being perpetrated upon her. But he could not hold on to that assumption any longer. From his preliminary investigation into her background, and that of her father, and the people with whom she was living, he could find no reason why anyone should attempt to coerce her into marriage. He had not yet managed to find out why she was living with a set of cits in Bloomsbury, when she had perfectly respectable relations who could have presented her at court, but she clearly felt no ill will towards them for not being able to launch her into society. She had just referred to them as perfectly lovely people, putting such stress on the pronoun that he could not mistake her implication that she excluded him from the set of people she liked.
In short, his first impression had been correct. She really did not like him at all. His scowl landed at random upon the driver of a very showy high-perch phaeton going in the opposite direction, causing the young man such consternation he very nearly ran his team off the road.
‘Then I can only deduce that whatever is still making you look as though you are on the verge of going into a decline had its origins at Miss Twining’s ball.’
His scowl intensified. He was inured to enduring this level of antagonism from his siblings, but he had no experience of prolonging an interaction with a person to whom he was not bound by ties of family who held him in dislike. It was problematical. He was not going to rescind his decision to provide a bulwark against whatever malice Miss Waverley chose to unleash upon her, but he had taken it for granted she would have received his offer of assistance with becoming gratitude. After all, he was about to bestow a singular honour upon her. Never, in his entire life, had he gone to so much trouble on another person’s behalf.
The usual pattern was for people to seek him out. If they didn’t bore him too dreadfully, he generally permitted them limited access to his circle, while he waited to discover what their motives were for attempting to get near him.
He turned his glare sideways, where she sat with that beak of a nose in the air, completely shutting him out.
The corners of his mouth turned down, as he bit back a string of oaths. What the devil had got into him? He did not want her to fawn over him, did he? He despised toadeaters.
It must just be that he was not used to having to expend any effort in getting people to like him. He didn’t quite know how to go about it—
Hold hard—like him? Why the devil should he be concerned whether this aggravating chit liked him or not? He had never cared one whit for another’s opinion. And he would not, most definitely not, care about hers either.
Which resolve lasted until the moment she turned her face up to his, and said, with a tremor in her voice, and stress creasing her brow, ‘I don’t, do I? Please tell me I don’t look as though I’m going into a decline.’
‘Well, Miss Gibson—’
‘Because I am not going to.’ She straightened up, as though she was exerting her entire will to pull herself together. ‘Absolutely not. Only a spineless ninny would—’ She shut her mouth with a snap, as though feeling she had said too much.
Leaving him wishing he could pull up the carriage and put his arms round her. Just to comfort her. She was struggling so valiantly to conceal some form of heartbreak that his own concerns no longer seemed to matter so very much.
Of course, he would do no such thing. For one thing, he was the very last person qualified to offer comfort to a heartbroken woman. He was more usually the one accused of doing the breaking. And the only comfort he’d ever given a female had been of the hot and sweaty variety. With his reputation, and given what he knew of her, if he did attempt to put his arms round her Miss Gibson would no doubt misinterpret his motives and slap his face.
‘This is getting tiresome,’ he said. ‘I wish you would stop pretending you have no idea why I sought you out.’
‘I do not know why you should have done such a thing. I never expected to see you again, after I left that horrid ball. Especially not when I found out that you are an earl.’
‘Two earls, if you count the Irish title. Not that many people do.’
‘I don’t care how many earls you are, or what country you have the authority to lord it over, I just wish you had left me alone!’
‘Tut tut, Miss Gibson. Can you really believe that I would not wish to take the very first opportunity that offered to thank you for coming so gallantly to my rescue?’
‘To thank me?’ He had gone to all this trouble to express his thanks?
He watched her subside on to the seat, her anger visibly draining away.
‘Oh, well …’
‘Miss Gibson, I do thank you. From the bottom of what passes for my heart. It is not an exaggeration to say you saved me from a fate worse than death.’
‘Having to get married, you mean?’
‘Oh, no, never that. Had you not intervened, I would merely have repudiated Miss Waverley, stood back and watched