With Nullford’s words having stirred up too many raw emotions, she needed to get away until she felt calmer. Since it was still early enough that Hyde Park should be devoid of society, she’d have Marie help her into her habit and go for a ride.
Marie, she recalled suddenly, halting in mid-stride, who had coaxed her to wear the new gown and let her hair be styled in a different manner.
Then there was Haines, who had known very well that it wasn’t her mother awaiting her in the Green Salon.
Apparently the whole household had been complicit in luring her to that fiasco of a proposal.
Her anger deepening, she stomped up the remaining stairs. Her groom had better bring his best horse, because she needed to indulge in a tearing gallop.
Running a hand over the stubble on his chin, Lord Theo Collington turned his horse down one of the pathways bordering Rotten Row. Despite not returning home until morning, he’d been too restless and out of sorts to seek his bed, deciding instead to order his gelding and head to Hyde Park for a ride while the park was still thin of company. He needed to think and he didn’t want to encounter anyone who would require him to play the increasingly wearying role of the devil-may-care man-about-town.
Not that he had any viable alternative to evenings of gaming with his friends or nights spent visiting the opera, the theatre, or whatever select society entertainment he expected to be amusing. But of late, a vague discomfort had begun to shadow his pleasure in those activities. A long-suppressed sense that there should have been something more to his life.
Not the ‘something more’ his mama continually urged on him—which was marriage and the setting up of his nursery. Though he very much enjoyed the female form and figure, he hadn’t yet encountered a woman out of bed who didn’t, after a time, grow tedious.
Well, perhaps one, he thought, smiling as he recalled the sharp verbal fencing that occurred whenever he encountered Miss Emma Henley. Fortunately, however, that lady was as little interested in marriage as he was, so he might indulge in the delight of her company without raising expectations in either her or society that he had matrimonial leanings in her direction.
When it came to ladies, though, one thing he did know for certain. After the contretemps at the opera last night, his liaison with Lady Belinda Ballister was definitely over.
That resolution was the easiest of the conclusions he’d needed the crisp morning air to clear his head enough to make. Still, forcing himself to give up the admittedly exceptional pleasure the skilfully inventive Belinda had given him the last few months was a sacrifice heroic enough to deserve a reward. He’d allow himself a gallop before returning home.
Gathering the reins back in both hands, he signalled his mount to start.
Ah, now this pleasure truly never would pale, he thought as the gelding reached full stride. His heart exulted with the rapid tattoo of the hoofbeats, the thrill of speeding over the ground, while the rush of wind blew the last of the brandy fumes out of his head.
This pleasure of another sort was, in its own way, nearly as satisfying as a rendezvous with the tireless Belinda. Maybe he ought to take up racing horses.
That nonsensical idea had him smiling as he rounded a corner—and almost collided with a rider galloping straight at him.
Both horses shied, fortunately to opposite sides of the path. It took him a moment to control his startled mount and bring him to a halt before he could turn to check on the other horseman.
Or rather, horsewoman, he corrected, noting the trailing riding habit. Noting also the expertise of the rider, who had quickly brought her own plunging, panicked horse back under control.
Straightening the shako on her head—the only damage she seemed to have suffered—the lady turned towards him. ‘Lord Theo,’ she said, the tone of her musical voice sardonic. ‘I should have known. Who else could I have expected to almost run me down in the park?’
His spirits immediately brightening, he felt his lips curving back into a smile. ‘Thank you, Miss Henley, for your solicitude in enquiring whether my mount and I sustained any harm in the shock of our near-collision. But then, what other lady might I expect to find galloping through the park like a steeplechaser?’
‘Temperance Lattimar,’ she tossed back. ‘Although now that she’s wed, she’s generally too occupied with the business of being an earl’s wife to have time to gallop in the park. One more good reason to remain single.’
‘I agree with you there. But isn’t it a bit late for your ride? You usually come earlier if you intend to race like a Newmarket jockey.’
He waited in anticipation, but she didn’t rise to the bait, merely replying, ‘True. Whereas you, Lord Theo—’ she gave him a quick inspection ‘—appear to have not yet found your bed. Carousing late again?’
‘As would be expected of the ton’s leading bachelor,’ he replied, his smile deepening.
What a singular female she was, he thought, captured anew by the force of the intense hazel-eyed gaze she’d fixed on him. She was the only woman of his acquaintance who, rather than angling her face to give him a flirtatious look or a seductive batting of her eyes, looked straight at him, her fierce, no-nonsense gaze devoid of flattery.
‘If I rode close enough, I suppose I would catch the scent, not just of horse, but of your latest lover’s perfume.’
Grinning, he shook a reproving finger. ‘You know a gentleman never gossips.’
As she tilted her head, studying him, he felt it again—the primitive surge of attraction of a male for a desirable female. He’d been startled at first to have the plain woman society dismissively referred to as ‘the Homely Miss Henley’ evoke such a reaction. But though she possessed none of the dazzling beauty that had made her elder sister, ‘the Handsome Miss Henley’ a diamond of the ton, there was something about her—some restless, passionate, driving force he sensed just beneath her surface calm—that called out to him, as compelling as physical beauty.
Unfortunately, he reminded himself with a suppressed sigh, it was also an attraction quite impossible to pursue. A gentleman might dally with willing married ladies, but never with an innocent.
He’d have to content himself with indulging in intellectual intercourse. A delight in which Miss Henley was as skilled as his former lover was in dalliance.
‘Then I shall not press you for details, but send you off to your bed,’ she said after a moment, the trace of heat in her gaze sending another wave of awareness through him.
Did he only imagine it, or did that comment imply that she, too—virginal maiden though she was—envisaged beds and a pressing together of flesh when she focused so intently upon him?
‘I shall resume my interrupted gallop,’ she continued as he sat speechless, distracted by that titillating speculation.
‘This late in the morning?’ Dragging his mind from its lecherous thoughts, Theo turned his attention back to the lady—and frowned.
Miss Henley’s face, normally a long, pale, unremarkable blank, was flushed. Her jaw was set and those exceptional hazel eyes glittered with more than usual fire.
Even more unusually, he realised, she was completely alone. Though Miss Henley often scoffed at society, she usually followed its conventions, which forbade an unmarried lady of quality from going anywhere unaccompanied.
‘Something happened this morning, didn’t it?’
Though she shook her head in denial, her quick huff of frustration and a clenching of her teeth belied that response.
‘Come now, give, give! Your groom is nowhere in sight, which means