The Honourable Fortune Hunter (Scandalous Miss Brightwells 5)

“Why, Mr McAlister, what a pleasure to see you!” Lizzy greeted him with a smile, as if she’d been brought out of a brown study, and Theodore was startled at his response to the genuine delight in her tone and voice.

But instead of the answering pleasure he felt at being in her company once more, he said rather severely, “That is the gentleman with whom you propose to ally yourself? Harry Dalgleish?”

Lizzy laughed. “He is rather dashing, don’t you think? Why, Mr McAlister, you’re frowning. Surely you’re not jealous?”

“Jealous? Of his supposedly dashing looks which I consider quite foppish, or of the fact that you just complimented him? Whom you choose to marry is of no account to me.” He hesitated, and she looked enquiringly at him.

“But…?” she prompted.

Despite himself, Theodore exhaled in frustration. “The fellow is a bounder. I wouldn’t say it other than that I believe our acquaintanceship—brief though it has been—compels me to warn you—”

“Warn me?” She cut him off with a laugh. “Who are you to warn me, Mr McAlister, when I’ve heard much worse things about you?”

“Indeed.” Of course, he should have known it wouldn’t be long before the inevitable character assassination. It had been rash to have accepted Lady Quamby’s offer of accommodation for all that it had offered a lifeline to both himself and Amelia.

Lizzy obviously rethought her approach for she wound a curl about her forefinger as she added with an assessing look, “I overheard Mrs Hodge telling Lady Quamby that under no account must word get around that you—of all people—had rescued me as you were a scoundrel and a philanderer, and she dare not risk Mr Dalgleish getting wind of the fact I might be compromised and therefore cry off.”

Theo didn’t interrupt her though the pressure at his temples increased and a haze blurred his vision a moment. He blinked, partly to forestall his anger, then, to his surprise, noticed that a wicked gleam appeared in Lizzy’s eye as she added, “So, what is your crime, Mr McAlister? Should I be warning the young lady you intend making up to this weekend? Who is she, by the way? I’m very interested to see her falling all over herself to please you, since there must be a great deal of feeling between the two of you for you to be so dismissive of me when I come with such a tidy fortune.”

The sight of her staring up at him with no idea how appealing she looked—both adorably innocent of the world and, in truth, her own charms, yet at the same time dangerously so—was like a knife in the gut.

“Do you know how unladylike and…childish you sound?” He regretted the words the moment they extinguished the light in her eye and the playfulness in her tone. For he had spoken out of a need to protect himself.

Lizzy’s mouth dropped open and hurt flared in her eyes. She pushed her shoulders back and raised her chin. “Clearly she is very important to you and I have offended you. My apologies. Please excuse me for I must dress for dinner.” Tossing her head, she brushed past him on the way back up the hill without another word.

Theodore was left staring after her, wondering what on earth had possessed him to speak so unkindly when, in truth, he hand’t enjoyed himself in more than a year as much as he had in Lizzy Scott’s company.

Lizzy flounced up the hill in high dudgeon. She knew that’s what she was doing because Mrs Hodge was forever accusing her of flouncing out of the room in high dudgeon when all Lizzy had done was found a flaw in the woman’s reasoning or accused her of being overbearing and unfair. Which she was. Frequently.

Yet, on all those past occasions, Lizzy had felt nothing but the deepest indignation at her rough treatment for a woman who made no secret of the fact that she considered Lizzy a burden, and had done from the moment Lizzy had stepped across her threshold five years before.

She drew her shawl about her more closely and crossly brushed at the damp coldness on her cheeks.

Initially, Lizzy thought Mrs Hodge’s antipathy was due to the threat she assumed Lizzy posed to her natural daughter, Susan. However, Susan had been married off very nicely within six months of Lizzy taking up residence.

Taking a shaky breath that wasn’t from exertion, Lizzy stopped in the middle of the path and contemplated the grand house with its terraced walkways and carefully manicured gardens.

These were all a blur, of course. A shimmering mirage through her tears. What wasn’t blurry or shimmery was the white-hot rage that burned in her breast at Mr McAlister’s unfair treatment of her.

She was used to it from Mrs Hodge because Mrs Hodge was small-minded and a bully.

But she’d thought differently about Mr McAlister. He had no good reason to deride her as he had done, for he had no intention of making anything serious of their relationship. He had made that clear, and so Lizzy had felt comfortable in extending that, to what she’d felt, was a sort of friendly camaraderie.

Yet, just now, he’d shown his true feelings towards her. Clearly, while she had enjoyed the time they’d shared beneath his roof, he’d found her nothing but a burden. A drain on his limited resources of patience and forbearance.

Just as Mrs Hodge made clear Lizzy was.

The thought made her bottom lip quiver and she brushed the back of her hand across her face.

“Lord, is that you, Lizzy? You’re not crying, are you?”

The last person Lizzy expected to see at that moment was the bland, wishy-washy young woman whom she had never really come to know, despite living under the same room for six months—Mrs Hodge’s daughter Susan.

She dropped her hand, hoping no telltale moisture glistened on her cheeks. “My, Susan, don’t you look grown up?”

Susan laughed, the taut, worried look that seemed a permanent feature disappearing from her plain, pale face. “You always spoke just as you thought. I’d forgotten that about you.”

“Your mother hates it.” Lizzy glanced about to see if Susan’s husband was bringing up the rear, but the white-covered hillside was empty right up to the house surrounds where several more carriages had just drawn up by the portico.