Never Trust a Rake

‘Please, do not refine too much upon the fact that he happens to be here tonight. He has probably forgotten all about me by now,’ she turned to her aunt to say.

‘Nonsense. He just has not noticed you yet,’ replied her aunt.

‘Don’t wave, don’t wave,’ Henrietta hissed out of the corner of her mouth, when it looked as though her aunt was about to do just that. ‘If he wants to pretend he has not seen us,’ she muttered angrily, for how he could have failed to see them, when the sofa upon which they sat was in full view of the door through which he had just walked, she could not imagine, ‘then he must not want to recognise us tonight.’

Her aunt subsided immediately. It was one thing for a member of the ton to call at one’s house, quite another for that same aristocrat to deign to recognise one in public.

Henrietta flicked open her fan and plied it over her aunt’s heated cheeks. The excitement of getting an invitation to a household such as this quite eclipsed the coup of getting her Mildred into a mere Miss Twining’s come-out ball. Although, in a way, they owed that, too, to Julia. She had called, with Lady Susan in tow, only a day or so ago, to enquire whether she had quite recovered from whatever had afflicted her during her come-out ball. ‘Because,’ Julia had said disingenuously, ‘I was beginning to fear it might be something serious, since I have not seen you anywhere since.’ As they’d been leaving, Lady Susan had asked if she would be interested in attending what she described as ‘a very informal rout’.

Aunt Ledbetter had very nearly expired from excitement on the spot.

‘Shall I fetch you some lemonade, aunt?’ There were so many more important people thronging the house that the footmen circulating with trays of refreshments had bypassed them several times. And she was only too willing to leave the room in which Lord Deben was holding court, to go in search of a waiter willing to serve them.

‘No, dear, I need something considerably stronger,’ said her aunt. ‘Lemonade for Mildred, though.’

Henrietta snapped her fan shut and deliberately avoided looking in Lord Deben’s direction. She hadn’t liked the way he’d kept invading her thoughts over the past fortnight. She hadn’t liked the way her spirits had lifted when she detected some sign that he might have been working on her behalf, in the background, in spite of the way they had parted. Although he’d probably, no, definitely had more important things to think about than a badly dressed, shrewish country miss. For in what other light could he regard her? When she looked back on the two occasions they had met, she realised that she had made a spectacle of herself both times. On that first occasion, her face had been all blotchy with tears, and, she’d discovered to her horror when she’d got home and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, there was more than a handful of dead ivy in her hair. The second time, she’d deliberately made herself look as vulgar as she possibly could, and, because she’d still been recovering from Richard, had been very far from gracious.

Shrewish, to be perfectly blunt. And whenever she tried to justify herself by reminding herself of all the rude things he’d said, too, her conscience pointed out that he had at least tried to rein in his temper. Several times. Only for her to provoke him into losing it again.

All the poor man wanted was to express his thanks in the only way he knew how—by offering her the chance at retribution. And she had thrown it all back in his face.

She especially did not like the fact that just now, when he’d walked into the room, she had reacted exactly the same as her aunt had done. The only difference between them was that her pride had kept her from showing it—that, and the fact that she would not for the world expose her aunt and cousin to ridicule by having a man like that snub them, if he should choose to do so.

It was bad enough that at the moment even the waiters would not deign to notice them.

If only she hadn’t turned down his offer to make her the toast of the ton, if only she hadn’t been so ungracious, so ungrateful, everything might have been so different.

So deep had she fallen into a spirit of self-chastisement that she very nearly walked right into the large male who stepped into her path.