‘I wonder,’ he said when he eventually reached her side, ‘what sort of mood you are in tonight? Dare I ask if I may sit beside you?’
‘I do not know why you bother,’ she complained as he sat, without having waited for her response, ‘since you meant to sit there no matter what I might have said.’
He inclined his upper body towards her. ‘How else am I to discover what it is that has made you appear so very unhappy tonight? Are you perchance having second thoughts about bringing our charade to an end?’
‘Well, yes,’ she began.
He smiled. ‘Ah, you find that you have grown so accustomed to having me at your beck and call that you would rather not forgo the pleasure.’
‘It is not that...’
‘You have discovered, then,’ he said, his smile broadening to something that was very nearly a smirk, ‘that you have fallen so violently in love with me that you wish to cast caution to the winds and admit that you cannot live without me.’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ she said, shrinking into herself. Dear lord, he couldn’t possibly have guessed how she felt about him, could he? She knew it wasn’t easy to disguise what she was thinking, most of the time, but she’d been so careful not to gaze up at him with spaniel eyes, or simper or sigh, nor any of the things she’d seen other girls do to indicate they found the gentleman with whom they were talking utterly irresistible.
He heaved a great sigh, as though she’d wounded him. And when she knew that having her fall in love with him must be the very last thing he’d want, it made her want to hit him.
‘It is your sister,’ she snapped. ‘She paid me a visit this afternoon and congratulated me, in a very loud voice, for resisting your vile attempts to seduce me. Apparently you are now such a hardened rake that committing adultery on a regular basis has grown too tame. You are now embarking on a career of seducing and abandoning innocent girls.’
‘And?’
‘Well, isn’t it obvious? If you stop pursuing me now, after that little incident...’
‘Where you broke your fan over my arm and ran to your aunt as though I’d made an indecent suggestion...’
She coloured up. ‘Yes. I admit it is all my fault that people should have started to think such vile things about you. S-so we can’t just stop now. Or people will think...’
‘That your maidenly reluctance has spiked my jaded palate,’ he finished for her, a curl to his lip.
‘I know. I’m so terribly sorry. I wouldn’t for the world have people believing such a horrid thing about you.’
The cynical expression leached from his face. Eyes fully open, he stared at her.
‘All this concern, the pallor in your face, your agitation, your change of mind regarding our arrangement, it all stems from a desire to protect my reputation?’
‘Yes. You see...’
He flung back his head and laughed.
She firmed her mouth and turned her head away. The headache, which had been building all day, was now making her entire skull feel too tight. She wanted to go home.
‘No, now, Miss Gibson, please do not take offence,’ he said. ‘It is just that my reputation is already so blackened, that the notion of anyone trying to defend it is beyond priceless.’
‘Yes. I quite see,’ she said, getting unsteadily to her feet. ‘If you will excuse me, Lord Deben, I shall remove my quite-unnecessary presence from your vicinity, your life, and no doubt within a very short space of time, your memory...’
He leapt to his feet and seized her wrist, all traces of humour vanished. ‘Your presence in my life is far from unnecessary. You may not believe it, Miss Gibson, but...’
But how was he to finish that sentence? She’d never been further from being receptive to a declaration. He’d given her the perfect opportunity to tell him if she was softening towards him and she’d said he was being absurd. If he told her that he only wished to stop the charade because he wanted them to have a real relationship, that in fact he wanted to marry her, in the mood she was in, she’d turn him down flat.
Well, he wasn’t going to give her the chance to humiliate him with a refusal. No woman would bring him to his knees. He had his own methods of getting what he wanted, which would be much more effective than making a formal proposal.