‘I don’t think I know how to flounce.’
‘March out with your nose in the air and your back ramrod straight then, the picture of outraged innocence. It will serve the purpose just as well.’
‘You mean, to confirm that horrid story your own sister is putting about?’
He folded his arms across his chest and smiled at her—a smile so completely without mirth that it made her want to weep.
‘Tears will do, I suppose,’ he said, reaching out as though to catch one that was forming on her eyelashes. ‘A woman’s last resort,’ he said with a mocking sneer.
That was too much for Henrietta. She was almost weeping for him, yet he could still mock her. He admitted he wanted to kiss her, yet it was only to sample her freshness, as though she was some sort of exotic fruit.
She was almost breaking her heart over him and he was donning his suit of chainmail again. She wanted to beat her fists against his chest. Wail and tear her hair.
But of course she did no such thing. Grappling with the strings of her reticule for a handkerchief, she stumbled away from him, half-blinded by tears of mortification, and sorrow, and confusion. How she managed to find her way out on to the terrace she had no idea.
It was by sheer coincidence that she stumbled through the French doors where she made her way to the parapet, and leaned on it, blindly staring out over the dimly lit gravel walks below.
Or was it? After only a very few moments she realised he’d pointed her in this direction before giving her that final taunt. The whole affair mattered so little to him that even when she was almost in tears, he remained cool enough to manipulate her. Of all the devious, conniving, overbearing men...
Yet this was the man she loved. How could she? She pressed the handkerchief to her eyes, inhaling the calming scent of lavender with which it had been soaked.
He was probably making his way to the little room of which he’d spoken right now. With a swagger to his walk and a smug little smile hovering over those sensual lips. So sure that she’d come to him like a...what was it her aunt had said? Like a little homing pigeon, that was it!
Well, that smile would soon falter when he waited, and waited, and she didn’t go at all. That would show him!
But were there not enough people in his life already who reacted to his faults by treating him as though that was all there was of him? Did she really want to join their ranks?
Did she want to leave him with the impression she didn’t care? Or that she held her own pride more dear than his feelings? Feelings that he would deny he had, but, oh, she’d glimpsed the hurt in his eyes before he’d disguised it under the mockery.
And how could he ever believe in the existence of love, unless somebody was prepared to show some to him?
Not that she dared hope that being true to the love she felt for him would make much of an impact on that scarred and hardened heart of his.
But she would know she’d been true. And maybe, one day, he would look back upon this time they’d shared and realise...
Her shoulders slumped. Realise what? That she was as susceptible to him as every other woman on earth? That she could no more resist his charm than all those legions of married women he’d conquered? That was all this was to him. Another conquest, of sorts. She was no more to him than an amusing little toy, which he could pick up and play with when he was particularly out of sorts, then discard when he had more important things to think about.
The way that all the men in her life regarded her. She sucked in a sharp breath, shocked in the same way she’d been once on leaping into a spring-fed pond one hot summer’s day and finding the water so cold it took her breath away. Those discussions she’d had about her family with Lord Deben had made her see her whole past in a different light. She’d always adored her older brothers, but they had gone out into the world and were advancing their own careers, with scarcely a thought for her. Oh, Hubert may have written and asked Richard to keep an eye on her during this Season, but look what good that had done.
And as for her father—well, he lived for his books. His studies. He did love her, in his own way. But the very fact that he’d made such a mull of arranging for her London Season only went to prove how little effort he’d expended on it. She’d seen him writing dozens of letters, to every known collector in the country, when spurred to acquire a rare geological specimen. She was sure there were any number of relatives he could have written to concerning her Season, some of whom would perhaps even have been able to arrange a court presentation. Instead, she suspected he’d inserted a paragraph into a letter he’d already been composing to the Ledbetters with whom he met up fairly frequently on his own trips to town, for her Uncle Ledbetter was one of those men who had contacts everywhere. He kept an eye open for when rare books, or newly discovered mineral samples, were coming on sale and notified her father. He would send the advertisements for lectures by obscure scientists who rarely ventured outdoors from their experimentations. Had her father assumed he would have the kind of contacts that would launch a girl into society? Or had it not even occurred to him that her requirements for a Season in London were nothing like those of a scholar?