‘Now that’s doing it much too brown,’ said Richard. ‘Don’t listen to him, Hen, he don’t mean it. Doing it for a wager, I’ll be bound.’
‘What a horrid thing to say,’ she said, rounding on him. And, though she’d never aspired to such dizzy heights, she was absolutely sick of Richard putting her down.
‘Why shouldn’t he wish to marry me?’
‘Well, ah, that is, nothing exactly wrong with you, Hen. But—’
‘Since the sight of me on my knees, telling you that my heart belongs to you, is not clear enough,’ Lord Deben interrupted, ‘let me clear up any misapprehension and put it in such plain words that even this chawbacon—’ he shot Richard a look of contempt ‘—could not misinterpret them. Miss Gibson, will you do me the very great honour of marrying me?’
For a moment, everything seemed a bit unreal. But at the back of the room, Henrietta noted the men who’d been sidling off into the card room come pouring back.
And then, as though from a very great distance, she heard Richard saying, ‘She can’t marry you. She’s going to marry me.’
The outrageous statement shocked her so much she recovered the power of speech.
‘How dare you tell such a lie, Richard? We are not betrothed!’
‘As good as. That is, everyone knows you’re going to marry me.’
‘Everyone except me, apparently,’ she snapped. ‘For I don’t recall you getting down on one knee and saying I would make you the happiest man in London if I gave you my heart.’
‘Well, that’s because I’m not such a sapskull,’ he retorted. ‘Anyway, what would be the point? I’ve known for ever that you have no greater ambition than to marry me. And...look, old girl, I admit I’m not ready to settle down quite yet—’
‘Not. Quite. Ready.’ It was no consolation to hear, now, that he’d been thinking of marrying her when he was ready.
He took her so much for granted that while she’d been in London, right before her eyes, and with her full knowledge, he’d joined the set that hung round Miss Waverley, jockeying with them for position as favourite.
Thank heaven she’d had her eyes opened to his true nature. If she really had ended up married to him, he would have treated her with as much consideration as though she were a piece of furniture.
‘But I know that when I am ready I couldn’t do any better than you,’ he added hastily. ‘Oh, come on,’ he blustered, going red in the face. ‘It’s been understood for ever. M’father...your brothers...and then when we kissed, I thought...’
So that kiss had been in the nature of an experiment. To see whether he could stomach the notion of marrying to please his father.
‘You went off to London, thinking your future secure,’ she spat. ‘Thinking you’d conquered me with one paltry kiss. Well, you are correct in saying you could do no better than marry me,’ she said coldly. ‘But I can most certainly do better than you. Lord Deben...’
As she began to turn away from him, Richard seized her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake.
‘Stop right there, Hen. Do not commit yourself to anything in a fit of pique. I admit, I may not have given you as much attention since you’ve been in town as you would have liked, but I thought we’d have our whole lives ahead of us.’
‘You didn’t even have the common courtesy to call on me, as a family friend, never mind accord me the kind of respect the woman you planned to spend the rest of your life with deserves.’
‘At least I didn’t make myself a subject for gossip with indiscreet behaviour, like you did. What do you think your father will say when you get home and he finds out you’ve been making a fool of yourself?’
‘If anyone has been making a fool of themselves this Season, it has not been me. Watching you trotting round at Miss Waverley’s heels like a spaniel has to be the most revolting display of idiocy in which you have ever engaged. And that includes the time you harnessed those poor cows to your father’s gig and they pulled the entire rig to bits in the middle of the high street and tipped you into the midden.’