Читать книгу The Louise Allen Collection: The Viscount's Betrothal / The Society Catch - Louise Allen - Страница 20

With the wind whipping her veil tight to her face, Decima glanced back over her shoulder to where Henry, no doubt cursing comprehensively, was attempting to fix a broken stirrup leather. Seeing that Spindrift was in no mood to stand quietly by, he had waved Decima off to have her gallop, but she had no intention of doing more than making a loop round and coming back to his side. It wasn’t fair to abandon him, and, even in a virtually empty park, it was not the thing for ladies to be riding without an escort.

Oh, but this felt so good, to be doing the one thing where she had always felt utterly confident. ‘Drat.’ She spoke aloud as she saw the other rider through the mist. He was seemingly intent on schooling his mount and out of simple good manners she would have to slow down to a decorous trot to pass him.

Spindrift tossed her head at the pressure on her bit, but slowed obediently, only to risk speeding up again when her mistress’s hands suddenly went slack on the reins.

It was Adam and there was absolutely no way to avoid him. ‘Steady!’ Decima brought the mare to a trot and then to a walk, reining in as she came alongside Ajax. ‘Good morning, my lord.’ Try as she might, that sounded cool. She was still angry with him, but the thought he might suspect why was hateful.

‘Good morning, Miss Ross.’ Adam halted Ajax. ‘We are very formal this morning,’ he observed, with a glint in his eyes that she could not read.

‘It seems appropriate,’ she rejoined.

‘You are angry with me.’ Damn him, why could he not have talked of indifferent things? Now what? To pretend not to know what he was referring to would only made her seem insufferably coy.

‘Are you surprised, my lord? I do not absolve myself from blame—to have returned your embrace was immodest and unwise, but you should have told me that you were engaged. Even if you did not tell me, it was outrageous of you to kiss me.’

‘I had forgotten,’ he said with such breathtaking simplicity she could only stare at him.

‘Forgotten? How could you forget you are engaged to be married? Poor Olivia—it is bad enough that she will have to put up with your mistress, but if she ever suspected that you could forget her so easily, to trifle with another woman…’

‘I was not trifling.’ Ajax shifted suddenly as though his rider had closed his hands hard on the reins. ‘I would never trifle with you. I simply forgot everything because I was so pleased to see you, and then I wanted to know what you were doing in London. If we had not been talking about Pru and Bates, I would have remembered to tell you about Olivia.’

‘Indeed?’ She wanted to believe him so badly. The thought that the man she loved might act dishonourably was intolerable.

‘Indeed,’ he echoed her haughty tone. ‘And, since you raise the subject, I have parted company with my mistress.’

‘Oh, good.’ Decima felt her face relax into a smile, only then realising just how tense she had been. ‘I knew I could not be mistaken in you, Adam. We will forget all about yesterday in your study.’ Not that she ever could forget it: the last time she would be in his arms, the last time his lips would crush down on hers, stealing her heart along with her breath.

The ironic twist of his lips filled her with a sudden doubt that he would forget it either, but she pushed the thought away. Provided Olivia never guessed for a moment that there had ever been anything between them, that was all that mattered.

‘I was speaking to Lady Brotherton,’ she said, anxious to move the conversation on along conventional lines. ‘Olivia’s relatives are all so very happy about this match.’

‘So I understand.’ The words were ordinary enough, his tone quite inoffensive, but Decima saw a flash of anger turning his grey eyes greenish with that betraying colour she had come to know, if not to understand. As she puzzled over it, Adam turned his head and she became aware of approaching hoof beats. It was Henry.

Henry made no concession to his stature in his choice of horses and his mount this morning was a raking hunter as high to the withers as Ajax. Decima smiled fondly at the sight of her friend’s approach; he was a fine rider.

‘You mended it?’ she called out as he drew alongside them.

‘Yes, I managed to make another hole with the knife in my saddlebag.’ Henry reined in and circled his bay alongside Spindrift. ‘Good day, sir.’

‘Henry, may I make you known to Viscount Weston? My lord, Sir Henry Freshford. Or perhaps you gentlemen know each other already?’ The air was crackling with tension, which was puzzling. Henry might well be poised to defend her against insult, but what was causing Adam to look down his nose with the air of a man about to issue a challenge?

‘His lordship is, of course, well known to me by reputation,’ Henry said smoothly with a pleasant smile that did not reach his eyes. Knowing him, Decima caught her breath. Oh, Lord!

Adam’s eyes narrowed. ‘I regret we have not met before. You are staying in London for the Season, Freshford?’

‘For as long as my mother, my sister and Miss Ross require my presence.’

‘You recall I told you I was staying with Lady Freshford, my lord,’ Decima intervened.

‘So you did, Miss Ross. And has there been any meeting yet between the star-crossed lovers whose cause you are championing?’ He met her gaze blandly, but Decima knew he was vividly conscious of Henry, his position by her side, of the way they spoke to each other. And beside her Henry still bristled with protectiveness under his urbane exterior.

‘Not that I am aware of, but I do not choose to interrogate my staff about their personal affairs,’ she replied coolly. ‘Nor do I find the situation as amusing as you apparently do. I would not have Pru made unhappy for the world.’

‘And love will make her happy?’ Adam’s tone was mocking, but Decima sensed a real edge beneath the surface. ‘This is something of a reversal of your previous position, is it not?’

‘You are accusing me of matchmaking, Lord Weston?’ She kept her tone as light as his. ‘Then you cannot have been listening to me before—I have been acting at the wish of one party and giving the other information only. Bates is free to act on it as he will.’

‘Lucky devil. I must bid you good day, Miss Ross, Sir Henry. I imagine none of us wishes to keep our horses standing in this chill.’ He touched his whip to his hat and turned Ajax to canter away across the grass towards the Serpentine.

‘My goodness, that was uncomfortable.’ Decima let out a long breath and tried to keep her voice light. Inside she felt slightly queasy from the tension that had been crackling between the three of them, and miserable that Adam seemed so distant.

Henry tore his eyes away from the figure vanishing into the mist and remarked, ‘He is jealous, of course.’ Meeting Decima’s puzzled eyes, he added, ‘Of us. With me mounted he probably doesn’t realise how short I am and thinks I’m courting you.’

‘That’s nonsense.’ Decima was instantly prickly, as she always was on Henry’s behalf if someone dismissed him because of his height. ‘My feelings for you would not be any different if you were six foot six or five foot nothing. We are friends. Anyways,’ she added firmly as they turned their horses’ heads and began to walk back down the drive, ‘he is in no position to be jealous of anyone except Olivia.’

Was Henry smiling? She looked hard at him and the quirk of his lips vanished. ‘Men are strange, possessive animals,’ he remarked. ‘You two were almost lovers. He feels he has put his mark on you, that’s all.’

‘All? That’s scandalous.’ Decima found she was truly shocked. ‘I am not a mare to be branded or a book where he has written his name on the flyleaf.’

‘Actually, the book is a very good analogy. Are you ever going to be able to open the volume of memories of this year without recalling him, seeing his name, as it were?’

Decima knew her cheeks were burning. ‘He can write his name in the wedding register, next to Olivia’s, nowhere else, and certainly not on anything of mine. Why, what you are suggesting is positively indecent—as if men really want to keep a harem of all the women they have ever…ever…’

‘Made love to?’ Henry supplied. ‘You are probably right. We are very unsatisfactory creatures compared to women.’ And he dug his heels into his mount’s flanks and cantered off, chuckling, before she could retaliate.

Decima dressed for Lady Cantline’s ball that evening in a spirit of half-terrified bravado. It must be—she counted on her fingers, frowning—almost five years since she had been to a large-scale dress ball. Five years in which she had been heartily grateful to be spared the humiliation of always being a wallflower, or, very occasionally, stumbling round the floor as the reluctant partner of some unfortunate man.

She had no intention of dancing tonight, either, but she did have the firm resolve of holding her head up amidst the matrons and the chaperons, knowing she was impeccably gowned and had absolutely nothing to apologise for. She was no longer a shop-worn piece of merchandise on the marriage mart, she was not even on the shelf any longer, because she would not allow anyone to categorise her that way. She was single and happy to be so.

Brave words butter no parsnips, she thought, nervously picking up the powder puff and dusting again at the freckles that were sprinkled across her bosom. And an alarming amount of that bosom seemed to be on show tonight. Decima tugged at the lace trim of the low-scooped neckline and Pru put down the hairbrush and tugged it back into place again.

‘Leave it, do, Miss Dessy…Miss Decima.’ She still had not got used to Decima’s insistence on her full name. ‘It’s a lovely gown, don’t go pulling it out of shape.’

‘I will fall out,’ Decima moaned faintly. ‘It didn’t look this indecent in the modiste’s.’

‘You’re a grown-up lady, now; you can show off your boobies,’ Pru said stoutly. ‘They aren’t all that big, but they’re a perfectly nice pair and your shoulders are lovely and white.’

‘Freckles,’ Decima said despairingly as Pru fastened her necklace and handed her the pearl bob earrings. Your freckles. I wondered if they went all the way down and they do…Adam’s voice as his fingers had traced across her skin. And she had at least had her back to him. What would have happened if he had seen the dusting of freckles across the swell of her bosom and disappearing down into her cleavage? She closed her eyes tight against the picture her treacherous mind conjured up, then opened them again wide as the image of Adam’s face appeared like magic on the inside of her lids.

‘There now, you look lovely.’ Pru stepped back for Decima to stand and look at herself in the long cheval glass.

Oh, my. This was not her at all. Instinctively Decima rounded her shoulders and saw, to her horror, that the bodice of the gown gaped alarmingly. There was nothing for it but perfect deportment: head up, shoulders back and a startling show of bosom at the front. Pru was talking, wrenching her attention away from her own reflection.

‘I was wondering what time you’d be coming in, Miss Decima.’ She was fiddling with things on the dressing table, but the casual air did not deceive Decima.

‘Not before one, I should think. Why? Would you like to go out?’ Pru’s neck went pink. ‘Oh, Pru—is it Bates? Has he asked you out this evening?’

‘Mmm,’ Pru mumbled. ‘Just round to this tavern he knows, not far from here. He says it is quite respectable and we can have a bite of supper and a chat, sort of thing.’

‘That is nice,’ Decima said, sounding ridiculously bracing to her own ears, like a mother encouraging her reluctant offspring to try something new. ‘You want to go, don’t you?’

‘Suppose so. I’m just…’ Pru stood scrubbing one toe into the carpet ‘…shy. It’s different here, not like it was at the lodge, somehow.’

‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Decima replied with feeling. ‘Never mind, go and have supper and, if that is all it leads to, well, at least you won’t be left wondering about might-have-beens.’ How easy it was to give advice to other people, even advice one was ignoring oneself.

The drive to Lady Cantline’s town mansion seemed unreal. Lady Freshford and Caroline chattered happily about who Caroline might meet at this, her very first big ball, and Henry sat next to Decima, looking exquisitely elegant, and conversing about any number of unexceptional subjects. All Decima wanted to do was hold his hand and whimper with nerves.

But she was twenty-seven years old, had made a New Year’s resolution that she must live up to and Lady Freshford would think her quite mad to be clinging to poor Henry’s hand.

Getting out of the carriage while maintaining her modesty in the new gown was a challenge that kept her mind off her terror until they were all climbing the stairs to the receiving line. Then sheer pride came to her aid.

I am not going to flee down these stairs, Decima told herself, linking her hand through Caroline’s elbow and squeezing encouragingly. Caroline turned wide, nervous eyes on her and Decima found herself smiling reassurance.

‘You look wonderful,’ she whispered. ‘You will be fighting the young men off the moment they see you. Now, don’t forget you must not waltz because you have not yet been approved by one of the Patronesses of Almack’s, and we do not know if any of them will be here this evening. And do not, whatever you do, dance more than twice with the same man.’

She spoke with the confidence of a woman who had had to deal with these social prohibitions on a regular basis and smiled at herself. Never mind, as long as it gave Caro reassurance, that was all that mattered.

Lady Freshford led the way confidently around the edge of the ballroom until she found a position that suited her and sank onto a satin chaise, waving her unmarried charges to the flanking chairs. Henry, as was expected, took up his position behind them. Decima glanced at him and he lowered one eyelid in the ghost of a wink; she strongly suspected he would slide away to the card room once he was confident his mama was comfortably settled. She wished she could go with him.

And then she looked across the room and saw Adam and the silly little fears and nerves vanished, swept away by an avalanche of conflicting emotions.

Pleasure, just to see him. Desire. Oh, the sheer, shaming heat of it, surging through her blood, leaving her tingling with urgency. Shyness about what he might think of her looks, of her gown. A faint hope that he might think well of her for facing down her fears and appearing at a ball at all. And love, and the knowledge that she must look away at once, now, or her feelings were going to be written on her face for all to see.

But, as her eyes dropped, she saw Adam was there for exactly the same reason as Henry—standing sentry over his little party of ladies—and the shameful jealousy swallowed all those other feelings. Olivia already had looks and youth, why should she have Adam Grantham, too? Other than the undeniable reason that she was exactly the sort of bride a viscount must be looking for.

Decima fought a silent battle with herself and won, just. If Lady Freshford or Caroline noticed the stains of colour on her cheekbones or the way her hands had twisted suddenly in her lap, they gave no sign of it. Decima took a long, steadying breath and blinked until the blurring had gone from her eyes. Then she fixed a smile on her lips and turned to watch the ebb and flow of arrivals with every sign of interest.

Across the room Adam fitted one shoulder more comfortably against a pillar and regarded the turbaned head of Mrs Channing, seated just in front of him, with cold dislike. He was going to keep his temper with her tonight, and on every occasion until he was married to Olivia, and then she would discover that her son-in-law was not going to dance to her tune, however neatly she had entrapped him.

But that could wait. His falling out with Mrs Channing would distress Olivia deeply—he already knew that raised voices, or even mild sarcasm, reduced her to miserable, quaking silence. There was no way he could teach her to show some backbone before the wedding; it would have to wait until afterwards.

And the damnable thing was, if he had never met Decima Ross he might very well have considered Olivia as a bride. She was exactly what everyone would consider suitable. Even her lack of dowry was a negligible factor given his wealth. Yes, BD—Before Decima, as he was beginning to think of it—Olivia fulfilled all his criteria. Well-bred, compliant, pretty, raised to make an excellent housekeeper and wife. If he was to yield to everyone’s wishes, including young Perry’s, and dutifully marry, Olivia Channing was just perfect.

Adam kept his face smoothly pleasant, nodding to acquaintances, straightening up to be introduced to the numerous ladies Mrs Channing was determined to gloat over, now the engagement notices had gone to the papers. Years of card playing had taught him the trick of an unreadable expression. Even the sanctuary of the card room was out of bounds tonight, he realised. It would be his duty to dance on several occasions with Olivia. In fact, she would probably expect to be able to demonstrate to her less fortunate friends that there was now one man she could dance with as often as she pleased, without causing the slightest scandal.

He bent over Olivia’s chair, turning his shoulder to exclude Mrs Channing. ‘Which dances will you permit me to have this evening?’ he murmured in her ear, deliberately making his voice slightly husky.

She smelt sweetly of roses; her blonde hair was caught up, exposing the soft delicacy of her throat, the fragile skin of her temples. Hidden by the lace of her bodice, the swell of her breasts curved with promise. She was utterly lovely, innocent and fresh. His. And he felt not one iota of desire for her.

‘Oh.’ She blushed, sent a desperate look in her mother’s direction for guidance and found no help, only his very close proximity. ‘Which would you like?’ Rather desperately she showed him her dance card and Adam pencilled his name against four, including one waltz.

‘Four? Is that not rather…I mean, I have not been approved by one of the Patronesses for waltzing…’

‘We will create a scandal,’ Adam said solemnly. ‘There is nothing for it, we will have to get married.’ If he had said such a thing to Decima, she would have caught him up in an instant. Laughed at his teasing, punished him in some way for his jest. Olivia simply looked terrified.

Damn. ‘I was only teasing you,’ he reassured her, smiling ruefully as the panic ebbed out of her face. Could he live with a woman who had no sense of humour? Or perhaps she was just frightened of the whole idea of marriage and would relax and show a different side to her character once they were wed. He could only pray it were true.

Then he straightened up to look round the room and saw her. Decima. Sitting almost opposite with a Roman-nosed matron he did not know, a very young lady and that damned starched-up friend of hers, Henry Freshford.

The madness seemed to sweep through him. He would cross the dance floor, catch her up in his arms, stride out of the house, into the night, take her away, make love to her until she sobbed with ecstasy, begged him never to stop—and the world could go hang.

Then he looked down and saw Olivia looking around her with innocent, nervous delight. He had compromised her, however unwittingly. He maintained he was a gentleman, he would fight any man who impugned his honour. And his honour required that he marry Olivia Channing.

He watched Decima shake her head as a gentleman bowed, obviously requesting a dance. It happened again. She was going to refuse to dance and sit out the ball as one of the chaperons, that was clear.

All his desires focused down, quite simply, on the need to have her in his arms one last time. To talk to her, to know she had forgiven him. He wasn’t given to prayer, considering that the life he led was not particularly deserving of any higher powers listening to erratic, and doubtless selfish, pleas from time to time. No. If he was going to achieve this, then he was going to have to manage it by himself.

Adam looked around the room for inspiration and his gaze lighted on one copper shock of hair, head and shoulders above the group of scarlet-coated army officers around it. Yes, there was George Mays, an unsuspecting good fairy. He bent over the ladies. ‘Would you excuse me for a moment? I have just seen a very old friend.’