Callum knew precious little about society women, by his own choice. Why waste precious moments with a lass whose heart was set on her wedding day when he could slake his needs with a willing widow or tradeswoman in town? He was always clear with his expectations, in that there weren’t any. Therefore, scant conversation was necessary.
But he wanted to hear her voice again. Perhaps if he said something nice, he’d get her to smile. “I didnae do anything wrong. Ye were rushing to whatever ye were doin’, not me.”
Ah, Christ.Was that truly the best he could do? His mind had apparently ceased communicating with his tongue.
She looked up from her frantic toweling. The divot between her brows was so deep he pondered if it was a permanent feature, like the tiny mole just below her right eye. “I was walking at a perfectly reasonable pace.Youbarrelled around the corner like a—like a charging bull and crashed into me without warning!”
“Had ye not been rushing, I would have seen ye and stopped. But I didnae, so—” He held out his hands, palms up, as he shrugged. Surely she wouldn’t argue any further. He was being logical, after all.
Her nostrils flared, and on a woman so cute, it would be comical. If he didn’t think she was about to pummel him. “Sir, I don’t know who you are,but—”
“Callum Hawthorne.” He extended his palm to her, and she stared at it as though his palm were diseased. He withdrew and stuffed his hand in his pocket. “And ye are?”
“Leaving.” Her pink lips pursed, and she swallowed heavily as she stepped back from him. When had he drifted so close that he saw the sprinkling of freckles across her cheekbones?
A strange panic pulled at his gut. She couldn’t leave yet. This woman had piqued his interest, one he hadn’t yet puzzled out. “Dinnae go yet. Ye owe me yer name at least.”
She snorted. “I owe you nothing. You’ll excuse me, sir.” A certain skill was required to deliver such polite words to land like a slap across the cheek, but she managed. She sidestepped and stormed past him, the fabric of her skirts swirling behind her.
Callum felt as though he had been struck by a sudden sandstorm, swept up unawares and spat out somewhere foreign, disheveled and disoriented. He watched her leave, the swell of her bottom entrancing him, hypnotizing him as it swayed. Christ, he was the worst of nobs, dousing her with drink, then staring at her arse as she stalked away from him.
This woman was a puzzle, something he’d never seen but was desperate to understand, the thrill of a challenge wiping the dread from his mind. Suddenly, a fortnight trapped at a country estate sounded far more appealing. Given enough time, he could make sense of anything, and this woman would not be an exception. He’d see her again, and, God help him, he’d do better next time.
Chapter 4
“Did you go allthe way to France to get that champagne?”
Violet’s body was still inflamed when she stepped into the ballroom a quarter hour later, and she met Timothy’s hissed question with a glare. “I had to fix my dress.”
“What happened to your dress?”
“Some lummox of a man spilled champagne all over my chest.” True, Violet had been more at fault in the incident, but had that dreadful Scot not been so large and solid, she’d already be conversing with the man across the ballroom.
The man she planned to—she gulped—shag.
Was she truly capable of this sort of thing? Her Great Aunt Margaret, her chaperone for the trip, had been infamous in her day for carrying on affairs but never marrying. Rumor was that she’d been ruined as a young woman, but instead of slinking away in shame, she’d embraced her semi-liberated status.
Even now, the silver-haired woman was perched on a sofa by the fire, being attended to by a trio of burly footmen who seemed to hang on her every word.
No, if Violet were being honest with herself—and it was about time to do so—she worried she couldn’t go through with a mindless affair. Violet was stable and reliable, trustworthy and timid, not the sort of girl one would expect to tumble into bed without an offer of marriage on the table.
But despite being the model of purity, as she’d been taught, her fiancé had rejected her. How the gossip-mongers hadn’t discovered what Gregory Townsend had done—
Well, that was better left unspoken. No one outside her family knew precisely what had transpired, thanks to her father’s generous payments to buy silence, so generous that the viscountcy’s finances never recovered. Whispers still escaped, murmurs of a scandal that spread like wildfire across London.Something happened to Violet Waverly.Rumors of ruination, with none of the pleasure to go along with them.
“I do have information for you.” Timothy leaned close and disturbed her thoughts. “I really should be employed by Her Majesty’s government, engaged in subterfuge, you know. In fact, you should be grateful—”
“I am grateful, truly,” she interrupted with a hand to his forearm. “What did you learn?”
“He’s Mr. James Taggart, out of Edinburgh. He owns some sort of… boating thing.”
She raised a brow, not taking her eye from the gentleman in question, as he greeted Lady Valebrook. “Boating thing?”
He huffed. “I studied the classics at Cambridge, I’ll remind you, not—” He waved his hand in a dismissive circle, “—transportation.”
“How does he know Valebrook?”
Timothy shrugged. “Perhaps a business connection? The earl was heavily invested in railroads until recently, and I heard he was diversifying accounts.”
