He loved her.
His hands, he noticed as he folded his handkerchief and put it away in an outer pocket, were shaking.
Chapter 13
Rosamund sank into a chair, laughing, and accepted a cup of tea from the hands of Lady Carver.
“It is really too bad that Eva has no imagination and Christobel could not stop giggling and Ferdie could not stop himself from talking out loud,” Valerie Newton said. “You are quite splendid at charades, Rosamund. You deserved a better team.”
“I believe you would have won anyway, Lady Hunter,” Mr. Michael Weaver said, “if the other team had not had Lord Wetherby.”
“No matter,” Rosamund said. “It was just a game. And I am afraid I threw myself into it with all the dignity of a fifteen-year-old.”
Indeed, the memory of the past two hours made her cheeks grow warm. Had she made a complete cake of herself? She had always loved charades, but she could not recall ever playing it with such dizzy abandon as she had that evening. And the same sort of madness had seemed to grip Justin, playing on the opposite team.
The marquess had even commented at one point that if the two of them were just teamed up together they would be invincible.
As it was, Justin’s team had won handily. She looked up and caught his eye across the room—he was with Annabelle. And she held his gaze just a little too long. She could almost hear him ask what his prize was to be. And she could hear herself in the billiard room at Mr. Price’s telling him that with Leonard and her it had always been a kiss. She looked away sharply.
“Rosamund.” The Reverend Strangelove was bowing over her hand and even raising it to his lips and commending her on her condescension in playing with the young people and ensuring their happiness for the evening.
“Thank you, Toby,” she said. “But it was entirely my own enjoyment I was securing.”
He took a seat beside her while Valerie and Mr. Weaver moved away. Josh, she could see, was sitting on the window ledge, one foot up on the seat beside him, looking about him with a half-smile. He had not joined in the game of charades, to everyone’s surprise.
She had avoided him in most cowardly fashion since the afternoon, staying far from him and making sure that she did not even look at him for fear their eyes would meet. What if he had arrived a few minutes earlier when Justin’s hand had been inside her jacket? What if she had not stopped Justin at that point?
But even apart from the embarrassment at what he had seen, there was the guilt over what he must have thought. Or more important even than that, there was the guilt of having seen herself through his eyes. And she had always liked Josh. They had always been good friends. That was why she had not been able to contemplate a real flirtation with him.
“Excuse me, Toby,” she said, waiting for him to pause to draw breath, “there is something I must talk to Josh about.” She got resolutely to her feet.
Lord Beresford watched her as she crossed the room, that strange half-smile on his lips. He removed his foot from the seat so that she could sit beside him.
“One thing I always liked about you, Rosamund,” he said, “was that you always scorned to avoid a potentially troublesome situation. I can remember that stubborn set to your jaw and that martial gleam in your eye—just the way you are looking now. You are not going to avoid me for the next week and a half, then?”
“No,” she said. “If you have scorn to heap on my head, Josh, heap away.”
“As Justin told me,” he said, “what was happening out there between the two of you was none of my business.”
“That is not good enough,” she said. “Do you despise me?”
“Does it matter to you if I do?” he asked.
She looked at him and smiled ruefully. “Yes, I’m afraid it does,” she said.
“I was shocked,” he said. “I would not have guessed you to be the type to try to steal someone else’s man, especially your own niece’s.”
“I was not doing that,” she said. “Just giving in to a moment’s weakness. It will not be repeated.”
“A moment’s weakness,” he said. “I don’t suppose you would care to satisfy my curiosity and tell me where you met him before this week?”
“A month ago,” she said. “We were snowbound together for three days. I did not know who he was, Josh.”
His mouth formed into a whistle. “Alone?” he said.
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“Enough questions on that topic,” he said. “The answer to the others that leap to mind are pretty glaringly obvious. You care for him, Rosamund?”
