Ernest’s pulse ignited as she turned that same gaze upon himself.
She perused his Hessian boots and thinned her lips.
She scrutinised his yellow-buff breeches and sniffed.
She inspected his hideously expensive striped waistcoat and raised a brow.
She peered at his perfectly crooked cravat and crinkled her nose.
“What a coincidence, Mrs Locke,” he drawled with a deep bow.
“My sincere gratitude for our rescue…sir.” Her expression was of a soldier thanking the surgeon who’d just amputated his leg, accompanied by the briefest of curtseys. “But I’m quite sure we are not acquainted.”
“You pain me, Mrs Locke, for I remember as though yesterday. The Plymtrees’ ball in May. My brother introduced us, and you…straightened my fashionably crooked cravat.”
“Ah.” She tapped her silken forehead. “Vaguely.”
“And inferred that I should wander in hellish unabated anguish forever.”Would a ravishing kiss sweeten such tartness?
She folded her arms, fingers rapping on her pelisse as though performing Beethoven. “Well, perhaps you should have taken my advice.”
Placing palm to wounded…ego, Ernest could not withhold his smile.
The gauntlet of her wintry dismissal had been thrown.
Mrs Locke was magnificent.
And oh, how he adored a challenge.
HEBELOCKE CLOSEDher eyes and breathed deep of Hyde Park in late July – chill air and verdant growth.
Why did the heroic gentleman who’d saved herself and Mr Maddock from certain death, or at the very least a drenching, have to be Lord Ernest Brook, brother to the Duke of Rothwell?
Having been so valiant in his actions, good manners would dictate she display her true gratitude with a coy glance or mayhap invite him to take tea, but this lord’s reputation amongst theTonfor debauched and rakish behaviour put paid to any thoughts of offering him her best biscuits.
Such rakes, she knew all too well, were not to be trusted, his impeccable waistcoat doubtless concealing a rotten core, its mouldy tendrils spreading with impunity, that tanned skin masking base metal – the sort which tinged one’s own skin green.
Mr Maddock interrupted her reverie with a cough. “And your name, sir? So that I might show my appreciation.”
“Lord Ernest Brook,” he declared, slinking a palm down the horse’s hip joint. “And you can show your appreciation by selling me this pair for my brother’s stable. Name your price.”
Mr Maddock stuttered. “You can’t just…”
“My brother is the Duke of Rothwell.” He hiked a brow that Hebe recognised from the duke himself’s own coterie of expressions as that duke also happened to be her art patron. “Are you refusing a highest peer of the realm?”
Hebe placed hand to mouth. How shameless of his lordship to flaunt his ducal connection so. And why would he want the mares? They’d most probably need to be retired after Maddock’s abhorrent use of the whip. She’d solely agreed to this curricle excursion because of his expressed wish to commission an oil painting of his stallion and such a rare opportunity for a female artist like herself could not be refused.
Perhaps she’d return to painting pug dogs.
A card was produced from the rake’s emerald jacket. “My details. I’ll expect your terms within the next two days.”
His bespectacled gaze then came to rest upon her and Hebe chilled her eyes to winter.
Dipping his head, he peered over the gold rims of those spectacles. “And I would ask to call upon you, Mrs Locke, to ascertain whether you have suffered any ill-effects, but…” His gaze flicked to Mr Maddock in speculation. “Well, I would not want to scald my lips on another man’s pottage, so to speak.”
Pottage!He’d called her pottage!
An outrage.
