“Clearly that was a mistake.” One Gal bitterly regretted now. “But at the time I thought…” Maybe honesty wasn’t the best policy as, judging by her incendiary reaction, the truth would now sound damning. Because now it was damning. “I thought…”Think, Galahad! Think!“I thought…”
Venus snarled with venom. “You thought, quite correctly, that I wouldn’t take kindly to having Sodom and Gomorrah move in next door to the orphanage. Especially when relations between us have always been so strained.” She unfolded her arms to fist her hands on her hips. “So you embarked on an offensive to sweeten me up before you told me and before you tried to charm the last of ‘the set’ from me!”
“It wasn’t quite as mercenary as you are making it sound.” Although now that she said it, it sounded pretty darn mercenary to him. “I’m a businessman—and with my business head on…”
“What you call business, I call selfish duplicity! Either way it explains why you suddenly wanted to bury the hatchet and declare a truce at the Rokebys’ when you’ve never cared that we hated each other before. Why you kept turning up like a bad penny when usually I never see you from one changing season to the next. Why you came to dinner and stayed to play cards when you rarely come to dinner and never stay for anything! And why you suppressed your usual obnoxiousness to make me warm to you.” He found his head bowing in shame like Tommy Claypole’s because what she had said was all true. He had been selfish for the sake of his business.
Initially at least. But he could see how she wouldn’t believe that everything that had happened between them since hadn’t been driven by his business.
“That explains why you happened to be in Hatchards, too, doesn’tit? Behaving all decent and noble when it was all plainly another one of your acts. And why…” Her fingers shook as she pressed them to her lips, and he watched in panic as her clever mind put two and two together to make three hundred and twenty-seven. “… And why you kissed me.”
The hurt in her eyes almost killed him. “That isn’t why I kissed you, Venus. I kissed you because…” She pushed him so hard he landed on his butt in the slush.
“You were acting all of it, weren’t you?”
“Not all.” He scrambled to his feet. “To begin with, I’ll admit I was putting my business first, but things changed the second we waltzed and…”
She backed away, her hands raised to ward off evil and her lovely eyes swimming with the tears he had put there. “God, I really am the world’s worst judge of a man’s character! As if you—you!” She spat that with such acid it burned. “Wouldn’t have had an ulterior motive to be nice to me!”
Then she was off again, her incensed heels tearing up the yards between them at such speed, it took him until she reached the inn to catch her.
“Venus, please…” He stayed her arm but she thwacked it with her silly little reticule.
“Touch me again, Galahad Sinclair, and I swear it will be the last thing that you ever do!”
“I appreciate that this looks bad.” Especially to all the lunchtime patrons in the inn and Nelly at the bar, who were all staring at the pair of them open-mouthed. “And I’ll admit that initially I was trying to soften you up a bit before I told you that we were going to be neighbors. But I swear, last night when I…”
“Ah, there you are, Vee!” The Reverend Smythe appeared on the landing beaming. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” He smiled at Galahad as he descended the stairs, oblivious to all the gaping patrons below. “The bags are loaded, and my wife has been sitting in thecarriage waiting for us for the last ten minutes.” Unaware of the awful, fraught atmosphere, the vicar smiled at them in turn. “But I am sure she won’t mind waiting a few minutes more for you two to say your final goodbyes.”
“No need.” Venus gave Gal one last disgusted look before she took the vicar’s arm. “We’ve already said them.”
Chapter Thirteen
Olivia does not recommend a debutante marrying in her first season as she is convinced a young lady must consider all her options and wait for the legendary frisson before she makes the leap. However, I know exactly what I want, so when I find the right gentleman I shall leap with abandon and to hell with the consequences…
—from the diary of Miss Venus Merriwell, aged 17
Vee plonked her bottom into the farthest of the wallflower chairs, well out of the way of everyone, and stared inanely at the ormolu clock on Lady Brightlingsea’s mantel, willing the ornate gold hands to turn faster.
With the benefit of hindsight—which she always had to suffer retroactively because she kept being a gullible fool—she knew that coming to this ball had been a huge mistake. Yet another one in yet another depressing season filled with them. A life filled with them!
Vee had allowed Olivia to cajole her into attending this dull soiree simply because she had needed some distraction from the awful aftermath of Brighton. A day and a half on and it was still too raw. It was near impossible to focus on what to do about it all when she was so emotionally battered by it. Her heart ached as if it had been kicked, which metaphorically it had. It would have been kinder if Galahad hadsimply wrenched it from her chest and stamped on it rather than make that poor, battered organ hope again. Left to her own devices alone at home, she knew she would have only wallowed in the twin pits of self-pity and self-hatred while alternate bucketloads of anger, disbelief, and humiliation were doused over her head as they had been all the way on the interminable journey back.
After overnighting in Crawley, they had left there at the crack of dawn this morning hoping to make good time, but thanks to more bad weather and atrocious conditions on the roads, hadn’t arrived in Mayfair until an hour before dinner. A little over an hour since dinner and now she was here—stuck for the duration—and in no fit state to socialize. Mostly because she was furious at herself for her own reliable stupidity—because she now had another humiliating final memory to add to her huge collection of hideous final memories that she wished with every fiber she did not have.
Exactly how many times did she need to be bitten before her supposedly sensible head learned that her stupid heart was always wrong? And why had it fallen so wholeheartedly for Galahad that this latest disappointment crushed her soul in a way that even that weasel Argyll hadn’t managed?
If there was one consolation to the dark cloud shrouding her head, it was that thanks to Galahad, she was all done with men. His had been the final nail in that coffin and she was ready to lay it to rest forever, because surely surrendering to an eternity of spinsterhood could not be as disappointing as all her failed attempts at love had been.
“I see you are still quite determined to avoid me.”
She almost groaned aloud at the sound of Lord Dorchester’s irritating voice behind her, rubbing more salt into her already gaping wound. What had she been thinking latching herself to this self-centered dud? When they had nothing in common and she did not harbor one jot of attraction for him? If the thought of spending five minutes in his company tonight made her feel this aggrieved, livingwith him would likely kill her. Further proof, not that she needed it, that spinsterhood was infinitely preferable.
However, to avoid causing a scene, Vee pasted on an approximation of a smile before she turned to face him, in no mood for any conversation at all let alone this one. “I have been busy.” Busy being used, betrayed, and made a complete fool of by another dud.
Again.
“Would you honor me with the next dance?”
