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‘No. You may have noticed I find women desirable,’ he said drily. ‘Anyway, lonely, frustrated women will look for a lover, more often than not. In this case their husbands looked the other way.’
‘How convenient for all concerned.’ Her voice was bleak. ‘I am obviously very unsophisticated about marriage.’
‘Rose, when I marry you I will not go with other women. I will not take a sudden interest in pretty lads and should my wedding tackle ever fail to function I can assure you that you will not be left unsatisfied. Is that plain enough for you?’
‘Exceedingly plain.’ Rose’s cheeks were a hectic red now. ‘As I said, I am apparently very naive. I was not so foolish as to believe that you’d had no women in your life before, you told me as much. But somehow I did not expect to meet them. Is that likely to happen very often?’
There had been a few years after the humiliation of the fiasco with Patricia Harte when he had been glad to salve his wounded pride with willing, neglected ladies. Gradually he had become conscious of a growing distaste. He was using them, they were using him and it felt underhand. He began to have liaisons with camp followers, women who had a warmth and a practical loyalty about them that encompassed the uncertain life expectancy of their partners. He knew he was not easy to live with and he never attempted to hold them in the relationship. It had seemed a better way to carry on than—
‘I see.’ Rose stood up and he realised that his few seconds of thought had appeared to her to be a tacit admission that Brussels was probably swarming with his past lovers.
‘Rose, I honestly do not know. Not many. I am hardly Don Juan. I am sorry, it never occurred to me that you would be embarrassed by this. ‘
‘Or that I would ever find out, I imagine. I would like to go home now.’ She set off down the path and unfurled her parasol, almost putting his eye out with it as she did so.
‘Rose, I cannot help my past, all I can do is to promise you that I will be utterly faithful to you.’
‘Forgive me, Major Flint, but somehow I do not find that very reassuring.’
‘Damn it!’ She kept on going. Flint strode past and stood in her path. ‘Are you doubting my word?’
That confounded parasol stopped him seeing her face, she wielded it with the skill of a fencer. ‘I do not know! Adam, I thought I was in love with you. Now…now I have no idea what I think.’
Love? It knocked the breath out of him for a moment, long enough for her to sweep past him. Rose was in love with him? Flint struggled to breathe as though someone had punched him in the solar plexus. What the devil did that mean? If she was in love, then why fight against marriage?
‘Rose, calm down. This is getting out of hand.’ Even as he said it he knew the words were a mistake. You did not tell a woman who had just declared that your past behaviour had probably killed her love for you to calm down.
She kept going. ‘Did I say I didn’t know what to think? Silly me. I know precisely what I think. And I am as calm as I wish to be. Good day, Major Flint.’
Short of throwing her over his shoulder he did not see how he could stop her. French cavalry was easier to deal with by a long mile. Flint fell into step behind her imperious, furious figure across the Parc and the few hundred yards to the house.
It was just a tiff, he told himself. Her nose had been put out of joint, that was all. They had been in perfect harmony before, she thought she might be in love with him. It would soon blow over.
He stood at the foot of the steps as she hammered on the front door, waited while Heale opened it.
‘Miss Tatton,’ the butler said on a gasp.
‘That man—’ Rose turned and pointed at Flint. ‘I am not At Home to that man. Ever.’
The door banged closed in his face as he took the steps, three in one stride. ‘Rose.’ Rose.
Chapter Sixteen
‘Miss Tatton.’ Heale’s voice stopped her as she reached the foot of the stairs. ‘Lady Thetford is not yet home. Shall I send your maid to you?’
‘No, thank you.’ It took a moment to collect herself sufficiently to fix a smile on her lips when she turned back to the butler. ‘A lovers’ tiff, Heale, that is all. Please do not say anything to my parents.’
The smile seemed to reassure him. Heale was, she recalled, a terrible romantic behind the stiff butler’s facade. ‘My lips are sealed, Miss Tatton.’
Rose ran upstairs to her room and locked the door. The nagging memories had crystallised into a certainty, the knowledge that she had been avoiding marriage because men let her down. Or perhaps, she thought as she took off her bonnet and pelisse and curled up on the window seat, perhaps she had been very naive in her expectations.
She looked down at the empty street. Of course Adam was not pacing up and down outside, distracted with despair because she’d run from him. He’s got more sense, she thought with a little laugh that threatened to turn into a sob. There was an ache in her midriff over that encounter with his past lovers. It had hurt and shocked her far more than it should have done, given that Adam was a soldier, not a monk. Of course he’d had lovers, she told herself. And why should he tell her about them? No gentleman would reveal such things to his betrothed.
I can forgive him those women, even the society ladies, yet I was never so forgiving in the past. Perhaps I never loved anyone enough to forgive.
Would her diaries tell her more? She had never thought to read them once the therapy of writing was done. Rose went to the chest at the foot of the bed and lifted the stack of blankets out to reveal the piece of paper concealing the base. That lifted away and she could hook her little finger into the knothole in the middle and lift the board out. The space created by the ornate carving around the bottom was packed with slim leather-bound books.
Rose lifted out the most worn, then sat back on her heels and stared at it.
