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‘Whatever his motives, this is completely unacceptable behaviour. I’m going to call him out.’ Henry straightened his cuffs, his brows drawn together in thought. ‘Now, who can I ask to act as my second? It will have to be someone discreet.’
‘No! Henry, you cannot possibly call him out. He never made me any promises, and today I kissed him just as much as he kissed me. I should never have been such a naïve idiot as to think he really found me attractive—it was just the strange circumstances at the time.’
‘Oh yes?’ Henry enquired sarcastically. ‘Being snowed in made you five inches shorter, removed your freckles and gave you a Cupid’s bow mouth, did it? Or perhaps he was dazzled by the snow?’
‘No, of course not. But we were snowed up alone with no chaperon, and it must have been days since he…er…’
‘Unless the man’s a ravening satyr, I am sure he could contain his lust for a week at least before setting out to ravish the nearest female.’ Decima glared at him. ‘And Grantham has no reputation for toying with innocents, either. Pricey mistresses, dashing widows, the odd opera dancer are his style. All perfectly unexceptionable.’
‘Most respectable,’ Decima said between gritted teeth, then recalled asking Adam about his mistresses and subsided with a complete lack of elegance onto the sofa. ‘Henry, you cannot call him out. Leaving aside the risk of scandal and the chance you might get hurt, there is still Pru and Bates to consider. And Spindrift.’
‘What about the mare?’ Henry sounded baffled.
‘I want to breed from her with Adam’s stallion.’
‘And you have discussed it with him? Give me strength, Decima—ladies do not talk about horse breeding with gentlemen.’ He came and sat down at the other end of the sofa and regarded her with exasperated affection.
‘I discuss it with you.’
‘I am the nearest thing you’ve got to a brother and I have given up being shocked by you. At least, I believed I had,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘Feel better now?’
‘Not really. Losing one’s temper is horrid, isn’t it?’
Henry appeared to take this as rhetorical. ‘Tell me about this Miss Channing, then—you might as well get all the misery over in one go.’
‘She’s tiny,’ Decima said, trying not to sound jealous and resentful. ‘Really petite with little hands and feet. And she has blonde hair and blue eyes and a rosebud mouth and skin like cream and she is well behaved and gentle and shy with beautiful deportment—perfect, in fact.’
‘Strewth.’ Henry looked stunned. ‘She sounds amazing. What’s the family like?’
‘Oh, very well-bred—cousins of the Brothertons. The only thing against her is the fact that I believe they haven’t a penny to rub together. A lack of a reasonable dowry is probably Olivia’s only handicap.’
‘And looking like that, it probably doesn’t make much difference,’ Henry observed with an unusual lack of tact.
Whereas the size of my dowry doesn’t make the slightest difference to my lack of attraction, Decima thought bitterly.
‘What do you want to do?’ Henry asked. ‘Go home?’
Two months ago that was exactly what she would have done, Decima realised. Fled and taken her wounds home to lick in privacy. Well, she was a new Decima now and she was not running away from anyone, not even herself.
‘Run away? No, I shall stay here and do exactly what I said I would do—enjoy the London Season without any pressure to be a success or do anything I do not want to do. I hope to be useful to your mama, spend far too much on clothes, go with you to galleries and show off Spindrift in the parks. And with any luck, Pru and Bates can meet and resolve things between them without Adam Grantham needing to know anything more about it.’
‘Good for you.’ Henry held out a hand to help her to her feet. ‘Sounds an excellent programme.’ She must have looked less confident than she had tried to sound, for he grinned, lifted a hand and chucked her under the chin. ‘Chin up, Decima, let’s give polite society something to talk about.’
The first thing she needed to do, Decima realised with a grimace as she went up to her room, was to call on Lady Brotherton. She had lived in the household for so many Seasons it was only polite to visit as soon as possible. No doubt she would hear all about Olivia’s wonderful good fortune from her, but then, it was likely to be much talked about in any case. She had better simply get used to it.
‘Oh, Adam,’ she sighed, sitting down on the window seat and propping her chin on her hand to gaze out at the street. She was a fool, she told herself. What on earth had she hoped for from him? Certainly not marriage, which was the only acceptable way in which she could become more than a casual acquaintance. She’d hoped for nothing, she realised.
Before she had come up to London she had just been thinking about him in a romantic haze as an unobtainable figure of fantasy. He was the man who had awakened all her latent sensuality, had given her the astonishing gift of realising that she was not the freakishly plain girl she had been brought up to believe she was. And as a result she had fallen head over heels.
Or had she? Decima bit her lip in thought. She had been almost instantly attracted to Adam physically, she had liked his sense of humour and his down-to-earth practicality and she had found him so very easy to talk to. Perhaps there was more to her feelings than some sort of pathetic gratitude that a handsome man had paid her attention. She was certainly in love with him. Nothing else, surely, could hurt quite so much? And hurt with a deep longing, not to avoid the source of the pain, but to expose herself to it, over and over again, for ever.
But did it matter whether her feelings were reality or fantasy? Adam could never be hers whatever she thought about it. Presumably other people learned to live with broken hearts—how hard could it be? She caught herself up with a wry smile. She had last thought that about cooking and she hadn’t proved any use at that at all. In fact, Adam had proved to be a much more effective cook than she.
After luncheon she would visit Lady Brotherton, combining duty with the desire to swallow the nasty medicine as soon as possible. Then she could just get on with the rest of her life. Her new, wonderful, independent life, she reminded herself firmly.
Lady Brotherton’s amazement as she greeted Decima should have given her much quiet satisfaction, if only she had not been feeling in such low spirits.
‘My dear Dessy! My goodness, you look so…so…’ She blinked, obviously struggling to find a word that was not completely at odds with every preconception she had ever had about her guest. It proved impossible. ‘Elegant,’ she finally conceded, somewhat breathlessly.
