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‘Yes, I managed to make another hole with the knife in my saddlebag.’ Henry reined in and circled his bay alongside Spindrift. ‘Good day, sir.’
‘Henry, may I make you known to Viscount Weston? My lord, Sir Henry Freshford. Or perhaps you gentlemen know each other already?’ The air was crackling with tension, which was puzzling. Henry might well be poised to defend her against insult, but what was causing Adam to look down his nose with the air of a man about to issue a challenge?
‘His lordship is, of course, well known to me by reputation,’ Henry said smoothly with a pleasant smile that did not reach his eyes. Knowing him, Decima caught her breath. Oh, Lord!
Adam’s eyes narrowed. ‘I regret we have not met before. You are staying in London for the Season, Freshford?’
‘For as long as my mother, my sister and Miss Ross require my presence.’
‘You recall I told you I was staying with Lady Freshford, my lord,’ Decima intervened.
‘So you did, Miss Ross. And has there been any meeting yet between the star-crossed lovers whose cause you are championing?’ He met her gaze blandly, but Decima knew he was vividly conscious of Henry, his position by her side, of the way they spoke to each other. And beside her Henry still bristled with protectiveness under his urbane exterior.
‘Not that I am aware of, but I do not choose to interrogate my staff about their personal affairs,’ she replied coolly. ‘Nor do I find the situation as amusing as you apparently do. I would not have Pru made unhappy for the world.’
‘And love will make her happy?’ Adam’s tone was mocking, but Decima sensed a real edge beneath the surface. ‘This is something of a reversal of your previous position, is it not?’
‘You are accusing me of matchmaking, Lord Weston?’ She kept her tone as light as his. ‘Then you cannot have been listening to me before—I have been acting at the wish of one party and giving the other information only. Bates is free to act on it as he will.’
‘Lucky devil. I must bid you good day, Miss Ross, Sir Henry. I imagine none of us wishes to keep our horses standing in this chill.’ He touched his whip to his hat and turned Ajax to canter away across the grass towards the Serpentine.
‘My goodness, that was uncomfortable.’ Decima let out a long breath and tried to keep her voice light. Inside she felt slightly queasy from the tension that had been crackling between the three of them, and miserable that Adam seemed so distant.
Henry tore his eyes away from the figure vanishing into the mist and remarked, ‘He is jealous, of course.’ Meeting Decima’s puzzled eyes, he added, ‘Of us. With me mounted he probably doesn’t realise how short I am and thinks I’m courting you.’
‘That’s nonsense.’ Decima was instantly prickly, as she always was on Henry’s behalf if someone dismissed him because of his height. ‘My feelings for you would not be any different if you were six foot six or five foot nothing. We are friends. Anyways,’ she added firmly as they turned their horses’ heads and began to walk back down the drive, ‘he is in no position to be jealous of anyone except Olivia.’
Was Henry smiling? She looked hard at him and the quirk of his lips vanished. ‘Men are strange, possessive animals,’ he remarked. ‘You two were almost lovers. He feels he has put his mark on you, that’s all.’
‘All? That’s scandalous.’ Decima found she was truly shocked. ‘I am not a mare to be branded or a book where he has written his name on the flyleaf.’
‘Actually, the book is a very good analogy. Are you ever going to be able to open the volume of memories of this year without recalling him, seeing his name, as it were?’
Decima knew her cheeks were burning. ‘He can write his name in the wedding register, next to Olivia’s, nowhere else, and certainly not on anything of mine. Why, what you are suggesting is positively indecent—as if men really want to keep a harem of all the women they have ever…ever…’
‘Made love to?’ Henry supplied. ‘You are probably right. We are very unsatisfactory creatures compared to women.’ And he dug his heels into his mount’s flanks and cantered off, chuckling, before she could retaliate.
Decima dressed for Lady Cantline’s ball that evening in a spirit of half-terrified bravado. It must be—she counted on her fingers, frowning—almost five years since she had been to a large-scale dress ball. Five years in which she had been heartily grateful to be spared the humiliation of always being a wallflower, or, very occasionally, stumbling round the floor as the reluctant partner of some unfortunate man.
She had no intention of dancing tonight, either, but she did have the firm resolve of holding her head up amidst the matrons and the chaperons, knowing she was impeccably gowned and had absolutely nothing to apologise for. She was no longer a shop-worn piece of merchandise on the marriage mart, she was not even on the shelf any longer, because she would not allow anyone to categorise her that way. She was single and happy to be so.
Brave words butter no parsnips, she thought, nervously picking up the powder puff and dusting again at the freckles that were sprinkled across her bosom. And an alarming amount of that bosom seemed to be on show tonight. Decima tugged at the lace trim of the low-scooped neckline and Pru put down the hairbrush and tugged it back into place again.
‘Leave it, do, Miss Dessy…Miss Decima.’ She still had not got used to Decima’s insistence on her full name. ‘It’s a lovely gown, don’t go pulling it out of shape.’
‘I will fall out,’ Decima moaned faintly. ‘It didn’t look this indecent in the modiste’s.’
‘You’re a grown-up lady, now; you can show off your boobies,’ Pru said stoutly. ‘They aren’t all that big, but they’re a perfectly nice pair and your shoulders are lovely and white.’
‘Freckles,’ Decima said despairingly as Pru fastened her necklace and handed her the pearl bob earrings. Your freckles. I wondered if they went all the way down and they do…Adam’s voice as his fingers had traced across her skin. And she had at least had her back to him. What would have happened if he had seen the dusting of freckles across the swell of her bosom and disappearing down into her cleavage? She closed her eyes tight against the picture her treacherous mind conjured up, then opened them again wide as the image of Adam’s face appeared like magic on the inside of her lids.
‘There now, you look lovely.’ Pru stepped back for Decima to stand and look at herself in the long cheval glass.
Oh, my. This was not her at all. Instinctively Decima rounded her shoulders and saw, to her horror, that the bodice of the gown gaped alarmingly. There was nothing for it but perfect deportment: head up, shoulders back and a startling show of bosom at the front. Pru was talking, wrenching her attention away from her own reflection.
‘I was wondering what time you’d be coming in, Miss Decima.’ She was fiddling with things on the dressing table, but the casual air did not deceive Decima.
‘Not before one, I should think. Why? Would you like to go out?’ Pru’s neck went pink. ‘Oh, Pru—is it Bates? Has he asked you out this evening?’
