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It had all gone on in her head.
Any emotions she’d felt for Richard were more of a girlish infatuation than anything. In fact, it had been more of a snatching at the hope of love. It was the difference between a little girl playing with a doll and a real mother with a live baby in her arms. One was pretence, play-acting, and more than a little bit of hope for something she was not really ready for.
But this—this entanglement with Lord Deben—was grown-up, messy, painful and all too real.
‘Don’t, whatever you do, attempt to speak until you have your anger under better control...’ he warned her.
‘Or what?’ Oh, him and his precious self-control! For two pins she would...she would...well, she didn’t know what she wanted to do. She was so furious with him for being so utterly calm and rational when her whole world felt as though it had just tilted on its axis.
How could she have let this happen?
And then her own words came back to mock her. You don’t plan to fall in love. It just happens.
Was there anything worse than falling victim to something you’d only just warned someone else about?
Yes. That person discovering you’d done it. So she would have to take jolly good care he never guessed.
‘Afraid I might try to peck you?’ In lieu of finding anything sensible to say, she found herself going back to the chicken analogy. ‘Even humble, ordinary farmyard chickens can defend themselves, you know.’ Which she was going to have to take great care to do. ‘In fact, they can be downright scary if you get on the wrong side of them.’
‘I am sure they can,’ he said. ‘Which is why men set such store by their fighting cocks...’
Her face went scarlet. ‘How dare you turn an innocent remark about chickens into something so...vulgar?’
Damn. He’d forgotten she had brothers. Apparently she was used to hearing epithets he would have thought her ears too innocent to recognise. ‘I was not being vulgar,’ he protested. He would never deliberately lead any conversation with her down such a dark alley. That kind of vulgar talk was the prelude to equally vulgar, not to say tasteless, couplings.
He’d only meant to say that he respected her opinion. What maggot in her brain had her taking everything he said the wrong way tonight? ‘And it is unjust of you to fly into the boughs with me over a perfectly innocuous remark...’
He was about to tell her that he now regarded the strength and prominence of her nose as indications of her character. That, in fact, he thought she would look quite nondescript without it. That he’d grown downright fond of it.
But her uncertain temper made him hesitate while he formulated the words. And when he was ready to speak, he found himself saying, ‘There is no saying anything to you tonight. You really should learn to master that temper of yours...’
‘And you should learn not to be so...’
‘So determined to have the last word?’ He reached out to run one finger down her face. ‘You won’t do so, however, because...’
With a little cry of vexation she lashed out at him with the hand that held her fan. The flimsy weapon splintered against his forearm. In utter shock that she should have reacted so dramatically, in such a public arena, she dropped the shattered bits of wood and paper on the floor, turned on her heels and ran to seek out her aunt.
* * *
‘Now I know I told you not to encourage him, my dear,’ said Aunt Ledbetter, on the way home, ‘but you really need not have carried out my advice quite so strenuously, even if he was making improper advances. Which was bound to happen eventually, with a man of his stamp,’ she finished repressively.
‘I know and I am sorry to have caused you embarrassment,’ she said meekly, hanging her head. ‘But nobody makes me as cross as he does. It seems that every time I meet him I act in a way that I know I should not. Yet I cannot seem to help myself. First, I—’
‘Threw together that dreadful ensemble, to make him regret ordering you to go out for a drive with him.’ Her aunt nodded sagaciously.
‘You knew?’
‘Well, your taste was a little bit on the dull side when first you came to town, but you have always known what colours match, at least. Wearing a fox fur with a mulberry pelisse could only have been a deliberate decision to look as dreadful as you could. And, having observed the interaction between the pair of you since then, I can only conclude that...’ She paused, her face puckering into a troubled frown.
