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The only trouble was that now Lady Mixby had told her that one of Gregory’s ancestors had been an Elizabethan pirate she couldn’t help picturing him with a pearl earring and a rapier in his hand. So instead of arming herself with a quiver full of clever remarks with which to confound him, she now spent the time before dinner imagining him engaged in various nefarious pursuits. The most frequent of which imaginings involved him mounted on a black horse, holding up a stagecoach at midnight. Though the one of him lounging back in his bathtub, naked apart from some strategically placed soapsuds, came a close second.
By the time she was ready, physically, to go downstairs, she was no more prepared to cross swords with His Grace the Duke of Halstead than poor betwattled Lady Mixby would ever be.
Chapter Fourteen
‘Miss Carstairs, how very much better you look,’ said Gregory when she entered the dining room.
Prudence couldn’t help raising one hand to her hair and flushing self-consciously. Did he really like the way she looked in this gown, with her hair neatly brushed, braided, and coiled on the top of her head?
His eyes followed the movement of her hand. He must have seen she was blushing, but his expression remained completely impassive. How different he was now from the man he’d been in that barn, when he’d described her hair as russet glory and trembled with the force of the desire he said he’d felt for her. This Gregory was a complete enigma. It was as if, the moment they’d set foot in Bramley Park, he’d deliberately snuffed out the man she’d come to know.
So how could she care so much about what he might be thinking? How could she long for him to find her as attractive as she found him, seeing him for the first time closely shaved and in a full set of clean clothes—even if they did belong to a humble gardener?
Bother Lady Mixby for putting that vision of him with a pearl earring into her mind. Though, to be fair, she’d come up with that vision of soapsuds slithering over his naked masculine musculature all by herself.
Well, it was no use having visions of that sort. Because they were weakening her resolve to put an end to a betrothal which should never have begun.
She drew on every ounce of pride she possessed, and said, ‘Thank you,’ in as calm a voice as she could muster. ‘The maid you sent was very proficient. It is entirely due to her,’ she couldn’t resist adding, ‘that I no longer look as though I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.’
‘You have never looked as though you had been dragged through a hedge backwards,’ he said, in a manner that must have looked to everyone else like gallantry. ‘Not even after you spent the night sleeping in hay.’
‘Sleeping in hay?’ Hugo, who’d leapt to his feet, was grinning. ‘I heard a rumour that you spent last night in a barn, Halstead. And now you have confirmed it.’ He rubbed his hands together in glee. ‘I can’t wait to hear how all this came about.’
‘Come, let me place you at my right hand, Miss Carstairs,’ said the Duke, ignoring Hugo as he led her to the rather small square table standing in the very centre of the room.
Hugo took the chair at his left without being asked.
‘As you can see,’ said Gregory witheringly. ‘We are dining informally tonight.’
‘I thought it for the best,’ said Lady Mixby. ‘All things considered.’
‘Yes, but some of us have managed not to forget our manners,’ he replied, as Mr Bodkin held out a chair for Benderby.
Hugo shot Gregory a look loaded with resentment, but didn’t get to his feet. Really, he was a very badly behaved boy. He put her in mind of one of the subalterns once under her father’s command, who’d come from a good family and had resented taking orders from men he regarded as his social inferiors. It had been insecurity, she’d overheard her father explain to her mother, that had made the lad so spiky and awkward, not any deep-seated malice. And once he’d proved his worth in battle his manners had greatly improved. What a pity there was no battle that Hugo could fight—that would knock some sense into him.
Benderby gave the butler a slight nod once they were all seated more or less where they wished, and he in turn marshalled Sam, his footman, into action.
‘I do hope the meal will meet with your approval,’ said Lady Mixby anxiously.
‘I am sure it will,’ said Gregory. ‘Since Mrs Hoskins was not expecting us today, we can hardly expect her to have prepared anything fancy, can we?’
The housekeeper would have had a jolly good try, though. Having the Duke turn up out of the blue must have created a state bordering on panic below stairs.
