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“If there is any woman who can make a man jump through hoops, it is you.”
“Thank you.”
“Not a compliment.”
“Hm.”
A rifle salute drew her attention back to the soldiers. Inexplicably, Guy lingered.
“If you did have all those guns under your control, what would you do?” he asked.
“You would be the first against the wall,” she said automatically.
That was untrue. Sculthorpe would be the first against the wall. Guy would be the second. Or she could make them face the firing squad together and save on bullets. What a fiscally responsible commander-in-chief she would be.
“Careful.” Guy sounded cheerful despite her death threat. “You wouldn’t want your betrothed to catch you flirting with me.”
She stared at him. “Flirting? I threatened to have you shot.”
“Which coming from you surely counts as flirting. Such sweet nothings! I’m very flattered.”
“You’re very annoying. Did you come here solely to provoke me?”
“Pretty much.” His eyes narrowed as he studied her, shaking his head slightly. “But whySculthorpe? Although I must admire your efficiency, snaring him minutes after I turned you down. You couldn’t be a marchioness so you settled on becoming a baroness. Does he know he was your second choice?”
Sculthorpe was so far down her list of choices, he didn’t appear on it at all. If only Guy had listened to her, then she could have bought time until Hadrian Bell returned, and now it was too late.
“You have it the wrong way around,” she said, haughtily turning away from him to study the crowd. “You were merely practice, to be sure I got it right when it actually mattered.”
Through the crowd, a flamboyant emerald-green bonnet snagged her eye, the headdress of a woman who wanted to be seen. It was Clare Ivory—renowned for her wit, her beauty, and for the fact that she had once been respectable, a gentleman’s daughter whom Guy Roth had wanted to marry, until she threw it all away by having an affair with Lord Sculthorpe and becoming a courtesan.
Guy was standing so close that Arabella sensed his new tension.
“I had to encounter her sooner or later, I suppose,” he murmured.
“The woman who broke your heart and made you run away,” Arabella said. “Did it never strike you as a trifle extreme, leaving the country for eight years? You do realize that the standard cure for heartbreak in a young man is overindulgence in poetry and drink.”
“I was no good at it.”
“At drinking or at writing bad poetry?”
“Either.” He sighed. “Alas, I was an utter failure as a tormented youth. I was rather looking forward to becoming brooding and pale. I even fancied I might become a rake.” He glanced at her sideways. “Women would have found me irresistible, of course.”
“Of course. The poor darlings could not have withstood the lure of your tortured soul.”
“Naturally I’d have broken their hearts.”
“For which they would adore you all the more.”
“Unfortunately for me, I have a debilitating fondness for daylight, company, and physical activity. Besides, the world has so many interesting things to see and people to meet that I kept forgetting to be heartbroken and miserable.”
Arabella suspected that Guy was telling partial truths to conceal his true feelings, but she said nothing. The conversation was surprisingly enjoyable; besides, a truce presented a chance to discuss Freddie.
“Is Freddie here?” she ventured. “I have not seen her.”
“I don’t know. Blasted Sir Walter is still playing his game of hide-and-seek.”
A chill shivered over her. “Guy, this isn’t a game. You must take care of Freddie. I might be able to find them but—”
