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“To which circles?”
A flush crept along her cheeks. Damn words that flew out of her mouth too easily. “To ladies that are unattached, or have the freedom to pretend they are so.”
A caustic chuckle left his lips and he shrugged, looking out the window. “Fine. I make it a point to stay in the shadows of the billiards and smoking rooms at those things.”
“Why do you even attend them if you do not wish to mingle with the guests?”
“I attend at the behest of Des or Weston. Sometimes our old captain, Lord Glenford.”
“Lord Glenford? Of course—of course that makes sense. The gala he threw to raise funds for his orphanage several months back.”
He offered one nod. “I was there.”
“And I…” Her look drifted up to the roof of the carriage as she tried to reconstruct that evening in her mind.
She was there with Lady Hewton and it was a grand event. A masked ball, so very full of people, and it had been very hard to tell the men apart. Especially the men with dark hair and she had danced, and flirted, and…
Of course.
She had snuck off with one masked gentleman into the gardens, then thought it was the same man later in the evening, which it wasn’t. Then she’d had three glasses of strong punch too many and had flirted outrageously with Lord Jenson late into the night and in front of his seething mother, and…damn it to bloody hell.
Shewasa madcap finch flittering from man to man.
She cleared her throat, her look dipping to him. “It is entirely rude to judge someone based on one night of abandon.”
He met her stare for a second, his lips quirking into a frown. His eyebrows lifted and he shifted his gaze out the window without a word.
Bugger.
He was rude. But she couldn’t fault him for what he’d witnessed.
Her arms unfurled and she sighed, her gaze going to the opposite window he looked out. The last buildings of Charminster passed them and they moved into fields and grazing lands.
It was going to be a long ride.
An hour later, Rune shifted in his seat, his foot bumping into her boot.
She looked to the floor, then upward. His forefinger was methodically tapping on the cushion. Her gaze travelled to his face. He was staring at her, his copper-green eyes burrowing into her. Trying to figure her out.
She’d seen that look in plenty of men studying her. It always meant it was time to part company. She didn’t need anyone looking at her like that, hoping to scrape under the surface of what she was willing to offer.
Unfortunately, she was well and stuck with Rune in this carriage and there would be no escape.
She drew in a deep breath, holding it in her lungs. “What do you want to know?”
“Why do you think I want to know anything?”
“You wouldn’t be staring at me as you are unless you had a question.”
He shifted, leaning forward and settling his forearms on his thighs, his look not wavering from her. “Why did your husband not love you?”
Elle froze.
Why didn’t her husband love her?
Damn, if she only knew.
Rune’s voice softened slightly. “I mean no offense—I was just curious. You can be charming as was witnessed at the coaching inn with that man—”
