Regency Rumour: Never Trust a Rake / Reforming the Viscount

But, she consoled herself, stuffing the other half of the biscuit into her mouth, at least she’d had the spirit to object to the disparaging way he’d spoken about her father.

‘Papa cannot help being a bit unaware of what London society is like,’ she had said, firmly. ‘You know he hardly ever comes up to town any more, and when he does it is only because he has heard that some rare book has finally come on the market.’ After all, she could not deny that Richard’s accusation was, in part, justified. She had not been a week in town before realising that because his cousin had married a man of business, she did not have, as Richard had so scornfully pointed out, the entrée into anywhere even remotely fashionable. ‘And anyway,’ she’d continued, loathe to admit to her disappointment, ‘if he did know, he would probably think it highly frivolous. He never judges a man by his rank or wealth, as you should know by now. How many times have you heard him say that a man’s real worth stems from his character and his intellect?’

She reached for another biscuit, feeling rather pleased with herself for taking that stance, even when she had still been Richard’s dupe. But then nothing would make her tolerate any criticism of her father, from whatever quarter it came.

Besides, he already felt badly enough about the discovery that she had somehow attained the age of two and twenty without him having done anything about finding her a husband.

The slightly bewildered look had crossed his face—the one he always adopted when forced to confront anything to do with the domestic side of life—when she had first tentatively broached the subject of having a London Season. ‘Are you quite sure you are old enough to want to think of getting married?’ He had then taken off his spectacles, and laid them on his desk with a resolute air. ‘But of course, my dear, if you want a Season, then you must have one. Leave it with me.’

‘You … you won’t forget?’ It would have been just like him. And he knew it, too, for instead of reprimanding her for speaking in such a forthright manner, he had smiled and assured her that, no, when it came to something as important as his only daughter’s future, he most certainly would not forget.

And he hadn’t forgotten. He just hadn’t got it quite right. But since she had not the heart to disillusion him about the wonderful time he hoped she was having, she had kept her letters home both cheerful and suitably vague.

Mrs Crimmer was still chattering away, but Henrietta had not heard a word for several minutes while she had been alternately woolgathering and munching her way methodically through the entire plate of biscuits. Her mind had not been able to do much more than go over and over the night of Miss Twining’s ball for days. It had all been so very much more painful, she had decided, because she’d pinned such hopes on it. And on Miss Twining herself. She really had hoped they might be friends. It hadn’t seemed to matter to her that she was staying with unfashionable relatives in the least. Miss Twining had even said she might call her Julia, she sighed, reaching for the last biscuit.

But the incident at the ball had destroyed any possibility that friendship could blossom between them, even if they’d had anything in common, which there hadn’t been time to find out, for she had left the ball before Miss Waverley, so that it would be Miss Waverley’s version of events that everyone would hear. And she knew such a schemer would not waste the heaven-sent opportunity to blacken her enemy’s reputation.

Not that she cared. She had no wish to step outside her aunt’s social circle ever again.

What was the point?

‘I say, what a bang-up rig,’ remarked Mr Bentley, who was lounging against the frame of the other window, amusing himself by watching the passing traffic. He was a friend of Mr Crimmer junior. She rather thought his role today was not only to provide moral support during the gruelling ordeal of attempting to make Mildred smile on him, but also to bear him company to the nearest hostelry, once they had stayed the requisite half-hour, to help revive Mr Crimmer’s battered spirits.

‘Pulled up right outside, as though he means to pay a visit here. By Jove, he does, too. He’s coming up the steps.’

On receipt of that information her aunt, to everyone’s astonishment, leapt from the sofa upon which she had been sitting and reached the window in one bound.

‘Oh, my goodness,’ she exclaimed, having thrust Mr Bentley aside and peered out. ‘He said he would call, but I never dreamed for one moment that he meant it. Even though he asked so particularly for our direction.’

Henrietta froze, the last biscuit halfway to her mouth. From her vantage point she, too, had seen the stylish curricle pull up in front of the house and had already recognised its driver.

‘Henrietta, my dear,’ said Aunt Ledbetter, whirling round to face her, ‘perhaps I should have mentioned it before, but …’ She paused at the sound of the front door knocker rapping. ‘Lord Deben said he might call, to see how you were, after …’ She checked, as though only just recalling that her drawing room was full of visitors. ‘After you were taken ill at Miss Twining’s ball.’

Voices in the hall alerted them to the fact that Lord Deben had entered the house.

Aunt Ledbetter sprinted back to her sofa and sat down hastily, arranging her skirts and adopting a languid pose, as though she had earls dropping in upon her every day of the week.

All conversation ceased. Every eye turned towards the door.

‘Lord Deben,’ announced Warnes, their butler.

Lord Deben strode into the room and paused, looking about him down his thin, aristocratic nose.

Henrietta’s hackles rose. He’d walked into Miss Twining’s house wearing just the same expression, as though he couldn’t quite believe he’d graced the place with his presence. Back then, she hadn’t known who or what he was, but the impression he had made on the others, his knowledge of it and his contemptuous reaction, had given her an instant dislike of the man.

His gaze swept her aunt’s drawing room with an air that somehow conveyed the impression he did not see anyone until his eyes came to rest on her.

‘Miss Gibson,’ he said, crossing the room to where she sat, ‘I trust I find you in better health today?’

It was all Henrietta could do to bite back an enquiry as to whether he had ever had any manners, or whether he just did not see the need to employ them today. What kind of man ignored his hostess, let alone the other occupants of the room?

But then Richard had behaved just like this when he’d come here, too. Richard had thought himself too good for this company. Richard had not deigned to speak to any of them either, dismissively referring to them as a bunch of clerks and shopkeepers. Though even he had, in deference to good manners, at least given Aunt Ledbetter a perfunctory bow before giving his undivided attention to Henrietta.

So she was not in the least bit flattered by the way Lord Deben bowed over her hand. When it looked as though he meant to kiss it, she raised it to her own mouth instead, shoving the last of the biscuits defiantly between her teeth.

She heard Mildred gasp.

Lord Deben’s expression did not alter one whit.

‘You still look a trifle peaked,’ he informed her, shutting out the other occupants of the room by the simple pretext of standing with his back to them all. ‘I shall take you out for a drive in the park. That should put the bloom back in your cheeks.’

‘You will take me out for a drive,’ she repeated. What unmitigated gall! Did he think she was so stupid she couldn’t see how he was snubbing her poor dear aunt? Besides, what if she didn’t want to go out? What then? She was just about to inform him that nothing on earth would induce her to leave this room, in the company of a man who clearly thought he was too good for it, when Mr Bentley burst out,

‘My word, what I wouldn’t give for a chance to tool that set-up round the park. Or even sit up beside you, my lord.’ He shot Henrietta a look loaded with envy. ‘You lucky, lucky girl!’

Lord Deben’s heavy lids lowered a fraction. He turned towards Mr Bentley, his lip curling. ‘I do not generally invite young gentlemen to escort me in the park during the fashionable hour,’ he remarked in a crushing tone that instantly reduced his admirer to red-faced silence.

He hadn’t invited her, either. Issued an order, more like.

‘And it is very generous of you to invite Henrietta,’ said her aunt, shooting her a look loaded with meaning. ‘Such an unlooked-for honour. It will not take her but a moment to run upstairs and put on a bonnet and coat.’ She made shooing motions towards Henrietta behind Lord Deben’s back. ‘Will it, my dear?’

No, it wouldn’t. And it would be better, much better for her aunt if she got him out of the house to tell him what she thought of his manners, than create a scene in her aunt’s drawing room.

‘Make haste,’ he said to Henrietta brusquely, finally succeeding in grasping her hand and using the hold he gained upon it to lift her to her feet. ‘I do not want to keep my horses standing.’

His horses! Well, that put her in her place. He rated their welfare far higher than such a paltry consideration as her sensibilities!

Who did he think he was? To come in here and comprehensively insult everyone like that?

Henrietta swept out of the room on a surge of indignation that completely banished the lethargy that had made even walking require a huge effort of will-power since Miss Twining’s ball.

Not keep his horses waiting, indeed! She marched up the stairs and flung open the door to her room.

And to crush poor Mr Bentley, she fumed as she strode across to the armoire and yanked it open, who’d only been expressing the kind of boyish enthusiasm for the splendour of his horses that any of her brothers might have done.

And to ignore her aunt and her cousins like that! Just because they were connected to trade! Because he thought they were common.

Well, she’d show him common.

She stuffed her arms into the sleeves of her mulberry redingote, then marched along the corridor to her aunt’s room, where she ruthlessly plundered her selection of furs until she found the fox. She slung it round her shoulders, pausing before the mirror only long enough to assure herself that it did indeed clash with her coat as horribly as she’d hoped, before making for Mildred’s room and the high-crowned bonnet, topped with a pair of bright red ostrich feathers, which had only arrived the morning before.

When she reappeared in the drawing room, not five minutes after she’d left it, Mildred’s jaw dropped. Her aunt made a faint choking noise.

Lord Deben, who was standing at the window, next to Mr Bentley, cocked his head to one side as his lazy brown eyes scanned her outfit.

‘More colour already,’ he drawled with a perfectly straight face, ‘just at the mere prospect of taking the air.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed with a smile as she stalked towards him. ‘I am so looking forward to being seen driving round the park with you, at the fashionable hour.’

This would serve him right! He looked just the type of man who would hate being seen driving about with someone who looked positively vulgar. He might have lowered himself by inviting a girl to drive with him who was well outside the circles in which he normally moved, but he had taken the greatest care over his own outfit. She knew enough about male fashion to guess that his clothing hailed from the most expensive, exclusive tailors. And he had shaved, very recently. His cheeks had that sheen that only lasted an hour or so after the event, and besides, when he had bent over her hand to attempt to kiss it, she had smelled oil of bergamot.

‘How little did I think,’ she simpered, ‘when I came up to town that I should have the honour of being taken driving by such an important man. In such a … a bang-up rig, too.’

His face, she noted with savage pleasure, was growing more wooden by the second.

‘I shall be sure to give you a full account of my treat, Mr Bentley—’ she beamed at the youth whose eyes were swivelling from the immaculately clad earl, to the ostrich feathers adorning her borrowed hat with something like horror ‘—next time you call upon us.’

Lord Deben gestured for her to precede him into the hall and, with her ostrich plumes bobbing in time to her martial stride, they set off.

Chapter Three

So what if he had finally found some semblance of manners and opened the door for her? It meant nothing. Except, perhaps, that he couldn’t wait to escape the presence of people he considered so far beneath him.

So what if he was a good driver? Just because he could weave in and out of the heavy traffic with an ease of manner that made it look effortless, when she knew it required great skill, did not make him any less unlikeable.

She was almost glad when, having swept through the park gates, he repeatedly cut people dead who were trying to attract his attention. It made it so much easier to cling to her bad humour, which the thrillingly rapid drive through the teeming streets had almost dispelled.

‘You are not an easy person to run to ground,’ he said suddenly, just when she was beginning to wonder whether the entire outing was going to take place in silence. ‘I looked for you at the Cardingtons’ and the Lensboroughs’ on Tuesday, the Swaffhams’, Pendleboroughs’, and Bonhams’ last night. And I regret to say that I do not have much time to spare on you today, even though it is imperative that we have some private conversation regarding what happened at that débutante’s ball whose name escapes me for the moment. Hence the abduction.’ He turned and bestowed a lazy smile upon her.

She felt a funny jolt in her stomach. There was something in that look that almost compelled her to smile back. Which was absurd, since she was very cross with him.

Reminding herself that he could not even recall the name of the girl she’d hoped might have become a friend was just what she needed to bolster her resentment.

‘On Tuesday night,’ she therefore retorted, ‘I was at a dance held by the Mountjoys. They are vintners. I don’t suppose you know them. And last night we went to the theatre in a party with most of the people who were sitting around the drawing room just now.’

‘Mountjoy …’ he mused. ‘I think I do know of them. I have a feeling they supply my cellars at Deben House.’

‘I shouldn’t be a bit surprised. They boast of having the patronage of several of the more well-heeled members of the ton, though not the entrée into their homes.’

‘Ah,’ he said.

‘And before you ask how I came to be at such an exalted affair as Miss Twining’s come-out ball, it was entirely due to the offices of my brother Hubert, who serves in the same regiment as her brother Charlie. Charlie wrote to her, asking if she wouldn’t mind calling on me, because I wasn’t likely to know anyone in town just at first.’

Not that he’d thought of it as an exalted affair. To judge from the look on his face, he’d regarded attendance as a tedious duty, probably undertaken out of some kind of obligation to the elderly lady he’d been escorting.

While for her it had been an evening that should have brought nothing but delight.

Well, neither of them had got quite what they’d expected.

At the time he’d walked in looking all cynical and bored, she’d still been full of hope she might run into Richard there. Miss Twining was bound to have sent him an invitation, since he, too, was friendly with her brother Charlie. And she was fairly sure that he would have called in for half an hour, at least, to ‘do the pretty’, even if he did not stay to dance. She had so hoped that, seeing her all dressed up in her London finery, with her hair so stylishly cut, her brother Hubert’s best friend would at long last see that she had grown up. See her as a woman, to be taken seriously, and not just one of his childhood playmates that he could casually brush aside.

‘Had I known how you are circumstanced,’ said Lord Deben, interrupting her gloomy reflections of that fateful night, ‘I would have called upon you sooner.’

‘But you did know how I am circumstanced. Lady Chigwell took great pains to let you know that she considered I was intruding amongst my betters.’

‘I assumed that was spite talking and discounted it. Particularly when I looked you up and discovered that you have a much more impressive pedigree than Lady Chigwell, whose husband’s title, such as it is, is a mere two generations old.’

‘You looked me up …?’

‘Of course. I had no intention of asking around and raising people’s curiosity about why I wished to know more about you. When I found that you are Miss Gibson of Shoebury Manor in Much Wakering and that your father is Sir Henry Gibson, scientist and scholar, member of the Royal Society, I naturally assumed you would be attending the kind of events most débutantes of your age enjoy when they come up to town for their Season.’ His mouth twisted with distaste. ‘Had I known that you would not, no power on earth would have compelled me to attend any of them.’

He’d spent two consecutive evenings haunting places he did not want to go to, merely because he had thought she might be there? And now she was obliging him to drive round the park, at the fashionable hour, while she was dressed in such spectacularly vulgar style?

For the first time in days, she felt almost cheerful.

‘What a lot of time you have wasted on my account,’ she said, with a satisfied gleam in her eye.

‘Well, it is not because I have been struck by a coup de foudre,’ he said sharply. ‘Do not take it into your head that I have an interest in you for any sentimental or … romantic reason,’ he said with a curl to his lip as he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

‘I wouldn’t!’ The coxcomb! Did he really believe that every female in London sighed after him, just because Miss Waverley had flung herself at him?

‘Let me tell you that I wouldn’t want to attract that kind of attention from a man as unpleasant and rude as you,’ she retorted hotly. ‘In fact, I didn’t want to come out for a drive with you today at all. And I wouldn’t have, either, if it wouldn’t have meant embarrassing my aunt.’

His full lips tightened in displeasure. Nobody spoke to him like that. Nobody.

‘It is as well I gave you little choice, then, is it not?’

‘I do not see that at all. I do not see that there is any reason for you to have looked for me, or investigated my background, or dragged me out of the house today …’

‘When you were clearly enjoying the company so much,’ he sneered.

She blinked. Had her misery been that obvious?

‘It was nothing to do with the company. They are all perfectly lovely people, who have very generously opened their home to me …’

He frowned. He had dismissed the suspicion that she had taken him in aversion on that accursed terrace, assuming she was just angry at the whole world, because of some injustice being perpetrated upon her. But he could not hold on to that assumption any longer. From his preliminary investigation into her background, and that of her father, and the people with whom she was living, he could find no reason why anyone should attempt to coerce her into marriage. He had not yet managed to find out why she was living with a set of cits in Bloomsbury, when she had perfectly respectable relations who could have presented her at court, but she clearly felt no ill will towards them for not being able to launch her into society. She had just referred to them as perfectly lovely people, putting such stress on the pronoun that he could not mistake her implication that she excluded him from the set of people she liked.

In short, his first impression had been correct. She really did not like him at all. His scowl landed at random upon the driver of a very showy high-perch phaeton going in the opposite direction, causing the young man such consternation he very nearly ran his team off the road.

‘Then I can only deduce that whatever is still making you look as though you are on the verge of going into a decline had its origins at Miss Twining’s ball.’

His scowl intensified. He was inured to enduring this level of antagonism from his siblings, but he had no experience of prolonging an interaction with a person to whom he was not bound by ties of family who held him in dislike. It was problematical. He was not going to rescind his decision to provide a bulwark against whatever malice Miss Waverley chose to unleash upon her, but he had taken it for granted she would have received his offer of assistance with becoming gratitude. After all, he was about to bestow a singular honour upon her. Never, in his entire life, had he gone to so much trouble on another person’s behalf.

The usual pattern was for people to seek him out. If they didn’t bore him too dreadfully, he generally permitted them limited access to his circle, while he waited to discover what their motives were for attempting to get near him.

He turned his glare sideways, where she sat with that beak of a nose in the air, completely shutting him out.

The corners of his mouth turned down, as he bit back a string of oaths. What the devil had got into him? He did not want her to fawn over him, did he? He despised toadeaters.

It must just be that he was not used to having to expend any effort in getting people to like him. He didn’t quite know how to go about it—

Hold hard—like him? Why the devil should he be concerned whether this aggravating chit liked him or not? He had never cared one whit for another’s opinion. And he would not, most definitely not, care about hers either.

Which resolve lasted until the moment she turned her face up to his, and said, with a tremor in her voice, and stress creasing her brow, ‘I don’t, do I? Please tell me I don’t look as though I’m going into a decline.’

‘Well, Miss Gibson—’

‘Because I am not going to.’ She straightened up, as though she was exerting her entire will to pull herself together. ‘Absolutely not. Only a spineless ninny would—’ She shut her mouth with a snap, as though feeling she had said too much.

Leaving him wishing he could pull up the carriage and put his arms round her. Just to comfort her. She was struggling so valiantly to conceal some form of heartbreak that his own concerns no longer seemed to matter so very much.

Of course, he would do no such thing. For one thing, he was the very last person qualified to offer comfort to a heartbroken woman. He was more usually the one accused of doing the breaking. And the only comfort he’d ever given a female had been of the hot and sweaty variety. With his reputation, and given what he knew of her, if he did attempt to put his arms round her Miss Gibson would no doubt misinterpret his motives and slap his face.

‘This is getting tiresome,’ he said. ‘I wish you would stop pretending you have no idea why I sought you out.’

‘I do not know why you should have done such a thing. I never expected to see you again, after I left that horrid ball. Especially not when I found out that you are an earl.’

‘Two earls, if you count the Irish title. Not that many people do.’

‘I don’t care how many earls you are, or what country you have the authority to lord it over, I just wish you had left me alone!’

‘Tut tut, Miss Gibson. Can you really believe that I would not wish to take the very first opportunity that offered to thank you for coming so gallantly to my rescue?’

‘To thank me?’ He had gone to all this trouble to express his thanks?

He watched her subside on to the seat, her anger visibly draining away.

‘Oh, well …’

‘Miss Gibson, I do thank you. From the bottom of what passes for my heart. It is not an exaggeration to say you saved me from a fate worse than death.’