Christine Merrill - The Wedding Game

Ahead of them, things seemed to be going well. She could hear Templeton droning on about something that evoked a delighted laugh from Belle. But between her and Lovell there was a silence that would have been uncomfortable had she wanted to speak to him, which she did not.

‘It is a lovely day for a ride,’ he said, when he was unable to bear it any longer.

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘It is.’

‘And that is a very...serviceable habit you have on today.’

She smiled. Next to Belle’s her costume was hardly a fashion plate. When they went on these little outings, it was usually her job to manage both horses while giving Belle an illusion of control. But it left Amy little energy to fuss over her appearance. Her current ensemble was dark green and devoid of ornament, except for a muddy footprint at the hem that had been gained when she’d ridden too close to Belle’s horse and scraped against the stirrup. Despite his excellent manners, Mr Lovell could not bring himself to lie and call it pretty.

‘It suits me well enough,’ she replied, staring down at a loose button on the sleeve.

‘If I may be so bold as to suggest it, a little lace at the cuffs might be quite flattering.’

She snapped her head up to look at him. ‘Are you a dressmaker, Mr Lovell, that you question the design of my clothing?’

‘Merely making an observation,’ he said blandly. ‘Miss Arabella is most fetchingly attired. You cannot expect gentlemen to notice you if you insist on standing in your sister’s shadow.’

Now she was not just looking at him, she was staring. ‘If you mean to offer me insults in the guise of friendly advice, please refrain, sir. I am quite content with both my sister’s popularity and my choice of attire.’

‘And your lack of escort?’ he said.

‘Lack of escort?’ She looked around, pretending surprise. ‘Correct me if I am mistaken, but are you not escorting me at this very moment? Or is this some fever dream that I’ve concocted featuring a man I’ve just met?’

‘You met me yesterday,’ he reminded her. ‘There was no formal introduction, of course.’

She gave him a blank look, pretending to forget.

‘You spilled your drink on me last night at Almack’s,’ he prompted.

‘Of course,’ she said, giving him a smile that was as overly sweet as the lemonade had been. ‘I apologised. And you said we would not speak of it again.’

He gave a dismissive shrug, as if to say the circumstances had changed now that he knew her identity.

‘And it was two drinks,’ she prodded.

He responded with such benign sympathy that it made her wish for a pitcher of the stuff so she might pour the whole of it over his insufferable head. ‘It was not necessary to do that to achieve this meeting,’ he said. ‘I would have been more than willing to ride with you even if you had not wasted two glasses of lemonade on my new waistcoat.’

‘You think I did that on purpose?’ she said, outraged. Of course, she had done it on purpose. But somehow, he had got the idiotic idea that it had been a ploy to gain his attention.

‘I think there are some young ladies who take naturally to society. And the ton rewards them for it.’ He cast a brief, longing look forward at her sister, before turning back to her. ‘While others, even though they are blest with many of the same gifts, lack a certain something.’ He shrugged. ‘Confidence, perhaps? That natural ease amongst people. As a result, they are quite unfairly overlooked by gentlemen when it comes time to marry.’

She bit her lip before she could blurt that her sister’s inability to string two sentences together was not actually feminine wisdom masking some sort of magical self-assurance. It was as she’d often suspected: though some might call Belle a fool, it was the men chasing her who were the idiots. And she was speaking to their king. ‘Suppose these poor, neglected unfortunates you describe are quite happy with their lot?’ Her tone rose slightly. ‘Perhaps, having met the gentlemen of London society, they would much rather remain single than spend the rest of their lives pretending an unworthy man is not just their equal, but their divinely ordained superior?’

Now she definitely saw anger in his eyes, but it was stifled almost as quickly as his earlier annoyance. He sucked in his lips for a moment, biting back the words he wanted to say, burying his true feelings. He was clever enough to think before he spoke. But it proved his amiable courtesy was little more than a thin veneer that might peel away if she continued to pry at it.

‘Then...’ he said, pausing again, ‘I would say that...’ another pause ‘...if they were truly content with their unmarried status, they would not find it necessary to giggle unceasingly, to flap their fans like deranged parrots and orchestrate accidents to call attention to themselves.’

‘Accidents like this, you mean?’ She brought her riding crop down in one swift motion, slapping the tip of it against his horse’s flank with a force equivalent to a wasp sting.

The enormous grey obliged with an irate whinny and reared.

His rider, who had been far too occupied with whatever condescending response he had been composing in his head, lost his grip on the reins and landed on the tan-covered trail behind his horse.

A few heads turned to stare at the man sitting in the mud. But not nearly enough of them, in Amy’s opinion. This minor embarrassment might go largely unnoticed if she did not help it along. ‘Mr Templeton,’ she sang out in a shrieking soprano. ‘Oh, dear. Mr Templeton! Mr Lovell has fallen from his horse! Someone help him, I pray.’

‘I am fine.’ He stood to prove the fact, one hand in the air in a self-deprecating wave to show the mildest embarrassment. But she was close enough to hear shattered pride in each of the three words. He followed them with a wry smile and an admonition. ‘Really, Miss Summoner. Do not distress yourself on my account. There is nothing to worry about.’

But the look he gave her said something far different.

You have nothing to worry about, yet.

Ben stared out of the window of his rooms at the busy crowds below him on Bond Street, contemplating his future. Hopefully, it would be devoid of the humiliation he had experienced on yesterday’s ride in Hyde Park.

He was an expert horseman, able to handle even the most spirited cattle with ease. But after five minutes of conversation with Miss Amelia Summoner he had been displayed before all of London society as a man who could not hold his seat on a walk down a bridle path. Worst of all, her sister had turned back to see him muddied and bruised. Her laughter at his predicament was a hundred times more painful than the fall had been.

If the experience in Rotten Row had gained him anything, it was proof that his friend Templeton was only partly correct in his assessment of Miss Summoner. Ben could see no sign that she was romantically attracted to him or anyone else. But it seemed that she was, in some way, obsessed with him. Her fixation bordered almost on mania. Could it be an untreated madness, or was there something he had done to set her off? He could not think what that might be. She had seemed set against him, even before an introduction was made. Perhaps she had chosen him at random to bear the brunt of her jealousy over her sister’s success. Or maybe she simply hated men.

After ten years in the thrall of one, he was more than wary of the focused attentions of overly clever women. At first he had been drawn to Cassandra’s intellect and aspired to become her equal. To be worthy of such a woman, a man had to strive for constant improvement.

The day had come when he’d finally been ready for the verbal fencing matches he’d dreamed of. He’d honed his wits to a rapier point only to discover she was wielding a stiletto. She had made him suffer for his impudence in believing he could ever be her master.