ANNIE BURROWS - The Major Meets His Match

‘What, no pithy retort?’ Ulysses shook his head in mock reproof. ‘I am disappointed.’

‘Yes, well, that’s the thing with swooping to someone’s rescue, isn’t it? They do tend to do things you didn’t expect and make you wish you hadn’t bothered.’

He threw back his head and laughed.

‘Touché!’

She glowered at him. Far from showing the slightest sign of contrition, he was clearly thoroughly enjoying himself. At her expense.

‘Come, come, don’t look at me like that,’ he said. ‘I conceded the point. And far from being sorry I swooped, I have to admit I am glad I did so. No, truly,’ he said, just as he whirled away from her.

‘Well, I’m not,’ she said as the interminable music finally gasped its last and everyone bowed or curtsied to everyone else in their set. ‘I’m tired of being baited.’ At least, she would very soon be if he kept this up for any length of time. It was just one more vexation she was going to have to endure. On top of everything else she was struggling with, it felt like the last straw. ‘Why don’t you just get it over with? Hmm? Go on. Tell Lady Tarbrook where you found me, two weeks ago, and what we were doing. And then...’

Her mind raced over Aunt Susan’s inevitable disappointment and her tears, and the scolding and the punishment. Which might well, if Uncle Hugo had anything to do with it, involve being sent back to Stone Court.

Which would mean her ordeal by London society would come to an end.

Which would be a relief, in a way.

At first. But then she’d have to live, for the rest of her life, with the knowledge that she’d failed. Which she most emphatically did not wish to do.

She lifted her head to stare at Lord Becconsall who, though being thoroughly annoying, had at least made her see that she was nowhere near ready to throw in the towel.

He was shaking his head. ‘I don’t know what I have done to make you think I would behave in such a scaly fashion,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Only that I would never betray a lady’s secrets.’

‘Not if it didn’t suit your schemes, no,’ she said uncharitably.

Which made him look a bit cross.

‘It wouldn’t be in either of our interests for anyone else to hear about that kiss,’ he snapped. And then went very still. And then he turned a devilish grin in her direction.

‘I’m beginning to wonder,’ he said, leaning close and lowering his voice to a murmur, ‘if you aren’t playing a similar kind of game to mine.’

‘Game?’

‘Oh, very nicely done. That touch of baffled innocence would have fooled most men. But I met you under, shall we say, very different circumstances. Revealing circumstances.’

‘Revealing?’ Her heart was hammering. What had she revealed? Apart from rather too much of her legs. And what game was it he suspected her of playing?

‘Oh, yes. You are a rebel, aren’t you?’

Well, that much was true. She had rebelled against Mama and Papa’s wishes to come to London for this Season.

And since she’d been here, she’d been rebelling against all the strictures imposed upon her behaviour.

‘Ha! I knew it. Your guilty expression has given it away. You are merely pretending to go along with all this...’ He waved his hand to include not only the ballroom, but by extension, the whole society it represented. ‘But the fact that you felt the need to go galloping round the park at dawn, unfettered by all the restrictions society would impose on you, coupled with the dreadful way you are dressed, hints at a cunning scheme to avoid falling into the trap of matrimony.’

‘Absolutely not,’ she retorted, stung by his continuing references to her poor choice of clothing. ‘If you must know...’ she drew herself to her full height, which meant she only had to tilt her head the slightest bit to look him straight in the eyes ‘...I dressed like this because...because...’

She paused, wondering why on earth Aunt Susan had permitted her to buy so many things that didn’t suit her. When she was doing so much to make her a social success.

And it came to her in a flash.

‘This is the first time I have ever been anywhere near a fashionable dressmaker and my aunt didn’t want to ruin the pleasure of being able to feel satin against my skin, or picking out lace and ribbons and feathers by objecting to every single gaudy thing I set my heart upon.’

‘But—’

‘And I do want to get married. That is why I’ve come to London. To find somebody who will...value me and...admire me and talk to me as if what I have to say is...not a joke!’

He flinched.

‘Oh, there is no need to worry that I will ever set my sights on you,’ she said with a curl of her lip. And, as a fleeting look of relief flitted across his face, she had another flash of insight. ‘That is what you meant, isn’t it, about playing a game? You are avoiding matrimony. Like the plague.’

He started and the wary look that came across his face told her she’d hit the nail on the head.

And then, because he’d had so much fun baiting her, she couldn’t resist taking the opportunity to turn the tables on him. It wouldn’t take much. He’d practically handed her all the ammunition she needed.

‘What devilish schemes,’ he said in alarm, ‘are running through that pretty head of yours?’

Pretty? She looked up at him sharply.

And met his eyes, squarely, for the first time that night.

And felt something arc between them, something that flared through all the places that he’d set ablaze when he’d crushed her to his chest and kissed her.

‘You think I’m pretty?’

What a stupid thing to say. Of all the things she might have said, all the clever responses she could have flung at him, she’d had to focus on that.

Fortunately, it seemed to amuse him.

‘In spite of those hideous clothes, and the ridiculous feathers in your hair, yes, Lady Harriet, you know full well you are vastly pretty.’

The words, and the way he said them, felt like being stroked all the way down her spine with a velvet glove. Even though they weren’t true. She’d had no idea anyone might think she was pretty. Let alone vastly pretty.

Even so, she wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily.

‘You are not going to turn me up sweet by saying things like that,’ she said sternly. ‘One word from me, just one, about that kiss in the park and my outraged family will be dragging you to the altar so fast it will make your head spin.’

‘What? You wouldn’t!’

‘Oh, wouldn’t I?’

‘No, now look here, Lady Harriet—’

‘Oh, don’t worry. The ordeal of being shackled to you for the rest of my life does not appeal. In the slightest. I’m just reminding you that I have as much on you as you have on me.’

At that point, they reached the chair upon which Aunt Susan was sitting, beaming at them.

‘Your niece, Lady Tarbrook,’ said Lord Becconsall, letting go of her hand as though it was red hot and making his bow rather stiffly. He then gave her a look which seemed two parts frustration and one part irritation, before turning and marching away, his back ramrod stiff.

‘Harriet, I despair of you,’ said her aunt as Harriet sank to the chair at her side, her knees shaking, her palms sweating and her insides feeling as if they were performing acrobatics.

‘There you had the chance of making a conquest of one of the most elusive bachelors in Town, and what must you do but frighten the poor man off. Whatever did you say to him on the dance floor to make him run away like that?’

She considered for a moment.

‘Only that I had no wish to marry him, when he raised the subject,’ she said daringly.

‘What!’ Aunt Susan looked aghast. ‘You turned down a proposal from Lord Becconsall? Not that I can believe he really did propose. Although,’ she mused, fanning herself rapidly, ‘he really is such a very harum-scarum young man it is probably exactly the sort of thing he would do. To fall in love at first sight and propose in the middle of Astley’s Hornpipe.’