ANNIE BURROWS - The Major Meets His Match

‘And the stakes?’ Zeus had gone all narrow-eyed and sneering again, as though he suspected Jack of trading on their long-ago connections to take advantage of him.

What the hell had happened to him, since school, to turn him into such a suspicious devil?

‘Why, the usual, naturally,’ said Jack. Which was almost as good as drawing his cork, since his head reared back in momentary surprise.

‘The...the usual?’

‘Yes. The usual between the four of us, that is.’

‘You...’ For a moment, Zeus looked as though he was about to express one of the softer emotions. But only for a moment.

‘Which reminds me,’ he drawled in that ghastly, affected way that set Jack’s teeth on edge. ‘You have already lost one wager.’

‘Are you demanding payment?’ Jack planted his fists on his hips and scowled. ‘Are you accusing me of attempting to welch on the bet?’

‘No,’ he said softly. ‘I was only going to suggest...double or quits?’

For a moment the four of them all stood in stunned silence.

And then Archie began to giggle. Atlas snorted. And soon, all four of them were laughing like the schoolboys they had once been.

Chapter Three

‘Nobody is going to ask you to dance if you don’t sit up straight and take that scowl off your face,’ said Aunt Susan, sternly.

They might if Aunt Susan hadn’t already repulsed the young men who’d shown an interest in her when she’d first come to Town, on the grounds that they were all fortune-hunters or scoundrels.

Nevertheless, Harriet obediently squared her shoulders and attempted the social smile her aunt had made her practise in the mirror every day for half an hour since she’d come to Town.

‘That’s better,’ said Aunt Susan out of the corner of her mouth which was also pulled into a similarly insincere rictus. ‘I know it must chafe that Kitty is having so much more success than you, but you must remember that you are no longer in the first flush of youth.’

Harriet only just managed to stop herself rolling her eyes. She was only twenty, for heaven’s sake. But eligible gentlemen looking for brides, her aunt had informed her, with a rueful shake of her head, wanted much younger girls. ‘It’s perfectly natural,’ she’d explained. ‘Gels usually make their debut when they are seventeen, or eighteen, unless there’s been a death in the family, or something of a similar nature. So everyone is bound to wonder why any girl who looks much older hasn’t appeared in society before. And,’ she’d added with a grimace of distaste, ‘draw their own conclusions.’

‘Please, dear,’ she was saying now, ‘do try to look as if you are enjoying yourself. Gentlemen are much more likely to ask you to dance if you appear to be good-natured.’

Harriet was beginning to suspect that actually she was not the slightest bit good-natured. She’d always thought of herself as being fairly placid before she’d come to Town. But ever since her aunt had descended on Stone Court like a fairy godmother to take her to the ball, she’d been see-sawing from one wild emotion to another. At first she’d been in a froth of excitement. But then had come the painful discovery that no amount of fine clothes could make her compare with her prettier, younger, more sociable cousin Kitty. After that, in spite of her aunt’s best efforts to bring her up to scratch in the short time they had, had come the discovery that actually, she didn’t want to conform to society’s notions of how a young lady should behave. And now she just felt as if she had a stone permanently lodged in her shoe.

‘Now, there is a young man with whom you might safely dance,’ said Lady Tarbrook, nudging Harriet in the ribs. And drawing her attention to the slender young man who’d just come into the ballroom. A man she’d been dreading coming across for the last two weeks. Ever since he’d fallen off his horse and tricked her into kissing him.

‘Though I shouldn’t like to raise your hopes too much. He hasn’t asked any eligible female to dance since he came to Town. Not that he’s actually attended many balls, to my knowledge. Well, not this sort of ball,’ Lady Tarbrook was muttering darkly. ‘Not his style. Not his style at all.’

No, his style was roistering all night with a pack of reprobates, then taking part in reckless wagers that ended up with him almost breaking his stupid neck. To say nothing of molesting people who went to help him.

And yet Aunt Susan was prepared to give her permission to dance with him. In the unlikely event he were to ask her.

It beggared belief.

‘Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ said Aunt Susan, fluttering her fan wildly and smiling for all she was worth in his direction.

While Harriet did her best to shrink into the meagre upholstery of the chair upon which she was sitting. Oh, where was a potted plant, or a fire screen, or...a hole in the ground when she needed one?

Ulysses—for that was the only name she knew him by—ran his eyes round the ballroom as though searching for someone before setting off in the direction of a group of military men gathered in the doorway to the refreshment room.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Lady Tarbrook with resignation. ‘He must have wanted to speak to one of his...associates. I don’t suppose he will stay long.’ She folded her fan as though consigning him to history.

While Harriet fumed. The...the beast! He’d looked right through her, as though she wasn’t there. Without the slightest sign he recognised her.

Well, he probably didn’t. He probably kissed random women senseless every day of the week. The kiss that she’d spent so many nights recalling, in great detail, before she went to sleep, and at odd moments during the day as well, had obviously completely slipped his mind.

Because it had meant nothing to him.

Because she meant nothing to him.

Well—he meant nothing to her, either. And nor did that kiss. Just because it was her first and still had the power to make her toes curl if she dwelt on it for too long, did not mean that...that...

Oh, bother him for getting her thoughts into a tangle.

A loud burst of laughter gave her the excuse she needed to let her eyes stray to the doorway of the refreshment room and the group of men who’d opened up to admit him to their company.

She couldn’t help noticing several other women turning their heads in his direction, too. And eyeing him with great interest. Which came as no surprise, seeing the way he moved. There was a vitality about him that naturally drew the eye, for it was so very different from the languid stroll affected by the other men present tonight. And in the candlelight his hair, which had just looked a sort of dull brown in the shade of that chestnut tree, gleamed with traces of gold.

She flicked her fan open and plied it vigorously before her face. Which she turned away from the part of the room in which he was standing. She would not stare at him. She would do nothing to attract his attention, either, in case he did have a dim recollection of her. You could sometimes get even quite stupid people to remember things if you constantly reminded them of it, or so Aunt Susan had told her, when she’d despaired of ever grasping the myriad rules of etiquette that seemed to come naturally to Kitty.

But then Kitty had been drilled into good behaviour from the moment she was born.

‘I don’t know what your mother was thinking, to leave you to run wild the way she has,’ Aunt Susan had said upon discovering that Harriet had only the vaguest notion of how deeply to curtsy to people of various ranks.

‘She didn’t let me run wild, precisely,’ Harriet had countered, because there had definitely been times when Mama had applied the birch. When she’d used phrases she’d picked up in the stables at the dinner table, for instance. ‘It’s just that she doesn’t think things like teaching me to curtsy are terribly important.’ Nor having a Season, come to that. In fact, she was beginning to think her mother might have a point. How on earth could anyone pick a life partner this way? Nobody really talked to anyone. Not about anything important. Everyone in Town seemed to Harriet to behave like a swarm of giddy mayflies, flitting above the surface of a glittering pond.