Marguerite Kaye - Scandal At The Midsummer Ball - The Officer's Temptation / The Debutante's Awakening

She turned her back on him. Fergus held the door wide open. ‘Leave us, if you please,’ he said firmly to the butler.

She waited until the last of the footmen had closed the door in the butler’s wake, before she turned to Fergus with raised brows.

Fergus leaned back against the closed door, eyeing her appraisingly. ‘I wish us to speak plainly.’

‘I suspect that is more of a command than a wish,’ she replied with a shadow of a smile. ‘May I assume, Colonel Kennedy, that this plain speaking does not involve a proposal?’

Her expression remained aloof, but in those china-blue eyes, there was a tiny hint of fear. There could no longer be any doubt that her snubs had been deliberate. Oddly, Fergus found this reassuring. ‘You may indeed,’ he said, crossing the room towards her and pulling out a chair from the stack waiting to be set around the pianoforte, waiting until she sat daintily down upon it before sitting astride another, facing her. ‘What I want to know, Lady Verity, is not whether or not you’ll accept my hand, but why you agreed to consider a proposal from me in the first place.’

He watched her closely, the struggle between prevarication and truth well disguised but there, none the less, in the tightening of her clasped hands, the way her eyes roamed restlessly around the room. Finally, to his relief, she seemed to reach a decision, straightening her shoulders and meeting his eyes unwaveringly.

‘It is not that I find you in any way objectionable, Colonel. On the contrary, you have borne my appalling behaviour with admirable restraint.’

She smiled then, a reserved smile, but a genuine one, allowing him a glimpse of the attractive woman behind the ice-maiden façade she routinely presented to him. He could, finally, understand why her admirers were legion, but knew too that he would never be one of them. There was still an element of calculation in the way she teased, something in her manner, a sense of entitlement that made his hackles rise. Lady Verity was lovely, and she was charming, and she knew it.

‘It is not I, but your uncle who will mete out any punishment when he discovers we are not willing to make the match he has engineered between us.’

Lady Verity blanched. ‘I fear my uncle will be furious with me.’

Fergus cursed under his breath. What a selfish oaf he had been, so caught up in his own dilemma that it hadn’t occurred to him that his were not the only strings being pulled by the twin puppet masters. ‘I apologise. I have been so concerned with the implications for my own fate that I had not thought of yours.’

‘What implications, Colonel?’

‘My posting to Egypt will be cancelled. My career as a tallyman of numbers will be extended indefinitely.’

‘How ironic. It is the posting you desire so very much which is precisely the stumbling block for me, you see. I confess that I have, to my surprise, found you to be honourable, and intelligent, and—yes—extremely attractive,’ Lady Verity said, blushing faintly. ‘Colonel Kennedy, under different circumstances, I am sure we would suit very well, for you are clearly a man whose star is on the rise, and without false modesty, I believe I would make an excellent diplomatic helpmeet, were you to be posted somewhere civilised like Paris or Rome. But Egypt! Heaven forfend, that does not suit me at all. I simply won’t be despatched to some fly-blown outpost. There, is that plain enough speaking for you?’

Completely taken aback, Fergus laughed. ‘Plain, and very unexpected. It is ironic indeed, that my idea of heaven is your idea of purgatory.’

‘No doubt you think me shallow. Perhaps I am. I prefer to think that I recognise that this particular English rose would not flourish in the desert, would rather wither and die. I know my limitations, Colonel.’

‘One of which is an inability to speak as frankly to your uncle, or even your aunt.’

Lady Verity sighed. ‘You don’t understand. I owe the duke and duchess a great deal. Since my mother died, I have been treated as the child they could not have. I have already turned down several advantageous proposals. I am testing their patience to the limit.’

‘And so this time, rather than incur your uncle’s wrath once more, you thought to shift the blame on to me.’

‘I am sorry. I had no way of knowing how much it meant to you. It is easier to think only of oneself when one is not actually acquainted with the other party.’

It was a very uncomfortable truth. ‘You are quite right,’ Fergus said, ‘it is a chastening thought.’ He got to his feet and began to pace the room. He ran his fingers across the strings of a harp, producing an appropriately discordant, jarring sound. There was no getting around the facts. He could not marry Lady Verity. The loss of his precious posting made his heart sink, but almost at once, his mood felt lighter. The uneasy feeling he’d been carrying about with him since he arrived at Brockmore Manor was quite gone. After all, a posting was hardly a lifetime’s commitment, while a wife—lord, but he’d had a narrow escape.

‘I do wish you would stop pacing, Colonel. I feel as if I am up on some sort of charge.’

‘I fear that will be my fate, when Wellington hears—but that is none of your concern.’ Fergus resumed his seat. ‘I wish I had not agreed to come here, but now that I have, and the eyes of your uncle and his guests are upon us, I think the worst possible course of action would be for me to leave, and leave you exposed to the inevitable gossip and ensuing scandal.’

Lady Verity shuddered. ‘No. Good grief, no.’

‘Aye. Well, in that case I suggest we pay lip service to our allotted roles. We’ll be polite to one another—you’ll stop publicly snubbing me—but there’s an end to it. And at the end of the week, I’ll speak to your uncle and tell him that I don’t think we’ll suit. I’ll make sure he understands that the failure to do his bidding lies at my door and not yours.’

Lady Verity flushed. ‘That is very good of you. I wish—I do sincerely wish, Colonel, that I was brave enough to shoulder the blame myself, but...’

‘There is no need for you to feel guilty.’

She smiled tightly. ‘I am afraid that if I try hard enough, I won’t. You make me rather ashamed of myself, Colonel.’

‘It was not my intention.’

‘None the less.’ Lady Verity got to her feet. ‘You are a good man. A most admirable one. I hope that the Duke of Wellington can for once overlook his ego, and award you the posting regardless. His loss would also be Egypt’s.’

‘But not yours?’ Fergus said, smiling.

She laughed. ‘I am a good deal less sure of that than I was this morning, but I suspect that matters not a jot. You would not have offered for me, Colonel, had I set out to charm you from the beginning, would you?’

‘I honestly don’t know.’ He frowned, running his hand through his hair. ‘I came here with every intention—at least, I thought I did, but—it’s such a cold-blooded way to make a match, is it not? I think we’ve both had a lucky escape. Best leave it at that.’

‘Unflattering as the sentiment is, I am forced to agree. I can only hope that the next suitor my uncle produces for me feels quite the opposite.’

‘Perhaps you should consider finding your own suitor.’

‘A novel thought.’ Lady Verity extended her hand.

Fergus brushed her fingertips with his lips. ‘It is indeed.’

* * *

Slipping her feet into a pair of soft leather slippers, Katerina quit her bedchamber. The house was quiet in the lull between the flurry of housework and the laborious preparations for dinner. The duke’s guests were, according to the Programme of Events, off on a mystery tour. Descending the stairs to the main guest floor in the hushed silence, she felt the eyes of the ancestral portraits which lined the walls around the stairwell on her, and succumbed to curiosity. Each painting was neatly labelled and in chronological order. The illustrious history of the Brockmore family was laid bare in picture form, from the first earl, his countess and their nine children, through to the current, fourth duke and his duchess.