ANNIE BURROWS - Regency Rumour - Never Trust a Rake / Reforming the Viscount

All the poor man wanted was to express his thanks in the only way he knew how—by offering her the chance at retribution. And she had thrown it all back in his face.

She especially did not like the fact that just now, when he’d walked into the room, she had reacted exactly the same as her aunt had done. The only difference between them was that her pride had kept her from showing it—that, and the fact that she would not for the world expose her aunt and cousin to ridicule by having a man like that snub them, if he should choose to do so.

It was bad enough that at the moment even the waiters would not deign to notice them.

If only she hadn’t turned down his offer to make her the toast of the ton , if only she hadn’t been so ungracious, so ungrateful, everything might have been so different.

So deep had she fallen into a spirit of self-chastisement that she very nearly walked right into the large male who stepped into her path.

‘Lord Deben!’

How on earth he’d managed to intercept her, she had no idea. Last time she had permitted herself to look at him he had been on the other side of the room.

‘Miss Gibson,’ he said, inclining his head in the slightest of bows. ‘Trying to avoid me, perchance?’ He spoke softly, his lips scarcely moving.

‘N-no, not at all! I thought you were …’ She felt her cheeks heat.

His lids lowered a fraction. A satisfied smile hovered briefly about his sensual mouth. ‘I have merely been complying with your wishes. You made it very plain you wanted nothing further to do with me. I was not, especially, to pollute your family’s drawing room with my sinfully tempting presence …’

Her cheeks grew hotter still. ‘I was angry and upset. I spoke hastily. I was rude. And …’ she lifted her chin and looked him full in the face ‘… I apologise.’

The smile stayed in place, but it no longer reached his eyes. It was almost as though he were disappointed in her.

‘But then you have had your revenge upon me, haven’t you?’ she continued gloomily. ‘So I suppose that makes us even.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know exactly what I mean,’ she snapped. She hated it when he put on that supercilious how dare you speak like that to me? look.

‘When you said “On your own head be it,” it was because you knew just what would happen after you took me out driving in the park. Ever since that afternoon, my aunt’s drawing room has been besieged by the most dreadful people all wanting to know who I am and how we are related.’

The smile returned to his eyes.

‘No doubt you quickly put them in their place. I only regret not having been there to witness their discomfiture at your masterly control of the cutting comment.’

‘I did not make any cutting comments to anyone. I told you, they were in my aunt’s drawing room. I simply explained …’ she continued, encouraged by the fact that he was smiling, even if it was at her expense. For he looked like another man altogether when he smiled like that, with genuine amusement. Younger, and an awful lot more approachable. ‘… that I was two and twenty.’

‘Which naturally put paid to the initial rumour that you must be my long-lost love child, conceived during my reckless youth.’

Her eyes widened. She had not thought he would speak quite so frankly. Although to be fair, she was the one who had started alluding to the scurrilous things that were being said about her.

‘You heard that one as well?’

He nodded, gravely. ‘For my part, I said that although I appreciated the compliment, even a man with my reputation with the ladies was unlikely to have begun my amatory career at the age of nine.’

‘And speaking of your reputation,’ she said darkly, ‘I had no idea when I accepted your invitation to drive in the park that you had never done so before with a woman who is not your mistress.’

His smile vanished completely. ‘Who told you that?’

‘That you only take a mistress up beside you?’

He nodded grimly.

‘I don’t think I’d better tell you his name,’ she said, suddenly fearful for the vengeance a man who could look so cold might take on the bacon-brained youth who’d let that piece of information slip. ‘Besides, another of the … gentlemen present soon stopped that line of speculation by declaring that he wouldn’t credit it unless he also heard that you had developed some kind of problem with your eyesight.’

‘He said what?’

‘Hearing failing now, too, hmmm? Perhaps you ought to sit down. At your age, you need to start being careful.’

‘At my age? I am hardly into my thirties, you impudent …’ He took her by the arm, steered her out of the room and up to a buffet, manned by a brace of footmen who had so far been ignoring her with masterly aplomb. With a few terse words, he arranged for them to take a tray of refreshments to her aunt and cousin, then whisked her into a small recess beyond the end of the last sideboard.

‘You will inform me, if you please, the name of the man who insulted you in your drawing room …’

‘But why?’ She opened her eyes wide, in mock surprise. ‘He only echoed what you yourself said in the park.’

‘Nothing of the sort. I made a list of your best features, in an attempt to persuade you that you had as much chance of dazzling a man as Miss Waverly, should you care to …’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, because Mr Crimmer soon settled his hash.’

‘Who is Mr Crimmer?’ His eyes narrowed on her intently. ‘Is he the suitor you were crying over at Miss Twining’s?’

‘Oh, no. He’s not my suitor at all. It was when Lord … I mean, the man who had said your eyesight must be deteriorating said that he could have understood it if it had been Mildred up beside you, because she was a … I think his exact words were a game pullet , that Mr Crimmer, who is in love with my cousin Mildred, you know, lifted him off his chair by his lapels, bundled him out of the house and threw him down the front steps.’

She paused, peeping up at him cheekily over the top of her languidly waving fan. Her eyes were brimful of laughter.

She was not angry about the incident. If anything, he would have said she was vastly amused by the antics of the boors who had invaded her aunt’s house. He leaned back against the wall and folded his arms across his chest.

‘Pray continue,’ he drawled. ‘I simply cannot wait to hear what happened next.’

It was, he realised, completely true. He was affecting boredom, but he did not think he had enjoyed a conversation with any other female half so much during the entire two weeks he had been deliberately avoiding her. Not that he’d had anything that could accurately have been described as a conversation. He had definitely attempted to start several, with various young ladies who could lay claim to both impeccable lineage and trim figures, but they always petered out into a sequence of ‘yes, my lord’ and ‘no, my lord’ and ‘oh, if you say so, then I am sure you must be right, my lord’. It had been like consuming a constant diet of bread and milk.

Running into Henrietta Gibson was like suddenly finding a pot of mustard on hand, to lend a piquancy to the unremittingly bland dishes he’d been obliged to sample of late.

‘Well, the man who’d called Mildred a game pullet was rather annoyed to be treated with such disrespect by a mere cit,’ Henrietta continued, ‘and informed Mr Crimmer of the fact in the most robust terms. And Mr Crimmer replied that a real gentleman would never speak of a lady with such disrespect, to which that man replied that Mildred was no lady, only a tradesman’s daughter.’

‘You heard all this?’