of them were in earnest, she didn’t suppose, and anyway, Mildred had learned a salutary lesson the afternoon of the brawl. Men of this class did not take women of her class seriously. They might flirt with her, but behind all the flattery lurked a contempt for her background that would prevent any but the most desperate fortune hunter from offering her anything more than carte blanche. Whereas Mr Crimmer, for all that he was cursed with a stutter and a fatal tendency to blush, had more than proved the strength of his feelings with his fists.
She took her place on the sofa on the far side of her aunt from Mildred, so as not to interrupt her light-hearted flirtation, and flicked open her fan. How soon would they be able to go home? And how soon after that would she be able to return to Much Wakering, and the very obscurity Miss Waverley had taunted her with as though it would be some kind of punishment? She sighed. Although she wrote regularly to her father, it seemed an age since she had seen him.
Perhaps he would come up to town for a meeting, or a lecture. He often took off at a moment’s notice, after having read an advertisement in the paper.
Her hand slowed and stilled, as she imagined him going to one of his meetings, and unexpectedly hearing her name bandied about in the way Miss Waverley had just described, for Miss Waverley was never going to let the matter drop. She was so angry about having her plan to entrap Lord Deben thwarted that she would most likely take every chance she got to blacken Henrietta’s name. And she was so popular with the men that she would never lack an audience.
A cold sensation gnawed at the pit of her stomach. She did not care for herself, but her father would be terribly upset to find he’d pitched her into such an uncomfortable situation.
Not to mention her brothers. When they returned home on leave, what would it do to them to find their sister talked about in that horrid way?
Oh, they would understand without having to be told how it was that their absent-minded father had come to send her to stay with the Ledbetters, which was what had led to the general assumption that she had a background in trade, but it would not make their chagrin on her behalf any the less. And even though Lady Dalrymple had enlightened some people, there were others, like Miss Waverley, who would prefer to believe the worst.
But it wasn’t that, so much, which would worry her whole family. It was the nature of her entanglement with Lord Deben. She had done absolutely nothing wrong, but Miss Waverley was sure to make it sound just as bad as it could be.
It was a kind of poetic justice. Because she had rashly pursued Richard up to London, she was going to be branded as the kind of girl who chased after all men. She felt a bit sick. By pushing her father into hastily arranging what he thought was a Season for her, she might well have dragged her entire family into the mire.
She could still hear the drone of Mildred’s two admirers buzzing in her ears, and see gorgeously apparelled people milling about the room, but she felt strangely detached from them all, guilt roiling through her like a poisonous miasma so thick that it practically blotted them all out.
Until Lord Deben strolled across the part of the room into which she was staring sightlessly.
Giving her a faint ray of hope. People were going to gossip about her, now, whatever she did. And that being the case, she would much rather they did so because she had become, mysteriously, the toast of the ton, than a byword for vulgarity.
She was not giving in to base temptation. She was not doing this because she wanted to put Miss Waverley’s nose out of joint. She was not thinking of how often it would mean she would have to spend time in Lord Deben’s stimulating company. It would just be far better for her male relatives to believe she’d had a successful Season, than pain them by becoming a laughing stock.
Rising to her feet, she walked across the room to Lord Deben’s side and, when he did not at first notice her hovering on the fringes of the crowd that had gathered round him, she reached through the throng and tugged at his sleeve.
A matron put up her lorgnettes and stared at her frostily. One of the men nudged another and they both smirked.
Lord Deben eyed the little hand that had just creased the immaculate sleeve of his coat, and then, slowly, followed the line of her arm to her face.
‘Miss Gibson,’ he said.
For one terrible moment, she thought she might just have committed social suicide. If he chose to snub her now, she really would be finished. Silently, with all her will-power, she begged him to help her. And after what felt like an eternity, but was probably only a second or two, his face broke into a charming smile.
‘My dear, I completely forgot. You are quite right to remind me.’ He took her hand and pulled her into the charmed circle. ‘You will excuse us, gentlemen? Ladies? Only I did give my word that …’ He trailed off, pulling his watch out of his pocket and examining it. ‘And I am already overdue. We were so deep in conversation,’ he said to Henrietta, ‘that I quite forgot the time.’
He tucked her hand firmly into the crook of his arm and gave it a reassuring pat. The others moved aside as he led her out of the door and along a corridor. After only a few paces, he opened another door, peered inside, then pushed her into a deserted room, shutting the door firmly behind them and turning the key in the lock.
‘Thank you.’ She breathed a sigh of relief. A brace of candlesticks stood upon the mantel over the empty grate, so that although the room was not very inviting, at least they were not in complete darkness.
‘Did you doubt me?’ He folded his arms and leaned back against the door. ‘I gave you my word that should you apply to me for aid, I would be there.’
But he’d never really thought she would come to him so quickly. His heart was only just returning to its regular rhythm, after the surge of jubilation that had set it pounding when she’d pleaded with him, mutely, to help her. It went some way to compensating him for having made the first move this evening. He’d still been rather annoyed with himself for doing so when two weeks earlier he’d sworn that the next time they spoke it would be because she had come to him. And yet the moment he’d seen her, feigning indifference, he’d been compelled to confront her, even going to the lengths of barring her way when she would have left the room.
‘Yes, that is why I came straight to you. It was only that I was not sure you would understand.’
‘My dear, you would not approach me, push through a crowd who fancy themselves the most important people in the land, and tug on my coat sleeve unless it was a dire emergency.’
Which was why he had not been able to resist making her wait for his response. For a few moments, he’d had the supreme satisfaction of having her exactly where he wanted her—metaphorically, if not literally, on her knees before him—and it had been so sweet a feeling that he’d prolonged it as long as he could. It had been just punishment for the damage she’d unwittingly caused his pride.
‘The most important people in the land? Oh, dear!’
‘They only think they are,’ he said with contempt. ‘But never mind the conversation you interrupted. I am far more interested in learning what has occurred to induce you to abandon that fierce pride of yours and come to me as a supplicant. Not that I object, you understand.’
‘Sometimes,’ she said, observing the smugness of the smile that curved his lips as he referred to her as a supplicant, ‘I really, really, dislike you.’
He
