excused himself from the group he chatted with and made his way to Miss Burke’s side. ‘Touché, Lady Alixe,’ he said in low tones for her ear alone. ‘You will have to do much better than that.’
Her eyes flashed, but her chance for a rejoinder was cut short by the arrival of carriages and horses. There were a few moments of organised pandemonium while Lady Folkestone sorted everyone into vehicles and those who wished to ride.
Alixe chose to ride. Merrick watched Alixe mount the roan mare, taking in the leaping head on the pommel of her side saddle. She was something of a serious horsewoman, then. No one would consider jumping without it. That she considered jumping at all said something about the quality of her riding. She reached down to adjust the balance strap on her stirrup, further testimony to her competence. That was when he looked more closely at the hideous habit. Its lines weren’t ugly. In fact, the outfit was efficiently cut. It was merely the colour. Where other women wore traditional blue and greens, she’d chosen a mousy grey that did nothing to enhance the amber sherry of her eyes or the chocolate lustre of her hair.
* * *
‘You don’t fool me for a moment, Alixe,’ he said casually once the crowd had separated into groups along the road. The road was only wide enough for two to ride abreast and the riders had neatly paired off with the partner of their choice. Merrick would remember what a formidable hostess Lady Folkestone was. No doubt, this outing was designed with matchmaking in mind, the road chosen for this exact purpose. There’d be plenty of chances for the young couples to exchange semi-private conversations while in plain sight of others along the road to the ruins. It was a stroke of brilliance on his hostess’s part.
‘What fooling would you be referring to?’ She kept her eyes straight ahead, her tone cool.
‘This attempt to be invisible, not to mention unattractive. It will take more than that to get me to beg your father to reconsider, or to send me running back to London, refusing to honour my agreement.’
‘Perhaps I like this habit. Perhaps you err by insulting a lady’s dress.’
Merrick laughed out loud. ‘You forget I saw your evening gown a few nights back. At least one item in your wardrobe suggests you have some sense of fashion. As for your “liking” the habit, I do think you like that riding habit. I think you like being invisible. It gives you permission to sail through life without being noticed and that makes you unaccountable. People can only talk about things they see.’
That made her head swivel in his direction. ‘How dare you?’ Now she was angry. The earlier cool hauteur had melted under the rising heat of her temper.
‘How dare I do what?’ Merrick stoked the coals a little more. He liked her better this way—she was real when she was angry.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I do and I want to be sure you know what I mean. I want you to say it.’ The real Lady Alixe didn’t think about what she was going to say or do, she just did it, like kicking him under the table. Such a quality would make her unique, set her apart from the pattern-card women of the ton. Well, maybe not the kicking part, but there was a certain appeal in her freshness. The real Lady Alixe had a natural wit and a sharp understanding of human nature. The masked Lady Alixe was prim and invisible and quite the stick-in-the-mud. That Lady Alixe thought too much and acted upon too little, tried too hard to be something she wasn’t—a woman devoid of any feeling.
Merrick took in the smooth profile of her jaw, the firm set of her mouth. There was plenty of feeling in Lady Alixe. She’d simply chosen to stifle it. It would certainly help his cause if he could work out why. Then he could coax it back to life.
She wasn’t going to answer his question. ‘It’s not in your best interest to ignore me, Alixe,’ he prodded.
‘I know. Don’t remind me. If I ignore you now, I’ll spend the rest of my life ignoring you as my husband.’ She rolled her eyes in exasperation. If the road had allowed room for it, Merrick was sure she’d like to have trotted on ahead. But she couldn’t keep running from this; surely she knew it.
Just when he thought he’d made her squirm a bit mentally, forced her to face the reality of her situation, she startled him. ‘You are quite the hypocrite, St Magnus. How dare you accuse me of being invisible for the sake of unaccountability when you’ve made yourself flagrantly visible for the same reason. Don’t look so surprised, St Magnus. I warned you I knew men like yourself.’
‘I warned you I knew women like you.’
‘So you did. I suppose that gives us something in common.’
* * *
Merrick gave her the space of silence. He wasn’t impervious to her feelings. He understood she was angry and he was the only available outlet for that anger. He also understood he was the only one with a chance of truly emerging victorious from this snare. He could turn her into London’s Toast and walk away. He’d still be free to go about his usual ambling through society. But Lady Alixe’s days of freedom would be over whether he succeeded or not. He did feel sorry for her, but he could not say it or show it. She would not want pity, least of all his. Honestly, though, she had to help him a bit with this or they would end up leg-shackled and her chance to choose her fate would be sealed. She was too intelligent to be blind to that most obvious outcome.
* * *
Alixe kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead. St Magnus’s silence was far worse than the light humour of his conversation. His silence left her plenty of time to be embarrassed. She wanted to take back her hot words. They’d been mean and cruel and entirely presumptuous. She still could not believe they’d tumbled out of her mouth. She wasn’t even sure she truly thought them, believed them. She’d known St Magnus for a handful of hours, far too little time to make such a damning judgement. It might have been the unkindest thing she’d ever said.
She snuck a sideways look at him in the periphery of her vision. Thankfully, he did not look affected by her harsh words. Instead, he looked confident and at ease. He’d chosen to ride without a hat and now the sun played through his hair, turning it a lovely white-blonde shade aspiring debutantes would envy. Buttermilk. That was it. His hair reminded her of fresh buttermilk.
‘Yes?’
Oh, dear. He’d caught her staring—gawking, really—like a schoolroom miss. But his remarkable blue eyes were friendly, warm even. ‘I’m terribly sorry. I spoke out of turn. It wasn’t well done of me,’ Alixe managed to stammer. It wasn’t the most elegant of apologies; needless to say she had had very little practise apologising to extraordinarily handsome men with buttermilk hair and sharp blue eyes that could look right through her if they so chose.
He gave her a half-grin. ‘Don’t apologise, Lady Alixe. I know what I am.’ That only made her feel worse.
Now she’d really have to make it up to him—as if someone like her could ever make anything up to someone like him. But her conscience demanded she try.
* * *
She started by giving him a tour of the ruins. The ruins were in two parts. There was an old Roman fort and the villa. Since the fort was closer to the space the group had appropriated as the picnic grounds, she started with that. Afterwards, they joined the other guests on blankets strewn on the ground, where she promptly began a polite but boring conversation about the state of food being served.
‘Why is it, Lady Alixe,
