didn’t want to be there had become so overwhelming he had no longer been able to bear it. The heat of that stuffy room had made his head feel muzzy. The tension that hadn’t left him since he’d taken the decision to do his duty by his family had become too great for a body so weakened by prolonged illness. He’d ached all over. He’d scarce known how to keep a civil tongue in his head. He’d had to leave, to get out of there and head home.
Only it hadn’t been his home he had gone back to. It was still Mortimer’s house. Another jarring reminder that he wasn’t living his own life any more.
It would do him good, he suddenly realized, to knock somebody down. He had been spoiling for a fight ever since he’d walked away from his grandfather, bristling with the determination to prove once and for all that he was a better man than Mortimer and Charlie put together.
‘Get up,’ he snarled, advancing on the redcoat, who still had his arms round Lady Jayne. Mortimer and Charlie were both beyond his reach, one being dead and the other in Paris. And a man could not come to blows with his own grandfather, no matter what the provocation.
But this redcoat was just about his own height. And though he was younger, and probably fitter, the lad had not been tempered into fighting steel in the heat of battle.
The man got to his feet. Slowly.
‘You are a disgrace to your uniform,’ he said, angered still further by his slovenly posture when anyone under his command would have known to snap to full attention when he’d used that particular tone of voice. ‘I would derive great personal satisfaction in seeing you brought up on a charge for this night’s work. No officer should force his attentions upon an unwilling female. If you were under my command you would be lucky to escape with a flogging.’
But before he had a chance to add that he would give the man a chance to settle the matter between them with their fists, Lady Jayne leaped to her feet and interposed her own body between him and the soldier, crying out, ‘Oh, no! You could not be so cruel!’
‘Cruel?’ He was stunned by her reaction. ‘You think it is cruel to rescue you from a situation that is plainly causing you distress?’
He steadfastly ignored the little voice that reminded him that he had been spoiling for a fight for ages. That this redcoat was just in the way when he happened to be in need of someone upon whom to vent his frustration. That if he had come across a young officer in the throes of a passionate clinch with a female as pretty as this one in Portugal he would have winked at the man, wished him luck and been on his way.
Ah, but this was no sloe-eyed señorita, nor the willing wife of a local grandee, he argued back. This was a young English lady, and she had not appeared willing. On the contrary, she’d been struggling with the lout. She’d looked frightened.
‘I admit, I was a little taken aback by Harry’s ardour,’ said Lady Jayne. ‘For he has never really kissed me like that before. But mostly I was afraid somebody might come by and discover us.’
‘Do you really expect me to believe you were only trying to fight him off because you feared discovery?’
Though now he came to think of it she must have come here of her own free will, even if she had taken fright at the last minute.
‘Yes!’ she cried, lifting her chin to glare at him defiantly. ‘Not that I expect a man like you to understand,’ she said with contempt. ‘But since my grandfather has forbidden Harry to approach me we can only meet in secret.’
He had not thought he could get any angrier. But her words were so inflammatory. What did she mean, a man like you? Why could she not just express her gratitude that he was here to rescue her? And, most of all, why wouldn’t she get out of the way so he could just lay into this sneaking, slovenly excuse for a soldier?
‘Did it never occur to you that your grandfather might have your best interests at heart? That it would be better to stay away from him?’
Lady Jayne was a great heiress. Her grandfather, so Berry had informed him, had no direct male heir, and it was common knowledge that he intended to bequeath to her the bulk of his fortune. Some penniless nobody was obviously not a suitable partner for a girl who would inherit so much. All this Harry had to recommend him, by the looks of it, was a handsome face, a pair of broad shoulders—and a ruthless streak.
‘So you mean to betray us?’ she said frostily.
Harry moved to stand beside her. He took her hand in his and raised it to his chest, where he pressed it to his heart.
‘This is not the end. I shall not let it be. I swore that I would not let anything part us and I meant it. I still mean it.’
‘Oh, Harry,’ she said, turning to him with a woebegone face. ‘I shall never forgive myself if he has you flogged.’ She shot a glance of loathing in Lord Ledbury’s direction. ‘I knew I should never have agreed to this meeting.’
And as they stood there, gazing soulfully into each other’s eyes, Lord Ledbury felt his irrational spurt of anger drain away.
If she was in love with this man, no matter what his own opinion of him was, no wonder she had behaved the way she had done in that ballroom earlier. Lord, he knew just how she must have felt. Had not his own grandfather ripped him from all that he knew, all that he loved, and set his feet on another path—one that he would never willingly have trod?
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ he snapped, annoyed that he was now obliged to continue in the role of upholder of propriety or he was going to look a complete fool. Even though half of him wished he could walk away and leave them to it. ‘Stop acting like some heroine out of a bad melodrama and call your maid over. It is time you went home.’
She made no such move—only hung her head, looking shamefaced.
‘Oh, Lord. Never say you came out without her?’
She could not even raise her eyes to meet his when she nodded.
This was getting worse and worse. He could not in all conscience leave her alone with a man who had no scruples about enticing a trusting young woman to meet him in secret, at dawn, without even the benefit of a maid to keep things within spitting distance of propriety.
‘I suppose I shall be obliged to escort you home, then,’ he snapped. ‘And we’ll have to hope nobody catches the pair of us—else we shall be the ones embroiled in scandal.’ Which would completely ruin his plans.
He’d decided that since marrying was his inescapable destiny he would jolly well find a wife who would be such a superlative countess that generations to come would speak of her in awe. He wasn’t necessarily going to find her in Almack’s. He’d made a point of launching his campaign in the house of a man of little wealth, but sterling character, to demonstrate that attaching a woman of high rank was not his primary objective. He wanted the woman he married to have a certain … something that everyone would recognise.
Even him, when he came across it.
There was no way he was going to live down to his family’s low expectations by tumbling into a match with a girl he scarcely knew in a way that reeked of suppressed scandal.
‘Well, what are you waiting for, man?’ He turned the full force of his frustration on the hapless young soldier. ‘Get back to your barracks before I think better of covering for the pair of you. And
