younger than he was. It wasn’t as if they’d ever been close friends. They’d fallen in with each other because they were much of an age and enjoyed the same pastimes, that was all. Besides, he was having too much trouble coping with the sensation of having been punched, hard, in the gut.
Lydia, married?
‘She cannot have married him,’ he’d just about managed to gasp. ‘She wouldn’t.’ Fearing he might actually be going to cast up his accounts as he imagined her giving herself willingly to that stick-thin, papery-skinned old man he’d glimpsed striding about the grounds on the fateful day he’d taken her to the picnic Robert had thrown at Westdene, he’d shakily reached for the brandy decanter himself. ‘I only took her there two weeks ago. And I…’ asked her to think about marrying him.
‘Well, we’re not talking about a love match, are we?’ Robert had splashed a measure of brandy into a glass and passed it to him, when his own hands had failed to accomplish the task himself. ‘My father likes young women. The younger the better, apparently. And he’s so rich that he has no trouble getting them to marry him.’
The words had eaten into him like acid scoring into a printer’s plate.
This was her answer, then. The Colonel had money and he didn’t, that was what it boiled down to. She was just like all the rest.
Though at least all those eligible débutantes who’d turned their pretty noses up at him because of his reputation, and the state of his finances, had been honest. Only Lydia had fooled him into dropping his guard. Into making him…hope.
‘If your reaction means what I think it does,’ Robert had said, looking at him with such concern he knew he must have turned white, ‘then let me tell you, my friend, you’ve had a lucky escape. She’s obviously mercenary to the core. God, but I pity my sisters, having that harpy foisted on them.’
The remainder of that encounter had vanished into the red mist that had risen up and swamped him. He knew he’d said some pretty harsh things about elderly men preying on females barely out of the schoolroom, but he could not recall which of them had thrown the first punch.
It could well have been Robert. A man can say what he likes about his own parent, but he won’t tolerate hearing it from another’s lips.
Family was family, after all.
Which brought him neatly back to this darkhaired, wilful beauty, with whom he was dancing right now. One of Robert’s half-sisters from one of those wives Colonel Morgan had worn out with his unreasonable demands and filthy temper while he’d been clawing his way up the rungs of the Company army ladder. Not his first, or she would be Robert’s full sister. But did it really matter which of them it was? All that concerned him was that Lydia had been his fourth wife. He ground his teeth. His fourth.
Of course, he’d known Lydia had come to town to find herself a husband. It was why they all came, year after year, all these well-bred girls in their uniform white dresses. But he’d started to think she shrank from the prospect. He’d seen the way that dragon of a chaperon was always breathing down her neck, and how the longer the Season went on, the more she’d wilted under the constant pressure to bring some man up to scratch.
She’d started to look so fragile she’d put him in mind of a dandelion clock. All that silvery-haired trembling beauty, being held together only by a tremendous effort of will. One hard knock was all it would take to scatter her to the four winds.
Or so he’d thought.
He snorted again. When he thought of how hard she’d made him work to get her to speak without stammering and blushing…or when he recalled the sense of triumph she’d aroused when she’d shyly confided that he could take her mind off her woes just by being there…or worse—that surge of protectiveness that had swept through him that day when she’d just about fainted, and he’d caught her in his arms, and carried her into the house.
‘God, how I wish I had the right to take you away from that dragon,’ he’d bitten out as she’d turned her face into his chest with a moan. ‘I would never force you to do anything you didn’t want,’ he’d said, wishing he could drop a kiss into the curls that had been tickling his chin. ‘You’re so delicate,’ he’d said, ‘you should have someone to look after you. I wish it could be me.’
And before he’d gone three more paces, he’d loved the way she felt in his arms so much he’d found himself casting caution to the winds.
‘And why shouldn’t it be me? I’ve got to get married some day. I’ve got a duty to my family to preserve the name, if nothing else. And you know, I don’t think it would be such a dreadful chore, if it was to a girl like you. You make me feel as though I’m worth something, even though I haven’t two brass farthings to rub together.’
She hadn’t said a word in reply. She hadn’t thrown her arms round his neck and said that marrying him would make her the happiest girl on earth. Even though he knew she was determined to marry someone. She’d confided in him, just the once, that she dreaded what would happen if it came to the end of the Season without her getting even one proposal.
So the look on her face, as he’d lain her down on the sofa, had filled him with foreboding.
It could have been the result of the headache that had felled her, of course, but he’d been so worried she was about to frame the words of refusal that he’d cut her short.
‘Don’t say a word,’ he’d said, backing away hastily. He could see he was going to have to prove he could support her, even if it wasn’t in very much style. He’d noticed that his rather cavalier attitude towards paying bills had perturbed her. And she’d expressed open disapproval of his tendency to make rather reckless wagers. He was going to have to prove that for once in his life he was in deadly earnest. In short, he was going to have to raise enough money to at least pay for a ring, and a licence, and the vicar. ‘Just think about it,’ he’d said as he backed out of the room.
He’d thought she would at least have done that, while he was off fleecing every drunk too crosseyed to see what cards he held in his hands. But no. By the time Robert caught up with him at Newmarket, she’d already worked her wiles on that…jumped-up clerk! She’d coldly, ruthlessly assessed what the Colonel could give her and then…sold herself to him without a qualm. She must have a core of steel to have survived marriage to a man who had gone out to India with nothing but the clothes he’d stood up in, and burning ambition, but who’d returned to England with wealth beyond most men’s wildest dreams.
And nobody was ever going to convince him that a man could amass such a fortune, so quickly, by honest means.
‘I beg your pardon?’
Rose Morgan was giving him an odd look. ‘What was that you said?’
It was only then he realised he’d been getting so worked up he’d begun muttering under his breath.
‘I’m thinking of a poem,’ he came back smoothly. ‘Something along the lines of…Your beauty surpasses my wildest dreams, I mean to have you by any means…’
Miss Morgan giggled and blushed. ‘You really should not repeat that kind of verse to me. If Robert ever found out, he would be simply furious.’
But she did not look displeased. She simpered and looked up at him from under those long, dark lashes of hers, with just the hint of a smile hovering round her lips.
Had
