quite impossible to pursue. A gentleman might dally with willing married ladies, but never with an innocent.
He’d have to content himself with indulging in intellectual intercourse. A delight in which Miss Henley was as skilled as his former lover was in dalliance.
‘Then I shall not press you for details, but send you off to your bed,’ she said after a moment, the trace of heat in her gaze sending another wave of awareness through him.
Did he only imagine it, or did that comment imply that she, too—virginal maiden though she was—envisaged beds and a pressing together of flesh when she focused so intently upon him?
‘I shall resume my interrupted gallop,’ she continued as he sat speechless, distracted by that titillating speculation.
‘This late in the morning?’ Dragging his mind from its lecherous thoughts, Theo turned his attention back to the lady—and frowned.
Miss Henley’s face, normally a long, pale, unremarkable blank, was flushed. Her jaw was set and those exceptional hazel eyes glittered with more than usual fire.
Even more unusually, he realised, she was completely alone. Though Miss Henley often scoffed at society, she usually followed its conventions, which forbade an unmarried lady of quality from going anywhere unaccompanied.
‘Something happened this morning, didn’t it?’
Though she shook her head in denial, her quick huff of frustration and a clenching of her teeth belied that response.
‘Come now, give, give! Your groom is nowhere in sight, which means you must have outridden him, and no one attends you—not even the very attentive Mr Null.’
Her flush heightened. ‘It wasn’t well done of me to have dubbed him that. And I should never have let you trick that name out of me!’
‘Ah, but the description is so apt, I would have tumbled to it myself, had you not beaten me to it.’
To his surprise, she lifted her chin and glared at him. ‘You shouldn’t mock him, just because he is not handsome and clever and irresistible to women, like you are,’ she cried, her tone as angry as her expression.
‘I don’t mean to mock,’ he protested, surprised by her vehemence. ‘But even you admit he has the personality of a rock.’
‘Even a dull, ordinary rock has feelings.’
‘I imagine it does—and has as much difficulty expressing them verbally as Mr Nu-Nullford. Why this sudden concern? I thought you’d been trying to avoid the man! Surely you haven’t suddenly conceived a tendre for him!’
‘No, of course not.’ The fire in her eyes died, leaving her expression bleak. Breaking their gaze, she turned her horse and set it to a walk—away from him.
‘You should know you can’t be rid of me that easily,’ Theo said, urging his mount to catch up with hers. ‘Come now, finish the conversation. If you haven’t inexplicably become enamoured of Mr Nullford, why this sudden concern for his feelings?’
As she remained silent, her face averted, an awful thought struck, sending a bolt of dismay to his belly.
‘Has your mama been after you again to marry? Surely you don’t intend to give in and encourage his suit!’ When she made no reply, he prodded again. ‘Do you?’
‘No, of course not,’ she snapped, looking goaded. ‘If you must know, he made me an offer this morning. I refused it.’
‘Ah,’ he said, inexplicably relieved. ‘That’s the reason for the ride. Avoiding what will doubtless be your mama’s attack of the vapours once she learns you’ve turned down another offer. How many will that make?’
‘Far fewer than the number of women you have seduced,’ she retorted.
He laughed. ‘Probably. Although, I should point out, I’ve never seduced a lady who didn’t wish to be seduced.’
‘Why do I let you trick out of me things I should never admit? And cajole me into me saying things I shouldn’t?’
‘Probably because you know I will never reveal the truths you—and I—see about society to anyone else.’
She sighed. As if that exhale of breath took with it the last of her inner turmoil, she turned back to him with a saucy look. ‘You deserve the things I say that I shouldn’t, you know. Like the very first time you deigned to speak with me.’
He groaned, recalling it. ‘Very well, I admit, you showed me up on that occasion—which was most unkind of you!’
‘You shouldn’t have pretended to remember me when clearly you didn’t.’
‘One could hardly admit to a lady that one doesn’t remember her. I was trying to play the Polite Society Gentleman.’
‘No, you were playing Ardent Gentleman Trying to Impress a Dazzling Beauty by Pretending to Know her Plain Friend,’ Miss Henley shot back.
‘Well, even so, it wasn’t nice of you to embarrass me in front of the dazzling Miss Lattimar.’
She chuckled—a warm, intimate sound that always invited him to share in her amusement, even when it was at his expense. ‘It did serve you right.’
‘Perhaps. But it was a most unhandsome response to my attempt to be chivalrous.’
‘If I am so troublesome, I wonder that you continue to seek me out and harass me. Why not just cut the connection?’
‘Don’t tempt me! But every time I contemplate giving you the cut direct you so richly deserve, I recall how singular you are—the only woman in society who doesn’t try to attract my attention. Who says the most outrageous things, one never knows about what or whom, except that the remarks will not adhere to society’s polite conventions—and will be absolute truth. A lady who, most inexplicably, appears impervious to my famous charm. I’m always compelled to approach you again and see if you’ve yet come to your senses.’
‘Why, so you may add me to your harem of admirers?’ she scoffed. ‘I shall never be any man’s property. But all this begs the question of why, if you were merely returning from a night of pleasure, you felt the need for a gallop.’
He hesitated, knowing it would be better to say nothing. Yet he was drawn to reveal the whole to perhaps the one person with whom, over the last few months, he’d inexplicably come to feel he could forgo the façade and be honest.
‘Come, come, bashful silence isn’t in character! You bullied me into revealing my secret. You know I won’t stop until I bully you into revealing yours.’
‘You are a bully, you know.’
‘And now who is being unkind?’ she tossed back, grinning. ‘So, what is it? Have the Beauteous Belinda’s charms begun to fade?’
He gave her a severe look. ‘You know far too much about discreet society affairs about which an innocent maiden should be completely unaware.’
‘Oh, balderdash!
