the cheek from just in front of the ear, across the jawbone and on to his neck, there was a half-healed scar that vanished into the white lawn of his neckcloth. His right hand, she saw, was bandaged. The limp was not affectation after all; he had been hurt, and badly. Dita stifled the instinct to touch him, demand to know what had happened as she once would have done, without inhibition.
Beside her she heard her friend’s sharp indrawn breath. ‘I do not regard it, sir.’ Averil nodded with cool dismissal and walked away towards the chaperons, then turned when she reached their sanctuary, her face comically dismayed as she realised Dita had not followed her.
I should apologise to him, Dita thought, but he ogled us so blatantly. And he cut at me just as he had that last time. Furthermore, he apologised only to Averil; her own looks would win no compliments from this man.
‘My friend is as gracious as she is beautiful,’ she said and the amber eyes, still warm from following Averil’s retreat, moved back to hers. He frowned at the tart sweetness of her tone. ‘She can find it in herself to forgive almost anyone, even presumptuous rakes.’ Which is what Alistair appeared to have grown into.
And on that note she should turn on her heel, perhaps with a light trill of laughter, or a flick of her fan, and leave him to annoy some other lady. But it was difficult to move, when wrenching her eyes away from his meant they fell to his mouth. It did not curve—he could not be said to be smiling—but one corner deepened into something that was almost a dimple. Not, of course, that such an arrogant hunk of masculinity could be said to have anything as charming as a dimple. That mouth on her skin, on her breast …
‘I am rightly chastised,’ he said. There was something provocative in the way that he said it that sent a little shock through her, although she had no idea why. Then she realised that he was speaking to her as a woman, not as the girl he had thought her when he had so cruelly dismissed her before. It was almost as though he was suggesting that she carry out the chastisement more personally.
Dita told herself that one could overcome blushes by sheer force of will, especially as she had no very exact idea what she was blushing about now. He did not recognise her; even if he did, what had happened so long ago had been unimportant to him, he had made that very clear at the time. ‘You do not appear remotely penitent, sir,’ she retorted. Sooner or later he would realise who he was talking to, but she was not going to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging him and thinking she attached any importance to it.
‘I never said I was, ma’am, merely that I acknowledged a reproof. There is no amusement in penitence—why, one would have to either give up the sin or be a hypocrite—and where’s the fun in that?’
‘I have no idea whether you are a hypocrite or not, sir, but certainly no one could accuse you of gallant behaviour.’
‘You struck first,’ he pointed out, accurately and unfairly.
‘For which I apologise,’ Dita said. She was not going to act as badly as he. Even as she made the resolution her tongue got the better of her. ‘But I have no intention of offering sympathy, sir. You obviously enjoy fighting.’ He had always been intense, often angry, as a youth. And that intensity had miraculously transmuted into fire and passion when he made love.
‘Indeed.’ He flexed the bandaged hand and winced slightly. ‘You should see the other fellow.’
‘I have no wish to. You appear to have been hacking at each other with sabres.’
‘Near enough,’ he agreed.
Something in the mocking, cultured tones still held the faintest burr of the West Country. A wave of nostalgia for home and the green hills and the fierce cliffs and the cold sea gripped her, overriding even the shock of seeing Alistair again.
‘You still have the West Country in your voice,’ Dita said abruptly.
‘North Cornwall, near the boundary with Devon. And you?’ He did not appear to find the way she had phrased the statement strange.
He misses it, too, she thought, hearing the hint of longing under the cool tone. ‘I, too, come from that area.’ Without calculation she put out her hand and he caught it in his uninjured, ungloved, left. His hand was warm and hard with a rider’s calluses and his fingertips rested against her pulse, which was racing. Once before he had held her hand like this, once before they had stood so close and she had read the need in his eyes and she had misunderstood and acted with reckless innocence. He had taken her to heaven and then mocked her for her foolishness.
She could not play games any longer. Sooner or later he would find out who she was, and if she made a mystery of it he would think she still remembered, still attached some importance to what had happened between them. ‘My family lives at Combe.’
‘You are a Brooke? One of the Earl of Wycombe’s family?’ He moved nearer, her hand still held in his as he drew her to him to study her face. Close to he seemed to take the air out of the space between them. Too close, too male. Alistair. Oh my lord, he has grown up. ‘Why, you are never little Dita Brooke? But you were all angles and nose and legs.’ He grinned. ‘I used to put frogs in your pinafore pocket and you tagged along everywhere. But you have changed since I last saw you. You must have been twelve.’ His amusement stripped the eight years from him.
‘I was sixteen,’ she said with all the icy reserve she could manage. All angles and nose. ‘I recall you—and your frogs—as an impudent youth while I was growing up. But I was sixteen when you left home.’ Sixteen when I kissed you with all the fervour and love that was filling me and you used me and brushed me aside. Was I simply too unskilled for you or too foolishly clinging?
A shadow darkened the mocking eyes and for a moment Alistair frowned as though chasing an elusive memory.
But he doesn’t seem to remember—or he is not admitting it. But how could he forget? Perhaps there have been so many women that one inept chit of a girl is infinitely forgettable.
‘Sixteen? Were you?’ He frowned, his eyes intent on her face. ‘I don’t … recollect.’ But his eyes held questions and a hint of puzzlement as though he had been reminded of a faded dream.
‘There is no reason why you should.’ Dita pulled her hand free, dropped the merest hint of a curtsy and walked away. So, he doesn’t even remember! He broke my foolish young heart and he doesn’t even remember doing it. I was that unimportant to him.
Daniel Chatterton intercepted her in the middle of the room and she set her face into a pleasant smile. I am not plain any more, she told herself with a fierce determination not to run away. I am polished and stylish and an original. That is what I am: an original. Other men admire me. It is good that I have met Alistair again—now I can replace the fantasy with the reality. Perhaps now the memories of one shattering, wonderful hour in his bed would leave her, finally.
‘Never tell me that you do not idolise our returning adventurer, Lady Perdita.’ Apparently her expression was not as bland as she hoped. She shrugged; no doubt half the room had heard the exchange. She could imagine the giggles amongst the cattery of young ladies. Chatterton gestured to a passing servant. ‘More punch?’
‘No. No, thank you, it is far too strong.’ Dita took a glass of mango juice in exchange. Was the arrack responsible for how she had felt just now? Without it perhaps she would have seen just another man and the glamour would have dropped away, leaving her untouched. As she raised her drink to sip, she realised her hand retained the faintest hint of Alistair’s scent: leather, musk and
