An Escapade and an Engagement (15 page)

‘Th-thank you for telling me all that,’ she said. He had paid
her a very great compliment in confiding things to her that he deliberately
concealed from everyone else. And his telling her about what it had been like to
be a soldier helped her understand why he seemed so much more real than anyone
she had ever met before. He had lived the kind of life most people only read
about in books.

No wonder he often betrayed impatience with the pampered,
shallow creatures who inhabited her world.

He heard her sigh, and saw her eyes filled with a look he found
hard to interpret. Damn! He hoped he had not made her feel sorry for him. He had
just wanted her to know him and…love him for himself? His mouth twisted in
self-mockery. He was a lost cause. What was he doing, thinking he could win a
prize like Lady Jayne with tales of warfare and injury? He wanted his head
examining.

‘I began to move in Society before I was ready, it is true,’ he
said. ‘When I first went to Town doing hardly anything at all exhausted me to
the point where I often went light-headed. But I have not needed that damn cane
for the past couple of weeks.’

Now she came to think of it, that cane had been conspicuous by
its absence on the night of the masquerade.

‘The fact that you see me up on horseback, even though it is
such a slug, is testament to my convalescence. The more exercise I can take, the
quicker my weakened muscles will regain their full strength, I am sure.’

His full strength? What was that she had been on the receiving
end of at the masquerade, then? When he’d picked her up and carried her into the
conservatory it had felt as though she was wrestling with something very like a
walking oak tree.

And yet he didn’t consider himself to be back to his full
strength?

Gracious.

And then, with a wrench—and because if she didn’t get back to
the matter at hand she might spend the rest of the ride gazing in fascination at
the muscles of his thighs, or remembering the feel of his arms clamping round
her as he’d lifted her effortlessly off her feet—she said, ‘M-Milly said that
during last winter you were so poorly she sometimes despaired…’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently, the mention of Milly’s name
reminding him of the danger Lady Jayne was courting. ‘You don’t need to remind
me how much I owe Milly. But that does not alter the fact that you should not
have brought her here. Which was why I wanted to talk to you alone this
morning.’

His expression turned so grim Lady Jayne’s courage deserted
her. She loved the way he’d opened up to her. It made her feel as though she was
special to him. It would make his censure even harder to bear.

‘Oh, dear,’ she said, slackening her grip on the reins. ‘I do
not think I can…’

Mischief, sensing freedom, flung her head up and down,
curvetted, then shot away at breakneck speed.

She aimed her towards a long, slow rise, crested by a belt of
woodland into which she intended to disappear, trusting that the horse Lord
Ledbury was riding would have neither the inclination nor the stamina to
follow.

The dash up the hill took the edge off Mischief’s pent-up
energy, just as she’d known it would, and they entered the woodland at a steady
canter. Even so, she had to bend low over Mischief’s neck to preserve her hat
from overhanging branches.

Since Mischief knew the terrain, Lady Jayne did not attempt to
guide the creature too strictly, and was soon rewarded by her faith in the
animal’s instincts when they emerged into a clearing on the far side of which
was just such a broad ride as she had hoped to find.

But, instead of finding herself completely alone, she heard
hoofbeats thundering up behind her. When she looked over her shoulder, to her
complete astonishment she saw Lord Ledbury was only a few yards away. She could
not believe he had managed to get that sluggish creature to keep up with
Mischief!

Though she knew why he had done so. He was determined to give
her a scold. Not only for bringing Milly into his home but also for letting him
think she would meet him in the shrubbery and then cravenly staying away.

She wheeled Mischief round to face him.

‘I know. I am sorry. I should have let you know I was not going
to meet with you this morning,’ she blurted, before he had the chance to reprove
her. ‘I know you must be furious with me. But think, my lord. You cannot
possibly want to be caught in a compromising position with me.’

She meant, he thought moodily, that it was the last thing
she
wanted. She had not been so pernickety about
getting caught out with Kendell.

‘As if you care a rap for propriety!’

She flinched at his condemnation of her behaviour.

‘Well, I do, actually,’ she replied earnestly. ‘Especially when
it comes to you,’ she admitted, blushing. ‘I would never do anything to
embarrass or hurt you.’

He allowed his horse to shudder to a standstill. It dropped its
head to the ground, its flanks heaving wheezily.

‘Are you telling me you had no intention of punishing me for
the way I issued you with orders to meet me?’

‘No! It was not like that. I did resent the way you spoke to
me, but I had no deliberate intent to punish you. I suppose it cannot have been
very pleasant for you, waiting outside for me.’ She glanced at his leg, then at
his face. ‘I did not think.’

She looked so contrite that he could not doubt she spoke the
truth. Though she was often impulsive and thoughtless, in all the time he had
known her he had never seen her be deliberately unkind to anyone.

‘Very well. I acquit you of attempting to punish me.’ When her
face lit up he almost forgot why he had been so determined to get her alone. It
took him quite an effort to say, ‘But that does not mean I am not still very
angry with you for bringing Milly here, when it is the last place I ever wanted
to see her.’

‘No!’ She looked shocked. ‘You cannot mean that.’

‘Of course I mean it!’

‘Oh, but Richard, can’t you see that once your grandfather has
seen with his own eyes how lovely Milly is he can surely have no further
objection to you marrying her?’

‘What?’

Lady Jayne thought he wanted to marry Milly? And that his
grandfather objected? How the hell had she reached such a staggeringly
inaccurate conclusion?

He swiftly reviewed that initial interview, when he’d asked her
to take Milly shopping a few times, and shook his head. Had he said something
that had misled her?

He looked down into her earnest little face and something
inside him settled. She had not brought Milly here to deliberately flout him. To
show him that she would be friends with whomever she pleased and to hell with
him…

Quite the reverse.

She thought she was assisting a pair of star-crossed lovers.
She had spent hours teaching Milly how to look as though she was a real lady, or
at least a woman who could pass as a lady’s companion…when she had not,
initially, even wanted to come down here. Because she wanted him to find the
happiness that had been denied her and Lieutenant Kendell.

She had put her own problems to one side in order to try and
solve his.

It didn’t matter to him that she’d got hold of completely the
wrong end of the stick. She’d flung herself into this madcap enterprise with the
sole aim of making him happy. Nobody in his entire life had ever cared if he was
happy or not. Let alone gone to such lengths to attempt to secure his
happiness.

How could people think she was cold and call her such vile
names? She was not cold. She was warm-hearted. And so beautiful, through and
through.

There was a splash of mud on her face, and her hat had come
askew at some point during her mad dash for the trees, releasing one golden curl
from its confines. And there was nobody in the whole world to match her.

‘You are such a darling,’ he said huskily.

She was still looking at him warily, chewing on her lower
lip.

That luscious lower lip.

Be damned to his ambition, and his search for a bride that
would impress his family. Be damned to propriety, too. He wanted Jayne, and he
was blowed if he was going to carry on resisting her allure for one more
second.

He leaned across the space between their two mounts and before
she had time to guess his intention, before she had time to object or take
evasive action, he kissed her.

* * *

He only managed to brush his lips across hers before
Mischief fidgeted and jolted her out of his reach, but she felt it all the way
down to her toes.

She had never dreamed one such brief kiss could do that to a
girl.

She couldn’t for the life of her think what on earth had
prompted him to do it. But then her wits were so badly scattered that it was
taking all her concentration to prevent herself from sliding out of the saddle
and melting into a puddle on the forest floor.

Fortunately she was spared the necessity of having to attempt
to make any kind of verbal response, because at that very moment Mr Beresford
and his sister arrived on the scene.

‘I say, Lady Jayne, are you unhurt?’ called Mr Beresford.

‘You must be terribly shaken after the way that horrid horse
bolted with you,’ said Lucy, looking, Lady Jayne thought, a little disappointed
not to see her lying on the floor with at least one limb broken.

‘Mischief did not bolt,’ she returned coldly. ‘I gave her her
head. We both enjoyed the gallop. And now, if you will excuse me, my lord…’

Completely unable to look Richard in the face after that
bone-melting kiss, she simply indicated to her mount that she was more than
ready for some more exercise. He would not pursue her. Not even should he want
to—which she doubted. How on earth he had managed to get such a turn of speed
out of the horse he was on she would never know, but of one thing she was sure.
He would not be able to reproduce such a miracle.

Mischief needed very little prompting. Glancing over her
shoulder as she galloped out of the clearing and onto the broad ride, she saw Mr
Beresford urge his own mount in hot pursuit—determined, she supposed, to do the
gentlemanly thing by sticking close and thus being able to report the spot where
she finally parted company with Mischief—leaving his sister alone with Lord
Ledbury.

Not that it would do Lucy any good. His heart belonged to
Milly.

While hers, she realized in a moment of startling clarity,
belonged to him.

That
was why she could not bear to
think of him being miserable.

That
was why she had visions of
dwindling into an eccentric spinsterhood once she’d pictured him happily married
off. It wasn’t that nobody would want to marry her. It was that she couldn’t
imagine marrying anyone but him.

And
that
was why the merest brush
of his lips upon hers had been enough to have her practically swooning, when all
Harry’s most vigorous efforts had done nothing but irritate her.

And was that the real reason she’d brought Milly here, too?

Was she so sure, deep down, that his family would never let him
marry a girl from such humble origins that the only result of having Milly here
would be to scupper his plans to marry anyone else?

Had she become so possessive of him that she could not bear to
let any other woman take the place she had not admitted until this very moment
that she wanted for herself?

And that awful sensation she’d had when she’d imagined him
making Milly his mistress… Had that been jealousy?

She spurred Mischief on, needing speed to distract her from the
dreadful pain of facing up to her deepest, most hidden desires. Desires she’d
refused to acknowledge even to herself.

But now that she had acknowledged them she began to wonder when
it had started.

From the first moment they had met, at that ridiculous come-out
ball of Lucy Beresford’s, where she had sat sulking on one side of the dance
floor and he on the other, she had felt a connection. It hadn’t been the fact
that they were the only two there of comparable rank. No, she had sensed in him
an irritation with the way people treated him that marched with her own.

And then he’d rescued her from Harry and taken her home when he
could have landed everyone involved in hot water. And instead of bowing out he’d
plunged right into the mess she’d been in with Harry and done his level best to
prevent it all getting any worse. He’d been protective. And even when she’d
interpreted that protectiveness as being overbearing and dictatorial, and told
herself she resented him, she’d been
aware
of him.
She always knew the moment he entered a ballroom without having to look up. And
once he was there it was as if he and she were the only two people in the room.
Nobody else had any real substance.

And since he’d held her in his arms as she’d gone to pieces
over Harry’s brutal honesty she could not stand anywhere near him without
feeling the urge to…well, to wind her arms and legs right round him.

She’d told herself it was because of the comfort she’d found in
his arms. And, despising herself for being weak, thinking she needed comfort,
she’d ruthlessly repressed the urges and refused to so much as examine them.

But it wasn’t comfort she wanted from him at all. The way her
whole body had fizzed, then melted at the merest brush of his lips upon hers,
had really opened her eyes.

Somewhere along the way she’d fallen in love with him.

She supposed she hadn’t correctly identified the nature of her
feelings because she didn’t have any experience of love, first-hand. She’d
thought that the fact that Richard stood in a class of his own, in her
estimation, was because she’d never met anyone like him before—never had a
relationship with anyone, male or female, with whom she’d shared so many
intimacies or entrusted with so many secrets. She’d told herself that was why
she thought about him so often. Why, when she wasn’t with him, she wondered what
he was doing. Why any event he attended stuck in her memory, and when he wasn’t
there the evening was unbearably flat.