Page 2 of A Scandal In July
Davies was still staring at her with a combination of annoyance and dismay, but the cad in the fountain had managed to extricate himself and now leaned, dripping, on the curved stone rim.
“I say, you’re a sight for sore eyes. Don’t think we’ve been introduced. I’m Gordon Burton.”
He extended his hand, as if he expected her to shake it, and Lenore sent him a scathing glance.
“I’m not interested in making the acquaintance of a man who takes advantage of women,” she said crossly. “Go away.”
Burton’s face fell, and he limped off into the bushes, leaving a trail of water in his wake.
Davies still didn’t seem in the mood to introduce himself, so Lenore twitched her skirts and straightened her elbow-length gloves. “Well, then. I suppose I’ll go back inside. Goodnight, Mister Davies. You’ve certainly lived up to expectations.”
With that parting shot, she withdrew, hurrying back inside to the safety of her family, but the image of Rhys Davies’s face had been imprinted on her brain. And her heart.
Chapter Two
Rhys Davies was excellent at evading things, especially punches and marriage.
He’d learned to dodge the punches at his twice-weekly boxing sessions, not merely because he didn’t enjoy pain, but because the ladies seemed to love his face just the way it was. Not ruining it with a broken nose was reason enough to stay sharp as the blows flew his way.
He'd avoided marriage because the idea of settling down with just one woman had seemed extremely restrictive, despite the obvious happiness of his three siblings, who’d all tied the knot in the past few years.
Rhys was a rational man. He put no store in the ridiculous idea that some mystical force kept throwing Davies and Montgomerys together. The fact that both his brothers and his sister had ended up with members of the rival clan was purely incidental—an interesting anomaly, but one that could easily be explained by the inherently perverse, stubborn and competitive natures of both families.
If someone told a Davies not to do something, it—naturally—became the very thing that Davies most desired to do. Rebellion was in their blood, and had been since some distant ancestorDavies had fought by the side of Llewellyn ap Gruffud, the last Prince of Gwynned, in his unsuccessful quest to drive the invading English from Welsh soil, back in the twelve-hundreds.
Now, six hundred years later, it was clear the English weren’t going anywhere, and since killing each other with swords was frowned on in a civilized society, both families had relished coming up with less violent but ever-more-sneaky ways to annoy the other.
Ergo, if a Davies knew the last thing they should do was to provoke a Montgomery, it became an irresistible quest, a source of both enjoyment and deep satisfaction.
The Montgomery family felt precisely the same way, and it was no surprise to Rhys that conquering their rivals on the field of love had surpassed beating them on the battlefield. Sleeping with the enemy was the ultimate forbidden fruit, and it wasn’t at all incredible that all the years of mutual taunting had produced several successful marriages, those of his three siblings included.
Rhys had been adamant thathewouldn’t succumb to the fatal charms of some Montgomery siren, however. Even so, he’d been feeling oddly relieved at Morgan’s wedding, believing all the available Montgomery girls had been taken.
He was in the clear. The Davies Curse, as he’d started to call it, couldn’t touch him.
And then he’d spoken to the two meddling Montgomery great aunts, Constance and Prudence, who’d gleefully informed him that threemoreMontgomery chits were sailing back from Madagascar.
That news had been enough to make Rhys break out into a cold sweat, even though he’d told himself quite firmly that there could be adozenMontgomery women in London and he wouldn’t fall for any of them. It was not pre-ordained. It wasn’t his destiny. Such thinking was ridiculous.
But when their ship had been wrecked off the coast of Madagascar (and once he’d heard that nobody had died), he’d actually laughed in relief, knowing their arrival would be delayed.
And when Aunt Prudence casually mentioned that they’d finally docked in London, he’d breathed another sigh of relief to learn that the eldest of the three sisters, Caro, had already married one of their fellow castaways, his old school friend Max Cavendish, the Duke of Hayworth, on board the ship.
That still left the twins, Lucy and Lenore, and Rhys knew he’d feel a lot better once the two of them were taken out of commission, too.
Not that he put any store in the idea that he was in danger from falling for a Montgomery. Of course not.
But better safe than sorry.
He’d deliberately stayed away from London for the first few months after their arrival, lurking about at Trellech Court in Wales, but he’d been bored and lonely and itching to get back to town and the many diversions of the city during the social season.
News that Lucy, one of the twins, had married Will Arden, one of the aristocratic investors of the Drury Lane Theater, had been music to Rhys’s ears, and he’d decided to throw caution to the wind and return to the capital.
How hard could it be to avoid Lenore, the last remaining twin? He’d just make sure their paths didn’t cross until she was safely engaged to someone else, and then he’d be home and dry.
His plan had worked splendidly for several weeks, mainly due to the fact that Lenore was, apparently, spending most of her time down at Kew Gardens, advising on setting up a new hothouse for tropical plants and butterflies, her specialty.
He’d been introduced to both Caro and Lucy, and while he’d found them remarkably attractive females, there had been no lightning strike of infatuation, no hint that he was in any danger.