Page 3 of Much Ado About Hating You (Second Chance Season #2)

Two

N o matter how much one prepared for disaster, it was never enough. Particularly when the disaster’s name was Mr. Richard Clark. A cow. A cow? He’d rather wed a cow than?—

Conceited arse.

If only he’d aged into his personality. If one acted like rotting cheese, one should resemble rotting cheese.

Richard did not.

In the coach on the way to Slopevale, she’d shoved back and locked away ghostly impressions of his hands on her skin, his lips against her own. How long ago had it been since the kiss? Seven years since she’d learned to hate him, but only three years since the kiss.

She should not pretend she did not know.

He’d not changed much in the intervening time. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, a habitual gesture, but that did nothing to diminish his size, his presence. It was as if the shadows hiding him solidified, gathered in flesh and bone about him, gifting him their secret, cool appeal. No easy smile now, his lips a compressed line of irritation. And somehow, from the shadows that seemed so much a part of him, his brown eyes saw through her, into her, disarmed her. There was something in his hair, and when John stepped to the side with an inviting smile, Beatrice saw what—a tiny, purple flower that had seen better days, propped atop his ear and stuck in his dark hair.

What an odd accessory, incongruent with the whole of him. A flower in Richard Clark’s hair was like a ribbon tied round a dragon’s neck.

The light beaming across him revealed more changes—the gray hairs at his temples, the lines that struck out from the corners of his eyes and crinkled when he smiled.

He wasn’t smiling now. No, his brown eyes had clouded with something between humiliation and the desperate need to bolt. Those brown eyes flicked toward the lake as those thick brows pulled toward one another. Was he considering jumping in?

“I can push you if you do not possess the courage, Mr. Clark.”

Now those eyes snapped to her. “Pardon?”

“The lake. You were considering your options for escape, I assume.”

He rolled his shoulders backward. “Not at all.”

“Will you not greet our guest, Richard?” John slapped his back. “ Politely .”

Richard bowed. “Miss Bell. You are looking well.”

“Not so good as a cow, though.”

His lips parted, and the tiniest sound slipped across his lips. A word or a grunt or a growl, she could not tell.

“Tell me, Mr. Clark, to which devil did you sell your soul to keep your looks?”

His teeth snapped when he talked. “The same one you did, Miss Hellcat.”

“Merciful heavens.” Evelina chuckled as she linked her arm through John’s. Her golden mood matched her golden looks—bright yellow hair and green eyes brimming with mirth. The picture of marital bliss, even before the wedding. “Already at it. Brings back old memories, does it not?”

“I’d rather those memories stay buried,” John said.

“Should we leave them to their mutual disdain?” Evelina asked.

“Yes,” John grumbled. “Who knows what the children have gotten into during our long absence.”

Evelina raised an eyebrow. “It’s been ten minutes. A quarter hour at most.”

“My God. Longer than I thought.” He tugged Evelina out of the gazebo. “If we don’t leave now, they’re likely to have burnt the house down.”

Evelina’s chuckle faded as John dragged her away.

And the silence seemed to congeal around Beatrice and Mr. Clark.

He dropped his gaze and drew a line on the gazebo floor with the toe of his boot.

And when she found even the slight movement of his leg in tight breeches appealing, she inspected the ceiling.

Would he never talk? She could simply leave. No reason to suffer this awkward silence. She stepped toward the stairs.

“I hear you’ve not married,” he said.

What a rude observation. “I am not married, no.” She had, however, decided to take a lover. House parties were perfect opportunities for such dalliances, and she might as well get something out of this one. “I have not yet discovered a man wise enough to wed.”

“All men are fools, then?”

“At least all men I’ve exchanged words with. Besides, they are all too young now.”

“Or you are simply too?—”

“Do not finish that sentence, Mr. Clark.”

The curve of his lip upward dimpled his cheek and flashed a sliver of even, white teeth. He’d always possessed an unfairly lovely smile.

“The problem is the men,” Beatrice said, giving him no chance to continue his insults. “Your brother is one of the few good men I know. The marquess, I mean. Not… not?—”

“I know whom you mean.”

The exiled Daniel hung like an ill wind between them.

“Yes, well. I used to think Mr. Fisher an excellent sort of fellow, too, but then he proved himself otherwise by courting and abandoning my cousin.”

“You still have no idea what happened that day.”

“I know what I need to know!”

“You always were a hardheaded termagant,” he mumbled.

She’d show him termagant. “I see you are also not wed. And you are… what? Five and thirty?” She whistled. “Even for a man, that is rather advanced in age for bachelorhood.”

“I’ve not yet met a woman without a head hard as a brick.”

“Yes, I can see how that is a difficulty. I have not met a woman with a soft enough brain to consider marrying you.”

He made the tiniest little sound, low and long and rumbling in his throat. “I see you have not lost your sharp tongue.”

“And you have not lost your dull wit.”

Mr. Clark stepped closer, licked his fine, fine lips for a length of time that made her squirm. He crossed his arms slowly over his chest, forcing her to realize—the cad—that he had lost none of the muscle of his youth. In fact, he seemed to have acquired more of it. Did that… did that seam of his jacket actually strain ? If she looked hard enough at it, she might see thread pulled tight as a hard string, singing her toward seduction.

She swallowed the lump in her throat. His chest would not affect her.

Nor would the way his jacket sleeves barely contained the bulging biceps of his arms.

Nor the way his white cravat rushed against skin kissed by the sun.

Nor the way his hands were sinewy and strong, dark hair dusted across the tops of them.

Nor would the impossible memory of all that… maleness homing in on her, dropping kisses sweetly on her lips…

Another lump in her throat. Curses.

He leaned slightly away from her, something pleased in the angle of his lips. “I must apologize.”

“Oh yes, I’m sure you—” Wait. “Pardon?” The flutter of denied physical attraction dropped like a stone in her belly.

“I must apologize for my actions the last time we met.”

“Which actions?” she snapped. “So many of them were reprehensible.” Or rather, she wished she thought them so. “The…” She lowered her voice. “Kiss?”

His brows pulled together. “What kiss? You must be confusing me with someone else.”

Oh God, he was going to play it that way. How humiliating. “Yes, I must be.”

He uncrossed his arms and held his hands palms up for a moment before rounding his shoulders forward and sticking them in his pockets. A lock of dark hair fell in front of his eye. How could he appear both rakish and boyish at the same time?

“Seven years ago. I yelled at you.” His voice was gruff like an unused hinge. “It was not sporting of me. It was ungentlemanly, and I have long regretted it.”

“I doubt that.”

“Of course you do. But I was right then.”

He’d refused to explain to her seven years ago why he was so certain of that fact, and she would not ask now. It did not matter.

He scratched a hand through his hair, pushing the rogue lock of it into line with the others. Why couldn’t his hair have thinned over the years, retreated from his brow. It still waved thick and touchable above his ears, and as if it knew her every thought, that lock fell right back into place over his eye. Taunting her.

“I hope, Miss Bell, that we can be comfortable with one another. For John and Evelina’s sake. We are here for them, are we not?” He stuck out a hand. “Truce?”

That, not a hand extended in friendship. That, a snake, sharp teeth eager for a bite. It hissed.

She clasped her hands behind her back. He would not fool her a second time. “No need for a truce with someone whose existence I barely acknowledge.”

“You will really be so childish?” He still offered his hand, taut like a blade. His jaw knife sharp, too, and wariness in his eyes that said he was the one being cut, not her.

“It’s not childish. Simply not necessary.”

He snapped his hand away in a movement sharp enough to break bone. And with one long step, rounded her and fled the gazebo. “I see treating you like a reasonable woman is unnecessary.”

Clutching the railing, she called after him, “I’m more reasonable than a man who thinks he can shape the world to his liking in every way. Martin and Selena are more than mere box hedges you can plant and move about the lawn. Hide behind .” She’d got him. Caught hold of his pride and yanked it clear off him like a tattered cloak.

He froze, cast her a look over his shoulder that would have sent any other woman running. “You always do have to have the last word, don’t you?”

“Because my words are better than yours.” Oh, his jaw was tick, tick, ticking—a powder keg, an imminent explosion. And that vein pulsing on his forehead that the rogue lock did nothing to hide—it had leapt to angry life as the skin stretched taut over his knuckles drained of life entirely. Then he strode away, leaving her with no words, nothing but the horrifically entrancing sight of his leg muscle working beneath the wool of his buckskins.

She may have had the last word, but he’d always possessed the very finest of arses. She slapped her cheek. “What nonsense,” she mumbled. “What absolute nonsense.” She strolled the length of the gazebo and back several times, trying to work out her frustration, before finally collapsing instead with a huff on a bench.

No use denying. Impossible to do so though she very much wished she could. But her body did not care what her mind wanted. It still harbored the girlish attraction she’d felt for him ages ago when she’d thought him an easygoing man, always aware of others’ needs, working ceaselessly to make everyone feel comfortable, acting as a bridge between his two half brothers—the gentleman and the rake. Mr. Clark— Richard —had been better than them both. He’d seen her hesitant on the edges of their group and looped her into its very center, made her feel… a part of something.

An act. He’d abandoned her readily enough, allowed his friend to abandon her cousin. He’d proved himself a beast back then, and he was still one now. That should be enough to snuff out attraction entirely.

As long as she didn’t drop her gaze to his arse.

Beatrice wandered toward the others strolling about the garden. When she reached the tall box hedges that bordered the perimeter of the garden, she stopped, hesitating in the private shadows where no one could see her, but she could see all. Where was Selena? She couldn’t simply walk into that collected group of people without a clear destination. No better way to feel adrift, to feel like unwanted, floating detritus after a shipwreck.

There was Selena, talking with a man. Oh. Not just any man. Mr. Martin Fisher, tall and lean and smiling as he’d ever been.

They stood just out of reach of one another, biting their lips, studying their feet. Selena fidgeted with ribbons while Martin rubbed a gloved hand through his yellow hair. The strands of it floated up and out as he beat a rhythm with his hat against his leg. They laughed, their bodies naturally leaning, shrinking the distance between them.

And Beatrice clasped her hands against her chest. Perhaps the old hurt was gone for Selena. Perhaps she could move on now. And perhaps it was good, after all, that they had come. Selena could put the past behind her finally.

And Beatrice could find a man to teach her the pleasures of the body.

“You know,” a voice said right behind her. His voice. “You should not insult a man’s box hedges, then use them for your own nefarious activities.”

“I was merely seeking shade. It is unusually hot.” She found her fan in her pocket and snapped it open, then stalked off. A retreat. Humiliating. But necessary.

He followed. His long, smooth strides were enough for him to catch up with her and keep pace. “It is a bit hot. And only April.”

“Why won’t you leave me alone?” She snapped her fan closed, stuffed it back into her pocket.

“I couldn’t let you have the last word. It has been itching at me. I hate being itchy.” His hands were still in his pockets, rolling his broad shoulders forward, an old attempt to lessen the impact of his presence. He failed. At least with her, he did. Perhaps she was too small for the trick. When he rolled those massive shoulders forward around her, he seemed to curve himself into a soft yet impenetrable shield. He blocked the sun. He blocked the wind and the world. There had been a time it had felt like protection. Now it nipped like an annoying, yapping dog at her ankles.

“Haven’t you already had the last word?” she asked.

“That was you. I distinctly remember.”

“Oh yes. You had the first words. What were they? Hm.” She tapped her lips. “Ah. I remember. ‘No wonder she’s a spinster.’ You’d rather marry a cow than?—”

“Beatrice.” The curve of his body deepened, bringing his eyes close and glittering to her own.

She stood her ground, lifted her chin and—oh. Oh no. Unintentional that—the scant inches between their lips, the heat of his breath across her face.

“I didn’t mean it,” he whispered.

“The hell you didn’t.”

“I was angry. I… was scared. It’s been so long.”

“Scared of little me?” She fluttered her eyelashes.

“Of course. You are absolutely terrifying.” He made it sound like a compliment. “Do not pretend you don’t know it.”

“You cannot flatter me, Clark.”

“I’m not trying to, Bell. It’s the truth.”

So few words. Yet they ripped her asunder. She was insulted and complimented at the same time. Which one was right? There was no right with Richard Clark. “Oh, do go away.”

“Very well.” He stepped back, unrolling to his full height. Oh yes, there went the sun. Goodbye, light. Apparently no matter what he did, he shaped her world. “But only because I have much to do.”

She snorted. “Quite busy being a marquess’s son.”

“A marquess’s bastard , you mean, and yes, the to-do list is fathoms long. Goodbye, Miss Bell.”

She let him have the last word this time. Mr. Clark could jump in the lake and sink to its very airless bottom for all she cared. But his head was so very full of air. He just might float. Those muscles, though (her mouth was not watering), big and thick and heavy, surely they would drag him down to the silty bottom. His lack of buoyancy would ensure she and Selena survived the house party and Beatrice found a man willing to warm her bed for a night or two or three.

Let him drown, then. No matter how fine that man’s arse, she’d find one much better.