Page 25 of The Austen Affair
I straighten up, blowing a stray curl away from my mouth in a spitting rage. “If you had your little knickers in a twist about my conversation with Jane all this time, you could have said so, instead of pretending to be human about it. I didn’t mean to screw up, I just got excited!”
Hugh’s expression is utterly scornful. “I never dreamed that you meant to make a muck of things. The thing about you is that you do it so effortlessly.”
Blood pounds in my ears, and I struggle to keep my voice cool and derisive. “I truly cannot stand you. I’d rather be trapped in the past with Jack the Ripper. Honestly, I would. At least he wouldn’t pretend to be my friend before stabbing me in the back.”
“And I betrayed you how ?” Hugh asks, his tone scathing.
I am so shocked by this question I accidentally let some of the hurt filter into my voice.
“By being fucking mean, ” I say. “By acting like the rumors are all you need to know about me before writing me off. By telling your sister I’m a mess, not worth associating with.
By kissing me one minute and storming away the next.
I’m a goddamn person, not a robot, Hugh. That shit hurts.”
Hugh’s response is explosive. His face heats up like a poker shoved into a flame. “I’m not a robot either, Tess! I’d thank you not to call me one.”
Good. It seems I’ve hit a sore spot. I decide to poke it hard.
“Fuck you,” I say. “If you don’t want to be called a robot, then you should think about other people for one second.
Apparently you’re only kind when you’re acting.
Sorry I can’t live up to the impeccable standard you set.
Surely, I’d experience the miracle of life on a richer, more fulfilling level if I followed strict internal programming to make sure I never stumbled upon a crumb of fun. ”
A twitch spasms in Hugh’s right eye. For a moment, I think he’s had a stroke, but then he smooths away any sign of emo tion like it was never there to begin with. A real professional actor.
“Right,” Hugh scoffs. “Lucky for you, I’m sure Armstrong will give you fun in spades. Right until the time he abandons you on the highway to Gretna Green, barefoot and knocked up.”
I feel like he just punched me in the gut.
I let out a totally undignified squeak of outrage.
I could just about breathe fire. “You fucking misogynist. You really think I’m stupid enough to fall for Armstrong’s act?
And better yet, you think you’re gonna swoop in and warn me just in time.
Well, I’ve got a helluva better douche radar than you, and he gives off radioactive levels of toxicity.
If you really wanted to help me out, you would have begged off this little outing so I could stay far away from him. ”
Hugh does a bit of a double take at that; the reins go slightly slack in his hands. He gives me a skeptical once-over. “You didn’t seem to think he was so toxic last night. I saw you two getting cozy in the foyer.”
Oh my God. Realization smashes into me. The creaking door. I had been right to suspect that someone spotted me alone with Mr. Armstrong—the person just happened to be Hugh.
Suddenly I feel like the world—previously upside down for no discernable reason—rights itself. Hugh’s hot-and-cold act wasn’t the sign of an unstable mind. He thought that I’d kissed him and then immediately turned around to flirt with the very man he’d warned me against.
“Oh my God,” I say, languorous, savoring every syllable. “You were jealous. That’s why you went all bitchy last night.”
Hugh snorts, keeping his eyes determinedly on the road. “I was not jealous. There is nothing to be jealous of.”
“Oh, of course not,” I snipe.
“No, nothing, ” Hugh reiterates. But that sneaky wordsmith Shakespeare is whispering in my ear. Something about how Hugh Balfour is protesting a bit too much.
“Yes, something!” I declare. “You were in your feelings because you thought I was some kind of two-timing harlot.”
Hugh makes a sort of huffy, snorting sound. “I didn’t use those words. Don’t put those words in my mouth.”
I am absolutely fuming. My face is literally hot with creeping rage. I suspect that between my flushed cheeks and the pin curls, I look a helluva lot like a Cabbage Patch Kid brought to life.
How dare Hugh Balfour. How dare he. He really assumed that I kissed him and then immediately turned around and started throwing myself at the most obvious Regency fuckboy this side of Mr. Wickham.
And what really pisses me off? It was a damn good kiss.
An earthshaking, knee-quaking, panty-melting kiss.
All wasted now. Tainted by the accusations that have come after.
No wonder Hugh Balfour is a man with a strict methodology for how he behaves.
He obviously blows things up spectacularly whenever he goes off script.
“Well, I’ve been cheated on enough to know it’s not something I’d do to another person. So you can just strike that assumption from your opinion of me. Just one more thing you think you know about me that’s dead wrong. You can’t know how much it hurts until it really happens to you.”
Hugh grows conspicuously silent for a few seconds, and then he looks over at me, an expression in his dark eyes that I’ve never seen before. A sort of bashful, vulnerable look.
“Trust me,” he says, voice low. “I know exactly how much it hurts.”
I reject the possibility that he’s telling the truth out of hand.
Please. As if someone like Hugh—so obviously gor geous, serious, talented, wealthy, acclaimed, intelligent—could possibly have real problems. Except, perhaps, the problems he invents for himself.
His romantic life is probably a breeze, and the hardest hurdle he ever has to jump is beating back the hordes of beautiful, interested women he doesn’t want.
“What would you know about it?” I drawl.
“Trust me.” Hugh laughs a little to himself, lightly clicking the reins with a sort of nervous energy.
“Charlotte, my ex… We dated for nearly five years, long enough that my mum actually started hinting I’d better pick out a ring or end things altogether.
But I didn’t have time to finish researching rings before I found out Charlotte was having an affair with another barrister from her firm.
It had been going on for some time.” His voice now sounds rich with wry, ironic detachment.
“I suppose that having a semisuccessful actor for a boyfriend was a good icebreaker at company events, but only another legal expert could truly be her soulmate. They’re engaged now.
Sent me an invitation to the wedding and everything, the cheeky bastards.
Not that I had time to RSVP for that joyous event before being shocked straight into the Regency. ”
For a moment, my heart leaps. I take a savage pleasure in the idea that he’s sad. I’m genuinely happy someone is down here in the muck with me for once. But then that same organ goes crashing to the floor. What an awful thing for me to think. I wasn’t raised to act like this.
“Well, at least if we don’t make it back, you’ll never have to go to the wedding. That’s what I call a silver lining.”
Hugh exhales sharply through his nose, which I think might have been a repressed laugh.
“The worst part was,” Hugh says, “when I confronted her, she basically said it was my fault she cheated. When I’d been totally faithful from the jump.”
“No way!” I say, shocked. No matter time or place or subject, I’m always excited for a little gossip. And the fact that Hugh’s willing to share this with me feels like an encouraging step in the right direction.
“Yes,” Hugh says. “She said she ‘needed someone who loved her,’ as if I hadn’t told her I loved her a thousand times.
Then she said she ’needed someone who would mean it.
’ That… that I talked to her like it was scripted dialogue.
That I acted like a robot, running through ones and zeroes.
Never actually feeling, just following the program. ”
Oh God. Shame hits me like a cannon blast as Hugh says that. I am such an asshole. At least when Hugh voiced his agreement with my worst fears on that phone call with Florence, he hadn’t known I was listening. But I said that shit right to his face.
“So, thank you,” Hugh says, the bite creeping back into his voice. “For giving me a second opinion. Glad to know Charlotte was right, after all.”
“Hugh,” I say, the first words of an improvised apology on the tip of my tongue.
He responds, “Don’t.”