Page 17 of The Lady Who Said No to the Duke

T hat could have gone a lot better , Hal thought grimly as he lowered Thea’s limp form onto the sofa.

Even as he wondered whether to make things even worse by ringing for a glass of water, she opened her eyes, then sat up.

‘You!’ she said again, her voice shaky. Then it hardened as her gaze came back into focus. ‘You lied to me.’

Hal shook his head. ‘I did not, although I admit I hid a great deal from you.’

‘ A great deal? And you are still doing it,’ she said fiercely. ‘You said your name was Hal Forrest.’

As he entered, Hal had noticed a copy of the Peerage lying in a side table next to a stack of partly addressed invitation cards. He picked it up and brought it over to the sofa, flicking through the pages until he came to his family’s entry.

‘See?’ He held it out and indicated the place. ‘Avery Henry de Forrest Castleton Vernier, sixth Duke of Leamington. I always hated Avery and I’ve gone by Hal ever since I was old enough to insist on it.’

Thea waved the heavy red volume away with a flick of her hand. ‘That is just a quibble and you know it. You deceived me, you and Godmama both. What were you doing there?’

‘Calling on my godmother on my way to the last visit of my tour of my estates before I came down to London,’ he said, laying the book down out of reach of an angry woman. The Peerage was heavy enough to fell an ox.

‘The final estate is really hardly more than a farm in Norfolk, it was no problem to leave that for the moment and stay for a while as our Godmama wanted.’

‘I am so glad it did not in any way inconvenience you,’ Thea said, her icy tone at odds with the heat in her eyes.

‘I told you why I was there, why I had run away, and you said nothing about who you were. Nothing .’ She broke off, her bosom rising and falling with her agitated breathing.

He saw the realisation strike her. ‘They all knew who you were—Godmama, Fenwick, the other servants. Goodness knows what they must have thought.’

‘Godmama told the staff that I was travelling incognito,’ he explained. ‘They had no idea why you had arrived or that it had anything to do with me.’

Thea closed her eyes, and he suspected that she was reviewing all the things she had told him and, probably, wishing she could sink through the floor while she did so. Or more likely wishing he would be the one to sink.

After a moment, she raised her lids and regarded him stonily. ‘It did not occur to you simply to say who you were and leave ?’

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘By the time I realised what had caused your flight, you had poured out the whole story. I wanted to help and I could see that if I admitted who I was it would have been acutely embarrassing for you.’

‘Oh? And this is not?’ she demanded.

‘I believed that we had established a friendship. An understanding. I thought that when I called here we would have the opportunity to discuss the situation. And I could apologise.’

‘For what, exactly?’ She was not giving an inch, he thought, admiring her backbone even as he was inwardly wincing.

‘In the first place for taking you for granted and neglecting you all those years. Your description of my unthinking behaviour hit home hard, believe me. You have every right to feel angry about that.’

He meant it. Lord, what an unthinking fool he had been to accept that such a thing was settled and that he had no need to bestir himself.

What if he had met Thea and found he thoroughly disliked her?

What if she had been a shrew, or a selfish, self-absorbed woman who would have had no care for their dependants, their children?

And that was just the practical side of the matter: he’d had no right to assume that he could simply command another person’s life like that.

Thea’s chin went up. ‘Oh? I have your permission to be angry, have I? Thank you so very much, Your Grace. That might be the case, but I am finding it very hard to forgive your neglect of me before now. You say you are sorry, you have apologised and I am sure that soothes your conscience, but it does not make me feel any better about it.’

Hal nodded, accepting that. It was difficult to see how an apology and an explanation of complete thoughtlessness could compensate for the feelings she must have experienced when Thea realised she was expected to marry an almost complete stranger.

Although surely she would not have expected to make a love match? Would she?

He pushed that idea aside. He had never had any thought of making such a thing, and she would not have been raised to expect it either. People of their class married for many reasons, but love was never one of them. Now, somehow, that seemed a…lack.

Hal ignored the strange ache in his chest. He was here to apologise, not dwell on his own feelings. ‘And I am sorry for not finding a way to explain it all—to confess, if you like—before we left.’

‘I assume Godmama advised you not to.’

She had, of course, and he had allowed himself to be swayed by her arguments. ‘I am not going to blame her for what I can now see was my error of judgement.’

‘Gallant of you, but I imagine she was very happily matchmaking. Do you know, she cautioned me, very seriously, about the dangers of developing a tendre for you. That was clever, putting the idea into my mind, sowing the seed. There is nothing like having something forbidden, advised against, for making one start thinking seriously about it.’

Hal winced. He hadn’t known about that and there was no safe way to comment on Lady Holme’s tactics, so he stuck to why he had kept his silence. ‘It would have been exceedingly awkward to travel back together if you had known.’

Thea took a deep breath. ‘I am trying to be fair, and it is not easy, believe me. I can see that it would have been difficult to interrupt me at tea that first afternoon. I was tired and emotional and I should not have poured out all that, I should not have spoken to a stranger about the Duke—about you—in such terms. That was my fault. And once I had said all that, I can appreciate that it was awkward to explain who you were. If you had announced who you were at that point I… I do not know what I would have done.’

Hal felt the stirrings of hope. Was Thea going to forgive what he now saw was a colossal error of judgement by himself and their godmother?

‘But you could have done it,’ she said, drowning that flicker of optimism.

‘You could have done it the very next day. It would have been embarrassing, but we could have had a frank conversation and agreed how we were going to deal with the situation. I am finding it very hard to understand why you did not do that.’

Because I was attracted to you , was the honest answer, he realised.

He had enjoyed her spirit and her anger, he had come to sympathise and see very clearly where he had been at fault—and he had not wanted to spoil the growing friendship he could feel developing between them even after so short a time.

He had seen that it would be no hardship whatsoever to marry this woman.

‘I knew that if I came here as myself then it would be a surprise—’

Thea gave a very unladylike snort.

Hal ploughed on. ‘A shock then, but I hoped that our friendship would carry us through it. That we could have that conversation I had suggested to you and we could agree to take this slowly. I could court you and you would see…come to see that our marriage would be for the best for both of us.’

Even as he spoke, he could tell that he had made things worse, not better.

‘ Court me? A few bunches of flowers, your escort to the theatre, a drive or two in the park, I suppose. No doubt that would allow me to experience the sensation of my parents being pleased with me for doing my duty. In fact, it would give me the opportunity to see sense . That was what you almost said, wasn’t it? ’

Thea was on her feet pacing now and, even as he felt the lash of her anger, Hal could admire her for holding firm to what she felt was right for her.

He was not going to lie to her, not any more. ‘Yes, I almost said that, but I realised it was…inappropriate.’

She stopped, stock-still in the middle of the room.

‘It would be very easy to say , Yes. But that only makes things easy for the immediate future.’ It sounded as though she was talking to herself, speaking her thoughts aloud.

Then she turned and there was no doubt she was addressing him now.

‘I have the rest of my life to consider—and so do you.

‘Do you know, I almost wished that you—plain Mr Hal Forrest with no title and rather old clothes, a shabby carriage and apparently not much in the way of an estate—were just a little more eligible. Nothing fancy, you understand. A viscount perhaps, or heir to something. Then I could imagine our friendship growing and you being someone that Papa might reluctantly accept for me once I had refused the Duke.’

‘But, Thea, I am that person. Even to the clothes and the coach—I prefer to be comfortable when I’m travelling, and my decent carriage broke an axle in Northumberland.’

‘No, you are not that man. The clothes and the carriage are mere details. You are the man who deceived me, who manipulated me, who made me believe he was my friend. The man who did not have the…the guts to explain the situation to me and trust me to discuss it in a rational manner.

‘You set a trap for me, Your Grace, and I am not going to put my neck in the snare.’

Something very uncomfortable was happening in the region of his breastbone, and the urge to bluster and protest and explain was an almost physical force. Hal choked it back down.

‘In that case,’ he said as calmly as he could manage, ‘I can see there is only one thing to do. We must—’

‘We must nothing ,’ Thea began as the door swung open and her parents entered, both of them beaming.

‘Now,’ said the Earl, looking exceedingly pleased with life. ‘What have you to say to me, Duke?’