Page 28 of The Lady Who Said No to the Duke

He raised his hat. ‘Lady Thea.’ His smile was warm and she could not resist the answering curve of her own lips.

‘Duke.’

Hal halted Juno when they were stirrup to stirrup, the two animals facing in opposite directions. ‘An awkward encounter,’ he murmured. ‘Who is that with her?’

‘Brother,’ Thea murmured back. ‘A bad lot, I gather.’

Hal continued to ride right around her until he was facing back into the group. ‘He looks it. I suggest we do not linger. May I offer you my escort once we have established that we are not being chased away?’

‘Thank you,’ she said with some feeling.

She should be above caring, Thea knew, but she felt increasingly uncomfortable under the hostile gaze of Helena Linton and the equally unsettling assessment of her brother.

It felt as though he could see right through her riding habit to her underwear, and his insolent regard made her skin crawl.

Hal was talking to the couple on his other side, and Thea nodded along to the raptures of the rider on her left whose name she could not recall and who was waxing poetical about the bare branches of the trees against the blue sky.

‘I have an appointment,’ Hal remarked as the chimes of a church reached them across the park. ‘I should leave.’

‘Goodness, is that the time? I must go too,’ Thea said. ‘Good day, everyone.’ She began to turn Lara.

‘May I ride with you to the gates as we appear to be heading in the same direction?’ Hal asked, turning Juno with one hand and tipping his hat to the group as he did so.

They rode away, with Hopkins, who had been waiting at a distance, following.

‘If that young scapegrace had ogled you for another minute, I’d have had him off that sway-backed roan and punched his front teeth out,’ Hal said abruptly. ‘Offensive young lout.’

Thea recounted what she had heard from her mother about Randolph Linton and Hal made a sound of disgust. ‘With any luck the lady’s brother will catch up with him and put a bullet where it will do most good.’

‘Thank you for rescuing me. I had an uneasy feeling that if I rode away by myself, he would follow. I have Hopkins with me, of course, but Mr Linton does not look like a man to tolerate interference from a groom.’

‘It was hardly a rescue to compare to yours of me at Lady Hampton’s ball. I am deeply in your debt for that.’

‘What would you have done if I had not appeared?’ Thea asked, curious.

‘I would have trampled through the greenery to escape, demolishing Lady Hampton’s prize exotics as I went,’ he said firmly.

‘And, if confronted by Lady Linton, I would have refused to accept that Lady Helena had been, in any way, compromised by me. I rather think that, if she chose to make a scene about it, my credit would prove rather stronger than hers.’

‘Helen has few friends,’ Thea said. ‘She has been spiteful to too many young ladies, stolen away too many beaux—and the mothers remember such behaviour. But it would have been an unpleasant scene.’

‘Very,’ he agreed with some feeling. ‘And mud always sticks, however carefully one washes.’

It felt as though they were back on their old friendly terms again. Thea felt an ease in Hal’s company that had been missing ever since her discovery of who he was.

‘Porchester seems to be showing considerable interest,’ he remarked.

Thea, her mind elsewhere, said vaguely, ‘In what?’

‘In you.’

‘Oh. Yes, I suppose so. I expect his aunt has pointed me out to him as an eligible match.’

‘I do not think he needs a female relative to decide that for himself,’ Hal said drily. ‘And I doubt the things that she would consider important about you are what attracts him.’

It took Thea a moment to realise that she had been paid a compliment. ‘There are a great many more beautiful young ladies on the Marriage Mart this Season than I. I am too tall, my hair is an unfashionable colour, I am not…um…curvaceous.’

Hal gave a snort of laughter. ‘Oh, I agree, you are not an example of what fashion has decreed is perfection for this Season. But what the modistes and the leaders of fashion and the hopeful mamas declare is perfection is rarely what a man considers desirable.’

‘And I am?’ Thea asked recklessly, staring at him. ‘Desirable?’

‘But of course. You have a mirror, have you not?’

Something was bubbling up inside her. Something she did not understand, a mixture of desire, longing, fear and old resentment.

For some reason the resentment won. ‘You called me Twig,’ she said indignantly.

‘I did?’ Hal stared back. ‘When?’

‘When we met before and you were a horrible boy. You said I looked like a twig in autumn, all thin and knobbly with one red leaf left on the end, and you would call me Twig.’

Juno came to a halt, presumably at a jerk on her reins. Thea carried on past Hal, circled Lara to face the other horse.

‘And that is why you would not marry me?’ Hal demanded. ‘Because as a revolting youth, I insulted you? Besides, as I recall, you did look like a twig. You do not now,’ he added hastily. ‘Your hair is a beautiful colour and you are not at all knobbly.’

It appeared to strike him that this was not perhaps the most tactful way to proceed and he shut his mouth on whatever he had been about to add.

‘Of course that was not why I refused! I mean, of course that is not why I told Mama and Papa I would not…’ Her voice trailed away.

‘At least, I recalled that I did not like you, and I hated being ordered to marry someone I had not met for years and every instinct fought against it.

It was later that I realised how much I resented the fact that you had made no effort to meet me, court me. Had just taken me from granted.

‘And then, of course, when I discovered you had been deceiving me all the time I was at Godmama’s house, that was the last straw.’

‘I apologise for the Twig,’ Hal said. ‘But youths are revolting creatures.’

‘I am quite well aware of that. I have brothers,’ Thea said stiffly. ‘To allow a childish insult to rankle is, of course, ridiculous. I do not know why we are quarrelling about it now.’

‘Are we quarrelling, Thea?’ Hal said softly.

She swallowed. ‘It feels as if we are.’

‘I have always thought that there has to be some…feeling between people who quarrel.’

‘And I had thought that we were friends. Before.’

‘Can we not still be friends?’ he asked.

But I don’t want to be friends. I want to be lovers. I want to marry you.

‘Yes, of course we can,’ Thea said.

There must have been something in her tone, or perhaps her expression, because the smile was no longer in his eyes. ‘But you have not forgiven me, have you? I do not mean the twig comment,’ he added. ‘No, do not answer, I do not think I have forgiven myself, so why should you?’

That sounded bitter. Thea lifted one hand, perhaps to reach out, but Hal glanced over her shoulder and said, ‘Your groom appears concerned. I think I should leave. Good day to you, Lady Thea.’ He touched his whip to the brim of his hat and rode away, the big grey mare surging into a canter as though her rider could not put distance between them fast enough.

Thea sat watching as horse and man grew smaller and finally vanished behind some distant trees.

‘My lady? You’ll become chilled if you stay still much longer.’ It was Hopkins, and she had not even heard him ride up beside her.

What had just happened? Had Hal been close to saying that he still wanted to marry her for more than her ‘eligibility’?

Could she summon up enough courage to show him that she wanted him too? Had she enough courage to risk rejection?

* * *

Hal told himself not to look back. It felt as though he had broken something and he had no idea what, or how he had done it. Or what he wanted from Thea. For Thea. A friend, yes. A wife? She would be perfect, except for the small matter of her not wanting to marry him.

The idea of an arranged marriage, a ‘suitable’ marriage, had never concerned him before, not that he had given it much thought, not until he had seen it through Thea’s eyes.

So, friendship, yet somehow that no longer seemed enough.