Page 29 of The Reckless Love of an Heir (The Marlow Family Secrets #4)

He would not. He could not. His feelings for Susan, were no meagre partiality, they would not be set aside.

‘There is nothing fixed between Alethea and I. I invited her to town to see if we would be compatible and to discover if a greater measure of feelings grew, but it is not Alethea who is inspiring finer feelings in me, it is you.’ He neared a crossroads in the street that required his full attention.

An enclosed carriage turned into the road, so Alethea and Stourton were a carriage ahead of them.

‘But you cannot have feelings for me.’

It was as though she were begging him not to have any interest in her, but as he’d discovered in Brighton such things would not be ordered away. ‘I cannot help how I feel. I have not chosen to be attracted to you, it is an emotion that has gathered of its own accord.’

‘Why?’ She sounded as though she could not believe anyone would be attracted to her.

He looked at her, for a moment only. ‘Because you are beautiful, strong-willed, more independent of mind than your sister, and intelligent, you spar with me… I like your wit.’

‘While you are reckless, proud, spoilt and everything I dislike.’

That was arguing against herself, not him. She was battling her feelings as strongly as he had wrestled his in Brighton. But like him, she had not won.

He glanced at her. ‘Do you like me as I like you? Perhaps there is no accounting for it, but why should we deny it?—’

‘Because you are meant for Alethea!’

‘You would have me make her unhappy then? If I married her now, I would spend every day looking at you and wanting to be with you.’

‘I will move away. Far away.’

‘To where? You have no income.’

‘To anywhere. I can find a husband or a position.’

He glanced at her again. A husband. Another man.

‘I know you have kissed no one else. You cannot have felt this for anyone else. It probably scares you. Hell and the Devil, Susan, it scares me.’ He took a breath.

‘I raced to Brighton to outrun the feelings. I could not. My affection for you is like an itch inside me, a constant feeling. I have not ceased thinking of you. Please,’ he looked at her again, as they turned into another street and neared Wellington Arch and the entrance to Hyde Park, ‘let us explore it at least. It is the same for you, I know.’ He steered the horses beneath the arch and on towards the gates of Hyde Park, past Apsley House, the Wellingtons’ residence.

He flicked the straps as they turned off the road. They were once more directly behind Alethea and Stourton.

‘You cannot pretend you feel nothing; I saw it in your eyes before we kissed and after.’

She did not answer.

He looked over. Her colour had heightened again, but at least she had ceased denying this was true.

Stourton’s carriage slowed before them and Alethea turned to beckon Henry forward, to draw up beside Stourton’s carriage.

Henry obeyed the summons. He could hardly not, and besides, he had no idea where his conversation with Susan was leading.

Susan leaned a little forward to look around him so she might see Alethea and talk. He pressed back against the seat so she need not lean so far. She glanced at him with a look of surprise before focusing on her sister.

Of course, she thought him self-centred and careless .

He and Stourton kept their horses to a walk as they rode on, side by side, so the sisters were able to talk.

Henry participated intermittently, as did Stourton – as and when Alethea drew them into the conversation.

Stourton often contributed with a beguiled smile.

He was interested in Alethea. Henry hoped Alethea had a genuine interest in Stourton, he would wish them luck.

He sighed, as Susan was speaking, leaning forward as he leaned back. It occurred to him that she might believe their kiss came from a place of reckless disregard and selfish indulgence. He had acted rashly, but it was because he did care, he could not ignore his feelings for her.

Today, when they returned to Uncle Casper’s house, or at the very latest this evening, he would tell Alethea he would not progress, and declare the depth of his emotions to Susan.

His next steps confirmed in his mind, Henry tried to relax and behave as he normally would by joining in the conversation and talking to Stourton.

When he became more engaged in the conversation, though, Alethea focused on more enthusiastic discussions with him.

Stourton looked from one to the other of them and Susan ceased to speak.

It was the first time Henry noticed that Alethea subtly cut Susan out – and it had been deliberately done.

She called him forward to drive his curricle close to speak with Susan, and used Susan to draw him into conversation.

That done… Susan was th en ignored. Just as Stourton had now served his purpose and was ignored.

In a moment when Stourton responded to Alethea, Henry looked at Susan. She was watching others in the park, hiding in full sight.

He thought back, he could not remember how things had been when they were young. But certainly, when he was injured and at home, on the rare occasions the sisters were together in a room Susan was silent and Alethea talkative. Yet Susan had not been uncommunicative when he’d been with her alone.

Perhaps that was why Susan hid herself in corners and in libraries – to escape her sister’s cuts? Self-centred and careless… Susan had very good reason to think of him thus. She had endured such cuts in his presence and he had done nothing, and even possibly played his part.

Damn.

His change of heart towards Alethea was a blessing, then.

He may be self-centred but he had never been cruel, he would loathe that in a wife.

Although he doubted Alethea realised she was doing it, it seemed a habit rather than an intent, and verbally she always protected Susan.

It was selfishness. The characteristic Susan abhorred in him.

When they left the park to return to the Forths’s, as they pulled out of the gates of Hyde Park, he looked at Susan in the moment when he flicked his reins to lift the horses’ pace into a trot. ‘I will tell Alethea tonight, I have decided against a match between her and I.’

Susan’s head spun and an expression of horror faced him. ‘No! You cannot! It would break her heart, Henry!’

‘Her heart is not involved any more than mine is.’

‘But she is set on you.’

‘We are all of us to suffer then? Is that the way you would have it? She and I to marry for the sake of a foolish promise, probably made when our fathers were deep in their cups, and you… You would choose to suffer too, because you would have to stand outside this marriage and watch us learn to hate each other. And besides, Alethea is not set on me, did you not see her flirting with Stourton?’

‘She is only flirting with him because you left her and went to Brighton.’

He glanced at Susan as a spike of anger pierced through his side. ‘What would you have had me do then? Call at your house and act as though nothing had occurred between us?’

Her grey eyes became stark with confused emotions. ‘Nothing should have happened.’ Her voice broke with the pain she had spent the last hour and a half hiding. ‘And… I do not know what to do.’ She was upset, afraid and full of guilt – he saw it. ‘I am miserable.’

‘I shall forever be miserable, Susan, if you do not agree to explore this.’

She did not respond.

He would kiss her again, that would be how he would manage this.

She would not be able to deny another kiss.

He did not then attempt to talk to her, and so they travelled the rest of the journey in silence, behind Alethea and Stourton, as Alethea continually glanced back, as though to check he was watching her.

When they reached Uncle Casper’s, Susan claimed a headache and ran away to her room, leaving him to act the damned fool in the middle of Alethea’s flirting with Stourton. It annoyed him, but not for the reasons she hoped.