His eyes dropped briefly to where her necklace glinted against her collarbone, then snapped back to her face. "You should not allow yourself to be in situations where you could be caught in scandal."
"Neither should you," she retorted, even as her heart hammered traitorously at his proximity.
"I came here to be alone."
"So did I."
"Then we are at an impasse."
"So it would seem."
The tension between them was palpable, hostile and sharp, yet somehow charged with something else entirely. Something that made Anthea's skin feel too warm and her breath come too quickly.
I despise this man,she told herself firmly.Arrogant, suspicious, insufferable?—
"You should step back, Your Grace," she said, her voice not quite as steady as she would have liked.
"You should step back, Miss Croft," he replied, his tone equally affected.
Neither of them moved.
"I—" she started, her voice embarrassingly breathless.
The doors burst open.
Anthea froze, her eyes widening in horror as Beatrice swept into the room, followed by a veritable parade of London's most notorious gossips. Lady Thornbury. Mrs. Pemberton. Lady Ashford. Half a dozen others, all of them staring with expressions ranging from shock to barely concealed glee.
"Well," Beatrice began, her voice dripping with false concern as she swept into the room. Then her gaze landed on Anthea instead of Poppy, and her composure fractured visibly. "What the bloody—" She caught herself, the coarse phrase dying as she remembered her audience. When she continued, her cultured accent had returned, but the shock beneath it was raw and genuine. "What have we here?"
Anthea might have found it amusing under other circumstances—that flash of her stepmother's true origins, the East End vowels she worked so hard to bury. It was the most honest reaction she had seen from Beatrice in years.
Caught. Thoroughly and completely caught.
Chapter Four
"Icannot believe you would be so reckless!"
Beatrice's voice filled the carriage with venomous fury the moment the door closed behind them. Anthea sat rigidly across from her stepmother, with Poppy and Veronica pressed on either side of her like trembling birds seeking shelter from a storm.
"Reckless?" Anthea repeated, her own anger simmering dangerously close to the surface. "I was protecting Poppy from your scheme."
"My scheme was perfectly orchestrated," Beatrice hissed, her face flushed with rage beneath her elaborate coiffure. "I had arranged everything—the timing, the witnesses, the location. Poppy would have been caught alone with the Duke, he would have been forced to offer for her, and we would have been saved from this interminable financial struggle. But you—" She jabbeda finger at Anthea. "You had to interfere. You had to insert yourself into the situation and ruin everything!"
"You mean Poppy would have been trapped in a marriage to a man she does not know," Anthea corrected coldly.
"As if that signifies!" Beatrice waved a dismissive hand. "Every woman of quality marries a man she does not know. That is how these matters are arranged. But now, instead of Poppy being caught with the Duke—my beautiful, biddable Poppy who would have made a perfect Duchess—you were caught with him. You, the unmarriageable spinster with a tarnished reputation and no prospects whatsoever!"
Anthea's hands clenched in her lap. "I prevented a disaster."
"You created one!" Beatrice leaned forward, her eyes glittering with malice. "Now instead of Poppy being caught with the Duke, you were caught with him. You, the veritableshrewwith a tarnished reputation and no prospects whatsoever. Do you have any idea what you have done?"
The words struck like physical blows, each one carefully aimed to wound. Anthea kept her expression impassive through sheer force of will, refusing to give Beatrice the satisfaction of seeing her flinch.
"I have done nothing wrong," she said evenly. "The Duke and I were merely conversing when you and your friends burst in."
"Conversing," Beatrice repeated with a harsh laugh. "Is that what you call standing so close together that you might have been embracing? Oh, do not think I failed to notice, girl. You were practically in his arms."
We were arguing,Anthea thought furiously.Standing close because we were both too stubborn to back down from a confrontation.But she could hardly explain that without admitting to the strange, unwanted awareness that had hummed between them like a plucked violin string.
