“I don’t think you and I have ever exchanged a friendly word,” she said. “You may notdislikeme, but you’re not particularly warm toward me. Why would you go out of your way to do me a favor?”
“Because I owe you,” he said. “Because you’re right. Youdidhelp me last night, and I repaid you with accusations. I had every reason to be suspicious, of course, but as it turned out, my suspicions were false. I’ll help you now, and that will settle the score.”
“I see. You don’t want to be in my debt.”
“No, I don’t.”
Lavinia wanted to turn down his help under those circumstances, but she knew it didn’t make sense to do that. Her father was doing all he could to give her away to someone of his choosing. The duke might be able to help her find someone of her own choosing.
“Wear a green gown tonight,” he advised. “Do you have one?”
“I do.”
“It will complement your eyes. We’ll begin then.”
He turned and walked away before she could say anything else, before she could accept or reject his offer of help. But she knew that if he had waited, she would have told him yes.
CHAPTER 4
“Ididn’t expect to see you here, Seth,” his friend Allan confided. Allan was the Duke of Harbeck and the host of this house party, but he was also one of Seth’s oldest friends. The two gentlemen had attended university together, and Seth often felt that Allan knew him better than anyone else in the world outside his own family.
Certainly he had enough knowledge of him to realize how unlikely it was for Seth to attend an event like this one. Even though Seth knew his friend was criticizing him gently, it also felt good to be understood. “I wasn’t going to come,” he confessed. “My mother persuaded me.”
“Well, you can’t stay in the house all the time,” Priscilla said. “Allan, it’s such a pleasure to see you again. This is a lovely party.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, Your Grace.” Allan was always a model of manners and etiquette, even though he hadknown Seth’s mother from the time the two gentlemen had been children. “And I’m very glad to have you here as well.”
“At least one of us is enjoying themselves,” Priscilla said rather sniffily. “I would have thought Seth would do a better job of socializing, but I haven’t seen him make a single social connection yet. Perhaps you might persuade him to come out of his shell a bit, Allan.”
“Mother, you don’t see everything I do,” Seth said. “You must know that.”
“Tell me who you’ve spoken to since we’ve been here, then,” she challenged.
Seth hesitated. The best answer he could give would be Lady Lavinia. He was strangely taken with her, given the circumstances under which they had met—not to mention the bizarre, almost aggressive tone in which she spoke to him. It was clear that she didn’t like him, and he shouldn’t have liked her, but he couldn’t help it.
But there was something about all of that he wanted to keep private. He simply didn’t want to give it away to his mother yet, to allow her to make whatever she would of the fact that he had actually met a lady who intrigued him. Either she would disapprove and spend the rest of the party criticizing Lady Lavinia, or she would approve, and that would make matters even worse. What if he had to spend the remainder of this party with his mother trying to force him and Lady Lavinia together?He liked her well enough, but he didn’t need his mother trying to turn it into something it wasn’t.
So he offered a different answer. “I spoke to Lady Genevieve at dinner last night,” he said.
“Ah, the Earl of Dorbury’s daughter?” his mother said quickly. “I saw that you were seated beside their family at dinner. You liked her, did you?”
“I thought I liked her,” Seth said. “But by the end of the evening, I had changed my mind.”
“Of course you had,” his mother sighed. “I don’t suppose any lady will ever be good enough for you, Seth.”
“Well, it was probably for the best,” Seth said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“She’s not an appropriate sort.”
“What on earth would make you say such a thing? After all, I know her family, and they’re perfectly lovely.”
“Perhaps they are. I don’t know. I hardly spoke to her mother, and I haven’t spoken to her father at all. But as for Lady Genevieve herself…well, she couldn’t have been any more inappropriate,” Seth said. “She cornered me in the garden andwouldn’t permit me to walk away from her. It’s obvious to me that she was trying to trap me.”
“You mean to say that she wanted to be caught in a scandalous situation with you?” his mother asked.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Seth said. “I saw the way her mother encouraged conversation between the two of us at dinner. At the time I thought she was simply being friendly and making introductions, and Lady Genevieve seemed nice enough. But when we met in the garden later, my opinion changed. When I tried to walk away from her, she took me by the arm and held me back. That could easily have caused a scandal.”
