“Min…” He shifted the reins to one hand and reached for her arm, but she jerked away.
Blast and the devil. What was a fellow to do when his friend was silently weeping—and a woman, and in public? He could hardly put his arms around her, or they really would have to get married.
And Minhatedthat idea.
He stared glumly at the ears of his horses until one of them threw up a restless head, bored at standing still. He didn’t even remember halting them. They’d be getting cold. All he needed was to injure his chestnuts—yes, think about horses, he told himself as he set them to a walk again. It was easier than his wretched misery at every helpless sniffle coming from his side.
They’d cost him a fortune, these chestnuts, even more than the matched blacks he’d bought six months ago. Maybethatwas what Blatherstock wanted to talk to him about. Or chastise him for, more like.
But if Jack’s stable expenses had grown significantly, at least he’d put a stop to his gaming. It’d only been a few months of boredom the previous winter. A sort of fretful, hollow urge forsomethingthat’d caused Jack to seek the dubious excitement of deep play. Several significant losses had, however, brought him to his senses. Exactly as he’d explained to Blatherstock the last time the man had seen fit to hound him.
Min was now silent. But though she’d stopped crying, and though he’d rationalised his own expenditure and come up with a dozen reasons Blatherstock needn’t bother him, he couldn’t shake the feeling that folly was all around him, dogging his steps, laughing in the cold breeze. He felt as stiff as his poor horses; the dull grey sky had sunk into his bones.
“Why is it so horrible?” he asked. “The thought of being engaged to me?”
She took a very long time to answer. And her voice was quiet.
“It’s a terrible trick to play.”
“So it’s a moral objection? Not an objection tome?”
“You—” The word came out hot, but the rest were spoken with quiet control. “I’d never marry you.”
“But exactly, that’s the joke of it! It’s a trick on the world and all its greedy sharks, not a trick on each other.Weknow we’re never going to get married, the very idea is laughable when we’ve never been…that…to each other. But what a prank to play! It’d be our finest yet. Don’t you remember when we dusted your face with flour and I got you to lie crooked under that tree and Nell thought you were dead?”
Her hands pinched together in her lap.
“I remember, Jack. I remember how I hated it.”
“What? No…why are you crying again?”
She turned her head resolutely. “I am not.”
“Fiddle!”
Another sniff was all the reply she made. The fingertips of her gloves grew a little damper. Jack clenched his jaw, but before he could attempt to discover the reason for Min’s upset, they were hailed by a distant shout.
“Ho there!”
Bowling along the path at a smart pace was Captain Sedgewick in what looked like a hired phaeton, the springs creaking, the horses badly matched. Jack snorted, but there was a simmering anger close on the heels of his amusement.
“This, Min,” he said in a low voice as the still distant Sedgewick grew closer, “is exactly the sort of impertinent nonsense I want to save you from.”
“Captain Sedgewick is free to go for a drive if he chooses.”
“Oh, entirely free! Yes, defend him—I saw how sorry you felt for him earlier when I teased him about his vehicle. You’re too tender hearted, by far; you have no idea what men like him—”
“He isyourfriend.”
“And I know better than to trust my sisters to him.”
“I amnotyour sister.”
“I didn’t say that you were!”
“Andyouare in love withhissister.”
He gaped for a moment, stupid as a fish. “I am not—That is beside the point! It’syouI’m talking about. The man is hunting you like a hound after a fox, and I won’t permit it.”
