Louisa clenched her fingers in her pretty fawn gloves. “Nothing could prevail on me to marry that man, Caroline, and you know it. Besides, it was never an official engagement—it was just an agreement between two children who knew no better.”
“You were twenty,” Caroline reminded her.
“And a fool.”
“All of us in love are fools.”
Louisa glared at her friend. “One dayyouwill fall in love, and then you’ll be sorry.”
“What a dull premonition. Although you are quite right, of course. If I were to fall in love, I would indeed be sorry.” She laughed and snaked her arm through Louisa’s. “But we are talking about you. Have you met him since his return?”
“Only once.” Louisa frowned at the memory. That had been last summer, when she’d been assisting his sister in marrying Lord Sunderland. “It did not . . . We never spoke of the past.”
“Well,” Caroline said brightly, steering Louisa abruptly left, “now is your opportunity.” With a speed Louisa had not hitherto suspected she possessed, she weaved past a large gaggle of young ladies and stopped before two gentlemen deep in conversation, who were obliged to stop and acknowledge them.
One of the gentlemen was Mr Comerford, a dear friend.
The other was Henry Beaumont, Viscount Eynsham, the man who broke her heart.
He looked, irritatingly, just as she remembered him, if a little taller and broader. The war had taken what was already handsome and given it a battle-honed air she could not deny was relentlessly appealing. Crisp and cool as the frost-laden air; stern and unforgiving as the weathered stone of the house. Remote, so remote, except when his gaze landed on her. Then there was a flash of awareness, perhaps even of heat.
He had vowed to wait for his wedding night, and she wondered if he had kept his promise, if he had remained chaste despite the temptations that were no doubt thrown his way.
She hoped he had; she hoped he had not. It ought to have made no difference to her.
Yet as his eyes dropped to her mouth for a heartbeat too long, she felt as though she were a girl again. Utterly under his spell, so in love with him that the sensation was painful in her chest.
He blinked, and the illusion was gone. Her hurt flooded back, her confusion and her anger.
“Lady Bolton,” he said after only the barest hesitation. His throat worked, the lines of it tightening. “I was not expecting to see you here.”
Louisa glared at Caroline, who gave an innocent smile in response.
“Lord Eynsham,” Louisa said, giving him a cold nod before turning to George and smiling. “George!” She used his given name in the hopes it would annoy Henry. “It’s good to see you. May I introduce you to Lady Augustus Spenser."
"Caroline," she said with her habitual throatiness. "As you are a dear friend of Louisa's." She aimed her words at George, but both men bowed. George with a level of flamboyance that almost hinted at foppishness, and Henry in crisp, clean lines. Every movement he made looked planned in advance and carried out with military precision.
I have it on excellent authority that Lord Eynsham is on the hunt for a wife.
No doubt that, too, had been a pre-thought-out decision.
Which, naturally, did not concern her at all.
George, the devil take him, immediately offered his arm to Caroline. She accepted with a coquettish smile, and Louisa was left to bring up the rear with Henry. He fell into step beside her, hands clasped behind his back.
Silence, thick and heavy, settled over them.
Their encounter nine years ago, when he had refused to flee with her to Gretna Green, played out in vivid detail before her. Her pleas, and his certainty that he could not do it.
Her anger burned in her throat.
“Say it,” he said. “You may as well.”
She glanced at the stern resignation on his face. “Say what? Have you been anticipating this meeting all these months?”
“I would be a fool to think we could both be in London and avoid each other.”
And yet she had hoped for precisely that.
