A strange expression twisted his lips.If Gemma didn’t know better, she would have called it something like pain.
As it was, she had no time to dwell on it because Hal had the audacity to say, “That’s the problem, Gemma.I cannot promise you a damned thing.”
She sucked in a provoked breath just as Lucy’s signature elephant tread sounded on the stairs.Knowing they were about to be interrupted, Gemma threw up her hands.“Fine.Fine!You want to play saboteur?Go ahead.It won’t make any difference.My plan will succeed, with or without your help.”
Stepping around the mattress, she left him lying on the floor with that odd look on his face, and told herself that was the last time she kissed Hal Deveril.
ChapterFourteen
It absolutely was not the last time she kissed Hal Deveril.
To her great dismay, she could not seem to stop kissing him.Behind the bar, when Lucy wasn’t looking.While walking into town behind Bess and Henrietta, who had allowed herself to be persuaded into daily strolls about the countryside.In the large front bedchamber, when he caught her up there making the beds ready.
That time, with the relative privacy and proximity to an actual bed, things had almost gotten out of hand.It was only the noisy arrival of a pair of bickering young lords that had prevented Gemma from finally becoming the debauched, wanton strumpet the Ton already believed her to be.
She wished she could pretend to be glad of the timely interruption, but as she hurried down the stairs to greet her newest guests, Gemma wished them to the very devil.
Her first glimpse of the two young men posing like bookends on either side of the hearth did not improve her mood.They were younger than she, probably closer to Lucy’s age than Gemma’s.And even if she hadn’t vaguely recognized them as hangers-on to the Duke of Thornecliff’s social circle, their mannerisms and mode of dress would have given it away.
Their breeches were tight over their padded thighs.Stiffly starched cravats held their weak chins at an improbable angle.Their waistcoats were garish.Their expressions were dull and sleepy, rather than Thorne’s infamous heavy-lidded smolder.
If Thorne was a marble Apollo carved by a master, these two appeared to be the results of amateur efforts by student sculptors working in rough clay.
Putting on her best smile, Gemma sighed inwardly.It was not easy to go straight from Hal’s strong, heated embrace to the limp handshakes produced by these two specimens, but she was determined.
Since the night Thorne and the ladies spent at Five Mile House, and the subsequent arrival of a steady-ish stream of well-heeled aristocratic guests, Gemma’s mother had made the start of a miraculous recovery.It was a relief to see her coming back to herself now that the plan was beginning to bear fruit, but Gemma did not delude herself that Henrietta’s improvement would continue if Gemma gave up on marrying well.
Each day saw Henrietta a bit more like her old self; she no longer slept the day away or huddled alone in her room, but ventured forth in one of her beloved bonnets to take the air, enjoy Bess’s cooking alongside her daughters, dabble about with the paints Gemma had unearthed from her trunks, and socialize with the guests.
Henrietta had always loved to play hostess, and it appeared to have dawned on her that living at Five Mile House was akin to hosting a never-ending house party with a revolving series of surprise guests.
Like these two fops.
“Lord Percival Merriwether, at your service,” cried the taller of the two gentlemen, at the same time as the shorter fellow nearly shouted, “Lord Bertram Archibald, ecstatic to make your acquaintance!”
This was a lot to take in.But her practiced eye quickly catalogued the fine quality and cut of their clothing, the polished shine of their Hessian boots, and concluded that they were worth at least the effort of having Lucy look them up in her copy of Debrett’s Peerage.
“My lords.”Gemma gave a pretty curtsy and looked up at them, flashing her dimple.
The way both lordlings’s stares went straight to her bodice and fastened there made her want to roll her eyes.It also made her want to nervously double check that all her laces were done up properly and her lace fichu tucked in again after Hal’s clever fingers had disarranged it, but she forced herself to straighten instead.
“Welcome to Five Mile House,” she said.“What brings you gentlemen here this afternoon?”
“Our bosom friend, the Duke of Thornecliff told us there were sights not to be missed at Five Mile House, don’t you know,” simpered Lord Percival, with a suggestive leer.
“Impeccable taste, has the duke,” Lord Bertram agreed importantly, screwing a quizzing glass into his eye and blinking affectedly.“Always knows the best places, what?”
“Oh, indubitably.”
“Yes, I say, rather.Eh what?”
The gentlemen bobbed their heads so much, indicating their complete and perfect agreement with one another in their admiration of Thorne’s good taste, they looked like puffed up hens pecking at scattered grain.
Bosom friend, my eye.
If Thorne had ever spoken more than two consecutive words to these fellows, Gemma would eat one of her mother’s hats.Moreover, she’d be willing to lay decent odds upon those two words from Thorne being “Sod off.”
In the silence of her own mind, Gemma began to fervently pray that Hal would stay upstairs and somehow not encounter these two.
