“You truly do not know?”
Helena stopped walking and he almost collided with her. She pivoted to face him. “Truly, I do not know.”
“Fine,” he said, guiding her from the bustle of pedestrian traffic. “You were too cavalier and familiar in your ‘flirting lesson’ with Miss Keep yesterday. It put the plan in jeopardy and our collaboration at risk. As your groom, I am powerless to do anything more than say, ‘Yes, my lady,’ and follow your lead. I was forced to comply, and I didn’t like it.”
“Why not? Because the demonstration dissuaded her?”
“Because yousat in my lapandcooed in my earfor the benefit of someone you’d known ten minutes. Lap-sitting and ear-cooing is not the behavior of an heiress and her groom, and certainly not the behavior of an heiress and her ‘minder.’ What if Girdleston learned of the stunt?”
“He won’t. Miss Keep can be trusted.”
“We have no idea about Miss Keep; you’d never met her in your life.”
“I don’t need to meet her to recognize an earnest girl with serious pursuits, desperate to gain some control of her future.”
They were on a schedule, and Helena resumed their progress down Oxford Street. “Joanna Keep lives in a world where she’s at the mercy of almost every man and any woman older than she is. She could gain control through shallowness or manipulation, but she has not. If I thought Miss Keep was inauthentic or a schemer, I would have been more prudent. I also would have happily dangled her before Lusk without a second thought. But she is clever and earnest and genuine. She is better than Lusk deserves. And we can trust her.”
A trio of boys darted in front of Helena, their hats overturned and filled with stolen eggs. One boy tripped and fell, making a mess of yolks and shells and a string of profanity. Helena tsked and stepped around the mess.
“My situation is not exactly like Miss Keep’s,” she went on, winding her way through scrambling boys, “but I am more like her than most young women. Enough to know that she’ll not gossip about me. I’m vying for some control over destiny, just as she is. The flirting demonstration was for her benefit, and as strange as it was, I believe it was useful. She will not betray the favor.”
“You hope she will not,” Declan said.
“I have very good instincts about people. Look how right I was about you. I trusted you on the first night.”
“That was sheer luck. One-in-a-million chance that Girdleston posted me to your detail instead of any of a hundred men who would’ve delivered you to him on the spot.”
“You call it luck, I call it a gut feeling.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She felt strongly about her intuition, but she was beginning to believe this wasn’t a quarrel about her instincts; it was about her taking advantage.
“Look,” she said, opening her eyes. “I can acknowledge that it was...” and now she searched for the correct word, “...exploitative to summon you and drape myself upon you. I was trying to benimble. Andopportunistic.” She walked a few steps, thinking about his complaint. Heat crept up her neck; she felt her face go red. His point was valid. As her groom, he was at her mercy. In full view of the public, he must do what she said.
She stopped walking. She pivoted back. “Perhaps now I can see that it may have been... poor form to portray the lesson in flirtation. Oh, Declan, I’m so sorry.” She bit her lip until it stung.
Declan stopped short and stared at her. He began shaking his head.
“What?” she demanded.
He walked around her.
“Do yourejectmy apology?” she called.
“No, I don’t reject it. I—” He made a growling noise.
“You what?” She followed him.
“You are too trusting,” he said. “And toohonest.”
They were striding down Oxford Street at a fast clip. Declan must have realized their appearance and paused, ducked his head, and allowed her to precede him.
“This was a mistake,” he said to her. “You shouldn’t have apologized. It was better when we were at odds.”
“Who is better off without an apology?”
“Look,” he sighed, “Lady Helena, our plan can continue—obviously we have no choice now but to see it through—but you and I? We cannot be so... so enmeshed.”
She missed a step, momentarily unable to comprehend. “What do you mean, ‘enmeshed’?”
“It’s my fault,” he said. “I’ve indulged too much. I... I never should have touched you. And I’ve revealed too much. If we quarrel, we quarrel. There’s no need for apologies. Perhaps we simply do not get on.”
