Lady Beaumont gave a light, tinkling laugh that nevertheless managed to be ugly. “She wasn’t even your first choice, Huntington! Such a pity you lost Lady Honora to Harley, but then it’s not quite the thing, is it, for a gentleman to wager to win the right to court a lady? Poor Huntington. Luck wasn’t with you that night, and Lady Honora would have made such an ideal marchioness. But as you said yourself, one aristocratic young lady is very much like another.”
“Much like a mistress is, I suspect.” Finn wasn’t proud of that wager, and even less pleased he’d been foolish enough to confide it to Lady Beaumont, who’d been far too amused by it for his tastes. “But the less said about that wager, the better. It would be too bad if Miss Somerset should hear of it.” He ran a fingertip down Lady Beaumont’s cheek, but his voice was cold. “I’d be quite displeased if she did.”
He turned to leave her, but she gripped his arm. “Miss Somerset is from the county, isn’t she? Surrey, I believe? A little country miss who’d no doubt be shocked at what a wealthy nobleman gets up to when no one’s watching.”
Finn’s expression didn’t change, but cold anger made his jaw tense. Not at her threat—Lady Beaumont knew there were limits to how much nonsense he’d tolerate from her—but because she knew quite a lot more than he’d realized about Miss Somerset. It seemed she’d made it her business to find out about his betrothed, and Finn didn’t like it.
He didn’t like it at all.
He took her chin between his fingers, his touch gentle. “I could almost imagine from your words, my dear, you mean to threaten me somehow. I don’t mind it for myself, but as for Miss Somerset…” His fingers tightened almost imperceptibly, but he could see by the way her eyes widened she noticed it. “I’m afraid I’ll have to insist you stay far, far away from her. Do you understand, my dear?” He swept his palm down her throat, and felt her nervous swallow. “Ah, yes. I see you do. That pleases me, my lady.”
Another swallow. “Yes, you do look pleased with yourself, Huntington.”
He gave her a polite smile, but his narrowed gaze held hers until her eyes skittered away. “I believe your visit is over. I’ll escort you to your carriage, shall I? I wouldn’t want you to get lost in Lady Fairchild’s garden. Who knows where you’d turn up?”
“Who knows, indeed?” She took the arm he offered with a resentful sniff, but Lady Beaumont had played her last card, and she was wise enough to know it.
Finn led her around the outskirts of the garden, relieved when they made it to a gate in a far corner that led into the mews. Her carriage was there, waiting, and Finn handed her in.
“Goodbye, my dear. I’ll remember our time together with fondness.”
Until I forget it entirely.
“Oh, one more word before I go, Huntington?” Lady Beaumont propped her gloved hand against the door before he could slam it closed. “You might want to keep an eye out for Lord Wrexley. I hear he’s rather taken with Miss Somerset, and you know his lordship isn’t one to easily relinquish a plaything, no matter how dull it might be.”
Finn’s mouth went as dry as dust. “Is there something you wish to tell me, my lady?”
She shot him a poisonous smile. “Now I think of it, my lord, there is. I believe I saw Lord Wrexley today, when I came into the garden. Yes, I recall it perfectly now. He was lingering there this afternoon. He said he was looking for someone. Do you think it was Miss Somerset? It’s a trifle worrying for her, perhaps. I hate to say it of him, but Lord Wrexley occasionally forgets he’s a gentleman.”
Finn’s nerveless hand fell away from the door of her carriage.
Lady Beaumont pulled it closed with a satisfied slam, her eyes gleaming as she took in his tense face. “I wish you a pleasant day, Lord Huntington.”
Chapter Three
Iris squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her hands against her ears. A strange numbness stole over her, as if she’d been standing in icy water for hours, and her blood had frozen in her veins.
She stood there helplessly as their words got uglier and uglier, until at last Lady Beaumont said something that made the blood surge again in a dizzying, painful rush, and she fled, the gleeful hiss of laughter ringing in her ears.
She wasn’t even your first choice, Huntington.
Iris ran until a pain in her side forced her to a wheezing halt, her only thought to get away before she heard another word. When she came back to herself at last, she was slumped on a stone bench in a remote corner of the park, surrounded on all sides by silence, under a copse of trees whose spreading branches obliterated the sun.
Her arm stung, and she looked down to find the sleeve of her gown was torn, and a long, bloody scratch stretched from her wrist to her elbow.
She didn’t remember how it happened.
She pressed her forehead to her knees and sat there for a long time, listening to the sound of her own gasping breaths.
When she managed to raise her head and look about her, her first thought was she’d been gone for far too long, and must return to the terrace at once. But when she did, she’d be obliged to flirt and smile, and pretend everything she knew and trusted hadn’t just collapsed into a pile of rubble at her feet.
Lord Huntington would be waiting for her there, his handsome mouth full of lies.
She shrank against the bench as panic rolled over her again. Soon—she would go back, very soon, yes, and when she did she’d take his arm, and send admiring glances his way, and flirt with him, and behave as if she were besotted and believed herself London’s most fortunate lady to be honored with his attentions, because it was what everyone expected of her.
But not yet. Not while she could still hear Lady Beaumont’s high, cruel laugh in her head. Not while every hurtful word was still reverberating in her chest.
So angelic, rather like a child…
