“I will, Mama,” he’d vowed, and as he stared at Rosemary, he realized that some part of him reallyhadremembered.
How wretchedly maudlin.
“Why do I want more gin?” he said brusquely. “So that I can drink it, obviously.”
Another peek in his direction, this one even more fleeting than the last.
She bit her lip.
He rolled his eyes.
“Out with it, Regina.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything. And it’s Rosemary. Rose. Mary.” She gave an agitated toss of her head that sent the hideously ugly bonnet she’d jammed over her hair before they’d departed Hawkridge Manor sliding forward onto her face. A muffled squeal, a startled pull on the left rein, and the curricle would have sailed off into the ditch had Sterling not covered her hands with his and straightened them out at the last possible second.
“Oh,” she gasped, hauling the buggy to a shuddering halt right in the middle of the lane. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. How frightening! I didn’t mean–”
“I blame this potato sack on your head,” he interrupted before he grabbed the bonnet and threw it unceremoniously in the bushes.
“That was mine!” she cried. “My grandmother had it made for my birthday.”
“Trust me. I did you a favor.” He paused. “I take it your grandmother selects all of your clothes?”
“Notallof them.”
“The dress you wore to breakfast on the last day of the house party. The pale blue with the violet ribbon. It wasn’t completely awful,” he allowed.
“I borrowed that gown from Evie.”
He nodded sagely. “That explains it, then.”
“My clothes…my clothes should be none of your concern, Your Grace.”
“I have to look at them, don’t I?” Absently, he glanced down to see that his hand was still wrapped around hers in an intimate grip that was no longer necessary given that they were stopped. Scowling, he withdrew his arm and draped it across the back of the seat instead, fingers idly drumming on the wood trim.
It was the lack of gin, he decided. The bloody stuff had gone to his head and without it…without it he had started to do all sorts of crazed things, like kissing Rosemary in the library and holding her hand and recalling the exact dress she’d worn nearly a fortnight ago. If he didn’t get liquor into his bloodstream soon, he’d do something truly out of character, like telling her that in the dappled sunlight her hair held glimmers of gold amidst all the silky tendrils of brown and her eyes were the color of a soft fog rolling in over the field right before sunrise.
“We need to go,” he said abruptly.
“But my bonnet–”
“Leave it. I’m sure the forest animals will give it the proper funeral that it deserves.”
She pressed her lips together as she adjusted her grip on the reins. “Has anyone told you that just because youcansay anything you want and not suffer repercussions due to your rank doesn’t mean that youshould?”
“No,” he said after he thought about it for a moment. “Never.”
“That explains it, then.”
Tipping his head back, he closed his eyes. “Just drive, Rosalie. And do try to keep us out of the ditch.”
Chapter Two
As Rosemary waitedimpatiently for Sterling to come out from the pub, she gave serious consideration to returning to Hawkridge Manor without him. Walking the eight or so miles back to the estate would serve him right after the way he’d treated her. Poking fun at her bonnet (even though it was, admittedly, quite hideous), repeatedly calling her by the wrong name, and–worst of all, in her opinion–going on as if their kiss had never happened.
He hadn’t made a single mention of it. Not one! If she didn’t know any better, she might be tempted to believe she’d fallen asleep while she was reading and dreamed the entire thing. Except that reading never made her tired. If anything, she had the opposite problem. And she hadn’t imagined that kiss. She knew she hadn’t! Which meant that either it was of such minor insignificance to Sterling that he’d already forgotten about it, or he was purposefully choosing to pretend it had never happened.
Neither scenario made her feel very good, and both were an excellent reminder of why she preferred the company of Sir Reginald, who liked her clothes if only because there was plenty of extra space for him to dash up her sleeve in case one of her grandmother’s yappy dogs came searching for a tasty, squirrel-sized snack.
