“I will certainly do that,” she said. “And she may accept more invitations too if she wishes. I will be happy to continue to sponsor her. There is no such place as the promised land, but it would be foolish to reject even an unpromised land as worthless without first inspecting it thoroughly. She has taken well with the ton and can expect to make a perfectly respectable match with a gentleman of her choosing if she should so desire.”
He stood there looking down at her, and she wished she had not picked up her embroidery. She had to concentrate hard to keep her hand steady. And her green silk thread, she noticed, was filling in the broad petal of a rose instead of the leaf on its stem. The other petals were a deep rose pink.
She decided she would not be the one to break the silence.
“I daresay,” he said, “your family had a thing or two to say about your allowing yourself to be caught up in that unseemly scene yesterday.”
“Let me see.” She held the thread above her work for a moment. “My brother was in favor of slapping a glove across Jason’s face and calling him out for the insult he so publicly dealt me—and himself. But Lily persuaded him that it would be a far worse punishment for a man like Jason to be soundly ignored. My cousin Joseph also wanted to call him out, but Neville told him that he must stand in line. Lily suggested that we add Mrs. Carstairs to our list of ladies to be called upon this afternoon, since her husband did something extraordinary yesterday and the lady always looks so desperately lonely anyway. Mama said that she had never been more proud of me than when I told Jason that I chose my own companions—and when I took your arm after the Duke of Bewcastle invited us to join him and the duchess for tea. She added that as far as she could see, I chose my companions both wisely and well. Lauren told me that after watching you take that verbal assault with such stoic dignity, she suspected every unmarried lady within hearing range and a few married ones too fell head over ears in love with you. Elizabeth, my aunt, thought it must have been very painful for me to watch Viscount Muir, the man who succeeded to my husband’s title, behave so badly in public. At the same time she thought I must be proud of how my chosen companion conducted himself with such dignity and restraint. She considers you a true British hero. The duke her husband believes that rather than tarnishing your fame, Jason’s vicious lies and their exposure by Mr. Carstairs have actually enhanced it. Shall I continue?”
She attacked her embroidery with renewed vigor.
“Your name will be on lips all across London today,” he said. “It will be coupled with mine. I am sorry about it. But it will not happen again. I shall stay in town awhile longer for Constance’s sake, but I will remain in my own proper milieu and among my own people. Society gossip, I have heard, soon dies down when there is nothing new to feed it.”
“Yes,” she said, “you are quite right about that.”
“Your mother will be relieved,” he said, “despite what she said to you yesterday. So will the rest of your family.”
She had finished embroidering the green rose petal. She did not finish it off. It would be easier to unpick later if she did not. She threaded her needle through the linen cloth and set it aside.
“I suppose that somewhere in the world,” she said, “there is someone else with as great a sense of inferiority as you possess, Lord Trentham, though it must surely be impossible that there is anyone with a greater sense.”
“I do not feel inferior,” he said. “Only different and realistic about it.”
“Poppycock,” she said inelegantly.
She glared up at him. He scowled back.
“If you really wanted me, Hugo,” she said, “if you really loved me, you would fight for me even if I were the queen of England.”
He stared back at her. His jaw line was granite again, his lips a hard, thin line, his eyes dark and fierce. She wondered for a moment how she could possibly love him.
“That would be daft,” he said.
Daft. One of his favorite words.
“Yes,” she said. “It is daft to believe that you could possibly want me. It is daft to imagine that you could ever love me.”
He resembled nothing more than a marble statue.
“Go away, Hugo,” she said. “Go, and never come back. I never want to see you again. Go.”
He went—as far as the door. He stood with his hand on the knob, his back to her.
She glared at his back, buoyed by hatred and determination. But he must go soon. He must go now. Please let him go now.
He did not go.
He lowered his hand from the knob and turned to face her.
“Let me show you what I mean,” he said.
She looked back at him, uncomprehending. Her hands were all pins and needles, she realized. She must have been clasping them too tightly.
“This has all been a one-way thing,” he said. “Right from the start. At Penderris you were in your own world, even if you did feel awkward at landing there uninvited. At Newbury Abbey you were in your own world and among your own family, not a single one of whom, I noticed, was without a title. Here you have been right in the center of your world—in this house, on the fashionable circuit in Hyde Park, at the Redfield House ball, at the garden party yesterday. I am the one each time who has been expected to step into a world that is not my own and prove myself worthy of it so that I can aspire to your hand. I have done that—repeatedly. And you criticize me for not feeling at home in it.”
“For feeling inferior,” she said.
“For feeling different,” he insisted. “Does there not seem something a bit unfair about it all?”
“Unfair?” She sighed. Perhaps he was right. She just wanted him to go and be done with it. He was going to go eventually anyway. It might as well be now. Her heart would be no less broken a week from now or a month.
“Come to my world,” he said.
“I have been to your house and met your sister and your stepmother,” she reminded him.
He looked steadily at her, without any relaxing of his expression.
“Come to my world,” he said again.
“How?” She frowned at him.
“If you want me, Gwendoline,” he said, “if you imagine that you love me and think you can spend your life with me, come to my world. You will find that wanting, even loving, is not enough.”
Her eyes wavered and she looked down at her hands. She stretched her fingers in an effort to rid them of the pins and needles. It was true. He had been the one to do all the adapting so far. And he had done well. Except that he was uncomfortable and unsure of himself and unhappy in a world that was not his own.
She would not ask how again. She did not know how. Probably he did not either.
“Very well,” she said, looking up again, glaring at him defiantly, almost with dislike. She did not want her comfortable world to be rocked more than it already had been by meeting and loving him.
Their eyes continued to do battle for a few silent moments. Then he bowed abruptly to her, and his hand came to rest on the knob of the door again.
“You will be hearing from me,” he said.
And he was gone.
While Gwen and Lily had been on Bond Street this morning, they had met Lord Merlock and had stood talking with him for a while before he offered to take them to a nearby tea shop for refreshments. Lily had been unable to accept. She had promised her children that she would be home in time for an early luncheon before they all went to the Tower of London with Neville. But Gwen had accepted. She had also accepted an invitation to share his box at the theater this evening with his four other guests.