Chapter Twenty-Five #2
Trentham found the trio in the morning room enjoying a late luncheon. He felt a brief qualm about intruding. After all, he’d already spent the better part of the morning with Lynch. And he’d been here all last evening. And now he was back again.
“Robin! How lovely!” Dessie said. “Come sit.” She turned to the footman. “Bring His Grace a plate.”
He held up a hand. “Not necessary.” Good Lord. He might as well move in with them. “I came to see if Miss Delancey would care to come for a ride with me in the park.”
Miss Delancey stiffened.
“Is that a good idea? It will look like you’re paying court,” Lynch said.
Dessie patted his arm. “They won’t be conspicuous. It’s too early for the Hyde Park promenade—”
“And I thought we’d go to Green Park.” It was less popular with the ton.
“Which smacks of sneaking around,” Lynch said. “Robin, what game are you—”
“For heavens’ sake!” Miss Delancey stood. “The invitation was extended to me. And my acceptance does not require a vote.” She stepped away from the table and crooked her finger at him. “Let’s go.”
On the way to the front door, Miss Delancey asked a footman to fetch her spencer jacket, hat, and gloves.
They waited until he brought them. Trentham held her jacket while she slipped it on.
Her lavender fragrance engulfed his senses, as it had in his dreams, bringing to mind other very pleasing things.
He let his fingertips glide along the nape of her neck and smiled to see her lightly tremble.
But he dropped his hand quickly to his side when she turned and scowled.
As they stepped outside, and he summoned his curricle closer, Miss Delancey asked, “So what game are you playing, Your Grace?”
Was she angry about last night? Of course, she was. He’d acted too well the part of a rake. He needed to correct that impression.
“Not a game, Miss Delancey, I assure you. I hope I made obvious to you last evening that I intend to court you. Sincerely.”
“Nothing about you is obvious. Or, I’m afraid, sincere. If I’m not mistaken, you are still courting someone else.”
“I went to the Barringtons’ earlier to tell Lady Elizabeth I would withdraw my suit.”
Her eyes widened. “Did you?”
“Yes, but she wasn’t at home.” He added as the thought came to him, “Or at least, she wasn’t at home to me.”
Miss Delancey sighed. He couldn’t interpret whether it was an exasperated sigh or a resigned one. But it was certainly not a sigh of joy.
Trentham helped her into his curricle, then climbed up beside her and urged the horses forward.
Staring down at her hands, Miss Delancey said, “I hope you don’t expect encouragement from me while Lady Elizabeth is still under the impression that you wish to marry her.”
“No.” He had to get this right. “No, but even were you to reject me outright, I would still cease to hound her. It was a flawed plan from the start. She is a person, not my ticket to redemption.” Bother.
Redemption? A word that would raise eyebrows.
He cleared his throat and added hurriedly, “Nevertheless, I admire her greatly. It takes great strength of character to be so impossibly rude.”
That surprised a small laugh out of Miss Delancey.
He continued, “After last night, I wanted to—to clear the air. I fear I behaved badly.”
“As did I. You don’t need to apologize.”
“I don’t intend to. As my mother once told me, the second time my governess found a frog in her bed, the bedrock of an apology is ‘I won’t do it again’. An insincere apology is worse than none at all. I’m not sorry I kissed you.” He risked a sidelong glance.
Her gaze rose to meet his, then fell, and she pressed her lips tightly.
The curricle jounced, and he refocused his attention on the rutted road so they wouldn’t overturn. All he needed to complete his fumbling of this explanation was a carriage accident. But his horses were top-notch, and he easily turned them to a safer course.
Back to it. “There are things you should know, before deciding whether or not to accept my attentions. First, which I tell you in confidence, is that the Wormsley name is going to be immersed in scandal.” Again. “Soon.”
“Dessie told me you and Lynch were meeting with a solicitor this morning. Lady Townes is going to sue for divorce. Good for her. And good for you, for encouraging her to do it.” She gave him a long look. “I imagine it will be difficult for you as well.”
He nodded. “It will.” Felicity’s scandal would undoubtedly dredge up his own. This was his cue to confess, now, before Miss Delancey heard of it elsewhere. But he’d come unprepared and the words stuck in his throat. “However, the most important thing is that she escapes from Sir George.”
A landau he recognized was coming down the street toward them. There was no way to avoid it. “There’s Lord Grenville.” A worse gossip than a woman. “Do you know him?”
“A nose tap.”
“A what?”
“Nothing.” She sounded irked. “We were introduced at the Barringtons’ ball.”
Both slowed their carriages so that they could exchange greetings. Trentham was convinced Grenville smirked nastily. But the interaction was short and they both rode on.
“Did you love her?” Miss Delancey blurted, startling him.
“What? Who?”
“The lady with whom you had your affair.”
“Fanny?” Good God! She already knew?
“Is there more than one?”
“What! No! Fanny was the only—who told you?” Not Lynch. Eli? No, he couldn’t believe it of Eli either.
Miss Delancey looked miserable, twisting her hands together, biting her lip. “Lady Melvin,” she said at last. “She called you a wayward man. I assumed an affair.”
She hadn’t known. She’d been fishing and he grabbed the bait. What was he supposed to say now?
“It’s a long, complicated story.”
“Did you love her?” she asked again.
“I did not.” He took a slow breath. Would she prefer that he had? Would that be a better excuse? “Frankly, I didn’t even like her.”
She slapped her palm on the bench. “You must have!”
“She was loud and boorish.” He knew he sounded disdainful, but he wasn’t being haughty without cause. “Lynch says she’d set her cap for me, but it wasn’t that. She wanted a title. Any title. Gilliam would not have had to coerce her to marry Lord Stanley. He was a viscount.”
But the unfortunate girl hadn’t expected her husband to be drunk half the time, nasty, and violent. Trentham’s mind flashed from Fanny to Felicity. From Lord Stanley to Sir George. Anger flared, then died.
His mistake had been to treat his old friend’s sister kindly, with sympathy, at a house party in the country.
No. His mistake had been to sleep with her.
He’d gone over this and over it in the years since. He hadn’t known, and never would know, Fanny’s motive. Maybe she’d wanted to make Stanley a figure of ridicule. The only revenge possible. In the end, it didn’t matter. Except, he hoped she hadn’t cared for him. That would make it all worse.
“Gilliam was her brother?”
He nodded tersely. This was not the way he’d intended to make his confession.
“Was she…was she very beautiful?”
“No.” He could barely remember her face. “She was pretty enough, I suppose. But not beautiful.”
“Then why? I don’t care about her reasons. Only yours. Didn’t it matter to you that she had a husband?”
He shook his head. “Obviously, it did not.” Seeing her frown of reproach, he said, “I don’t want to spout excuses. They mean nothing now. But I hope you’ll believe I’ve never made a habit of sleeping with other men’s wives.”
“You didn’t like her. You didn’t find her beautiful. You didn’t ‘make a habit’ of seducing married women. So why?”
They’d reached the park. Rather than answer, he feigned concentration on steering through the entrance gate and choosing a narrow, shaded path, scented with spring wildflowers. The romance of the setting mocked him.
They rode in silence for several minutes, minutes that seemed more like hours as the horses clip-clopped along, and he searched for the right words.
The truth was embarrassing, crass, and inappropriate to tell a lady.
Still, she was waiting. Well, then—the truth.
He cleared his throat. “This is no excuse, but it was a decade ago. I was twenty years old. She offered me sex. That is it. That is the entirety of my explanation.”
Her brow puckered again. “I don’t understand.”
Gad! She was innocent. Yet her calm was preferable to the shocked, blushing outrage he’d feared.
“You would if you were a twenty-year-old man. I spent an inordinate amount of time and energy in pursuit of that particular delight. I was not about to pass up a tryst that was handed to me.”
She scowled. “So you blame her?”
“No. I blame us both equally.”
“You knew it was wrong, but did it anyway. That speaks poorly to your character.”
“It does. But—”
“You were willing to throw away your reputation, your relationships with your friends and family, all for…” Now, she blushed.
“Not willingly. Unwittingly. But yes.”
“And I’m supposed to believe you’ve changed?
When you’re stealing kisses from me and—and touching me under the dinner table?
” She shifted farther from him on the bench, so not even her skirts brushed his thigh.
“All while ostensibly courting Lady Elizabeth? And trying to help your sister? She needs your respectability now. How am I to believe you when you’re still willing to throw it all away—”
“Because this time it’s for love!” The words surprised him, coming to him from the blue and slipping out of his mouth before he’d had time to reflect. He meant them, but he wished he’d presented them better, later, a declaration rather than a defense.
She stared at him, lips slightly parted, lovely brown eyes wide. Rather than blushing more deeply, she seemed to grow pale. “I’m not convinced you know the difference. You had best take me back to Lynch’s. And don’t call on me again until you are free of any obligation to Lady Elizabeth.”
Don’t call on me until was better than don’t call on me. He pinned his fading hopes on that.