Miles assumed an angelic expression. ‘I don’t know what you could possibly be referring to. I would never do anything so low as to knock over the board and rearrange the pieces.’
‘Richard never cheats at draughts,’ Lady Uppington whispered to Amy.
‘No, only at croquet,’ Miles put in sarcastically. ‘Or did that ball just move two wickets all by itself?’
‘You,’ drawled Lord Richard, strolling forward to join the little group around Lady Uppington, ‘are merely sore because I sent your ball flying into the blackberry brambles.’
‘Thorns all over my favourite breeches,’ mourned Miles.
‘Oh, that’s what became of those!’ exclaimed Henrietta.
‘Did you think Miles had suddenly discovered good taste?’ Richard grinned.
‘I don’t know why I put up with this family,’ Miles muttered to Amy and Jane.
‘It’s because we feed you,’ Henrietta explained.
‘Thanks, Hen.’ Miles ruffled her hair. ‘I would never have figured that out on my own.’
‘He’s like one of those stray dogs that follows you home,’ Henrietta continued, warming to her theme, ‘and once you’ve given him a meal, keeps scratching on the kitchen door, and looking up at you with big mournful eyes.’
‘All right, Hen,’ said Miles.
‘Madness only runs in part of my family,’ Richard said softly to Amy. ‘My brother Charles is quite sane, I assure you. And Miles isn’t related at all.’
‘Third cousin twice removed!’ protested Miles.
‘By marriage,’ corrected Richard, his eyes not leaving Amy’s. ‘I trust you had a pleasant afternoon?’
Amy had spent the remainder of the afternoon on her stomach on her bed, contemplating the relative merits of boiling him in oil as opposed to hanging him by his feet and hitting him with a spiked stick.
‘Yes. Quite.’ Amy belatedly remembered that she was supposed to be flirting with him, and added, ‘I especially enjoyed the antiquities.’
‘Ah, so you like antiquities!’ Lady Uppington broke in, with a significant look at Richard. ‘How splendid! Do tell me more…’
Within ten minutes, Lady Uppington had deftly extracted the information that Amy had been born in France, raised in Shropshire, and didn’t much care for turnips. Richard listened, mute with horror, as Lady Uppington ferreted out Amy’s literary preferences, and political leanings. She seemed on the verge of inquiring about her shoe size, when Henrietta fortunately intervened.
‘Has Mother told you yet about the time Richard tried to tear up the floor of the gazebo with a pickaxe?’
Richard ceased feeling thankful. Over Henrietta’s head, he saw Miles bearing purposefully down on them. The room began to feel uncomfortably close.
‘Miss Balcourt’ – he broke into his mother’s wildly exaggerated account of the time he had accidentally skewered a gardener while fencing with the topiary – ‘the statues in the courtyard appear to be exceptionally fine. Would you do me the honour of showing them to me?’
Amy’s skin tingled with excitement at the invitation. Every sensible instinct in her body told her to decline. But there were certainly more than enough people about to chaperone them, Amy persuaded her sensible side. This was a perfect opportunity to put her plans for revenge into practice – what could be more romantic than a moonlit garden? – and she’d be a fool not to leap at it.
‘Yes, I’d like that,’ Amy responded with scarcely a moment’s hesitation.
‘…blood spurting everywhere! Wait, what did you say, dear?’
‘I asked Miss Balcourt if she would take a turn in the courtyard with me. She said yes. And I would like to make clear that I barely scratched his hand.’
‘The courtyard! What a good idea! I mean, you shall have to be chaperoned, of course. Henrietta, darling, why don’t you go with them.’
‘How can I be a chaperone when I have a chaperone?’ protested Henrietta.
Tapping her foot in impatience, Lady Uppington whispered something in Henrietta’s ear. ‘Oh, right!’ Henrietta waggled her eyebrows meaningfully at her mother.
‘Shall we?’ asked Richard dryly, extending an arm to Amy.
Brother and sister exchanged a long look as they exited through the French doors onto the balcony. Henrietta yawned ostentatiously and collapsed onto a stone bench. ‘It has been an awfully long day! I’ll just sit down here and watch the stars, if you don’t mind terribly.’
‘Thank you,’ Richard mouthed at her.
Tucking Amy’s arm more firmly through his, Richard led her down the three shallow steps into the moonlit garden.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Amy cast about for something to say as they wandered towards the fountain in the centre of the courtyard.
Lord Richard’s booted feet kept pace with hers on the walkway. Amy forced herself to look up from her contemplation of four sets of toes (two in ribbon-bedecked slippers, two in shiny black boots) and face her nemesis. Something about the angle of his head as he glanced down at her was so like the Purple Gentian that it made Amy’s heart contract. Idiot, Amy told herself, forcing a fixed smile onto her lips in the face of his quizzical gaze. Of course he looked like the Purple Gentian. The blasted man was the Purple Gentian. Amy hoped the crunching of gravel underfoot sufficiently masked the gritting of her teeth.
‘Did you really duel with hedges?’ asked Amy. She was strong, Amy reminded herself. She was stonyhearted.
‘Only because my father told me that they were dragons,’ Lord Richard responded, with a grin that could melt stone. Amy rapidly adjusted her recital to ironhearted instead. Lord Richard waved his left hand in the direction of the shadowy clumps of shrubbery. ‘I assure you, your brother’s garden is safe from me.’
‘A little hacking with a sword looks like it might do some of these plants good,’ Amy commented, stooping to touch a leaf on an overgrown rosebush. ‘Ouch!’
‘Prickly things, aren’t they?’ Lord Richard took the hand Amy was flapping about and turned it over to examine the pricked pad of her finger. His fingers burnt against her wrist and palm.
‘They have to protect themselves somehow.’ Amy wrenched her hand away.
‘You sound like you empathise.’
‘My Aunt Abigail is a great cultivator of roses.’ Amy evaded the implied question and Lord Richard’s amused gaze, turning from the rosebush to wander along a small gravelled path. She was doing quite well, she congratulated herself. She was keeping the conversation light, and his touch hadn’t affected her at all. Or at least not that much. Oh, heavens, she hoped he hadn’t felt the way her pulse was racing in her wrist.
‘Perhaps I should speak to her about the removal of some thorns.’
Forget touch. The hideous man didn’t even need to touch her to send shivers down her spine.
‘Shouldn’t we look at some statues?’ Amy suggested breathlessly. ‘After all, that is what you told your mother.’
‘Oh, that. I am sorry about inflicting my family on you like this.’
Just because he sounded like a chastened schoolboy didn’t mean she should feel sympathy for him, Amy told herself. It didn’t change the way he had played with her affections. Bluebeard had probably had a mother, too.
‘I think they’re lovely,’ Amy said stoutly, and meant it.
‘Most of the time,’ Richard replied wryly, glancing back to the balcony where Henrietta was sitting with her head ostentatiously tilted up towards the night sky, ‘I would agree with you.’
‘You are lucky to have them.’
Lord Richard glanced down at her with too much comprehension in his green eyes. ‘I am sorry about your parents. Truly sorry.’
Amy shrugged uncomfortably. ‘We don’t need to revisit all of that.’
‘But I think we do.’ Richard stopped as they rounded an overgrown bush and reached for Amy’s hand. ‘We started off badly on the boat and I want to fix it.’
‘There’s no need.’ Amy hastily shifted her
hand out of reach. Not quite sure what to do with it, or with her other, equally vulnerable hand, she clasped them behind her back. Unfortunately, that had the effect of propelling her bosom into more than usual prominence. Lord Richard’s gaze plummeted like a hawk descending on its prey.
Resisting the urge to tug at her bodice, Amy let her hands fall back to her sides. ‘You’ve been more than kind. Having us to see your antiquities, for example,’ she continued a little too brightly. ‘That was terribly, um, kind of you. So now that’s all settled.’
Clearly, it wasn’t. Lord Richard moved closer. ‘What can I do to convince you I’m not an evil regicide?’
The bush prickled through the thin fabric of Amy’s frock. When, she wondered indignantly, had she lost control of the conversation? She was supposed to flirt with him, he was supposed to fawn besottedly, and she was supposed to crush his hopes under her dainty slippered heel. Not this! His tangy cologne filled her nostrils, blotting out the scents of the garden, assaulting her with memory, weakening her with desire.
‘I’m convinced,’ Amy blurted out to his cravat. He was so close that the ends of the starched fabric practically tickled the end of her nose. One more step and his knees would brush against hers. ‘Really!’
The cravat receded. ‘Good.’
Amy let herself look up. It wasn’t one of her wiser decisions.
‘I wouldn’t want you to think ill of me,’ he said softly, so softly his words stroked Amy with the evening breeze. His hand moved to brush a lock of hair off her cheek. Slowly. Gently. His green eyes sought hers in a lingering caress as his head tilted towards hers.
‘No!’
Amy yanked her head back so violently that her hair tangled in the branches of a bush. Her blue eyes were wide with panic. ‘No! I-I can’t. I just can’t.’
Lord Richard took a step back, hands in his pockets. ‘Why not?’ he asked neutrally. ‘Do you still dislike me that much?’
Dislike. Oh goodness. What an inadequate term. She wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him until his teeth rattled and then kiss him till they were both gasping, and he asked her if she disliked him? Amy hadn’t the slightest notion what exactly she felt towards him – the English language didn’t contain words enough to encapsulate the blizzard of emotions storming through her – but it certainly wasn’t dislike.
How could it be possible to desire and despise someone quite so much all at the same time? Was there a word for that in any language?
‘No,’ she croaked. ‘I don’t dislike you.’
Lord Richard’s face relaxed almost imperceptibly. ‘Then why…?’
She could tell him the truth, Amy thought madly. She could call him to account for his actions and give him the chance to explain himself. She drank in the features of his face: the straight slope of his nose, the watchful green eyes, the clean angles of cheekbones and jaw. The Purple Gentian, unmasked.
The bracing memory of his deceit stiffened Amy’s resolve to make him suffer as much as possible.
Casting her eyes to the side, she declared, with all the conviction she could force into it, ‘I love another.’
Of all the responses Richard had expected – and Amy had stood there thinking for so bloody long that he’d had time to come up with an entire encyclopaedia’s worth of them – that one hadn’t been on the list.
‘Who is he?’
‘Please don’t ask me that.’
Richard’s mind – and stomach – churned. Who could it be? Whoever it was, it would give Richard great satisfaction to drive a fist into his jaw. It couldn’t be Marston, not unless Amy had a hidden streak of perversion. Who in the hell else did she even know in France? Did she have a beloved back in England? Was that the answer? And what was she doing kissing the Purple Gentian when – oh. Oh no. The terrible truth hit Richard like a whack from a falling column.
He was jealous of his own bloody self.
When, he thought furiously, in all the annals of the world, had there ever been a situation so ludicrous? At least King Arthur and Menelaus and all those other chaps had been cuckolded by genuine rivals. It was positively embarrassing to be thwarted in love by one’s own bleeding self. What sort of idiot got in the way of his own courtship?
Lord Richard Selwick, the Purple Gentian, that was who.
Urgh.
Like Amy, Richard found the English language entirely inadequate for the situation.
‘Tell me more about your perfect love,’ he clipped.
‘I never said he was perfect.’
‘He’s not?’ Richard was offended. What was wrong with the Purple Gentian? He was a paragon of a man, a hero, a – oh, wait, he was supposed to be his rival.
Amy’s eyes slanted up at him from beneath dark lashes. ‘You heard Miss Gwen. There’s no such thing as a perfect man.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Richard quickly catalogued possibilities. Was it his breath? That blasted cloak?
‘He didn’t trust me as he should,’ Amy replied promptly, glowering at Richard.
Hell. It would have been much easier to deal with getting a new cloak.
This was ridiculous! He didn’t know whether to defend himself – the Purple Gentian bit of himself, that was – or to be jealous of his Purple Gentian self on behalf of his himself self. Devil take it, even his thoughts were in a deuced tangle. There was one way to end all the tangles and confusion.
Richard’s mouth opened but no sound came out. He’d thought he would feel better when he told Deirdre, hadn’t he? And look what had come of that. Who would the casualty be this time? Geoff? Miles?
Richard’s mouth shut into a very tight line.
Amy was watching him closely. ‘Were you about to say something?’
Richard shrugged. ‘Merely that your secret love, whoever he may be, is a very lucky man. Shall we return to the others?’
The walk back across the garden was considerably quicker than the stroll out; Amy had to scurry to keep up with Richard’s brisk strides. Maybe it had to do with being out of breath, but victory didn’t leave nearly as sweet a taste in Amy’s mouth as she had anticipated. Could one really use the term victory, when Lord Richard hadn’t so much as glanced at her since they had started back down the path?
If he had ever really cared, he would never have given up that easily. Clearly, thought Amy savagely, she hadn’t even been an infatuation. She had been nothing more than a dalliance.
Henrietta looked up eagerly as Richard and Amy hove into view. ‘Did you have a nice…’ she began brightly, but the phrase trailed off as she caught sight of her brother’s stony face.
‘I’ll leave you here to get acquainted.’ Richard all but shook Amy’s fingers off his arm, executed a bow in her general direction, and plunged through the French doors into the drawing room.
‘Richard! Pssst!’ His mother’s arm shot out and dragged him behind a faux mummy case. ‘Over here!’
‘Ouch.’ Richard rubbed his wrist and glowered down at his mother. When in matchmaking mode, somehow his diminutive parent’s strength was as the strength of ten. Ten pugilists, that was.
‘Sorry, darling,’ the marchioness absentmindedly patted her son’s wrist, but her solicitude was short-lived. ‘What happened? You were outside with her for ages!’
Richard gave evasion a try. ‘Is Miles flirting with Hen?’
Lady Uppington rolled her eyes. ‘If Miles is flirting with Hen, I’m sure Hen is happily flirting back. Besides, they’re perfectly well chaperoned by that nice Miss Meadows. Do stop trying to change the subject, Richard. I don’t know why you children always think you can distract me like that.’
‘When have we ever tried to distract you, Mother? You’re far too sharp for us.’
Lady Uppington narrowed her eyes. ‘Let’s see… There was the time you and Charles… Oh no. I’m not falling for that old dodge. Come now, darling, won’t you talk about it to your’ – Lady Uppington patted the side of the mummy case – ‘mummy?’
Richard gro
aned. ‘That was beyond awful, Mother.’
‘Some children have no gratitude. What happened, darling?’
‘Amy thinks she’s in love with the Purple Gentian.’
‘But you are—’
‘I know!’
It was at that highly edifying moment that Miles chose to pop behind the mummy case. The marchioness looked miffed.
‘Why so gloomy? Is it…the mummy?’
Richard glowered at his best friend. ‘Don’t you start.’
‘I promise to behave as long as you provide refuge from the hen party – and I do mean, a Hen party – on the balcony. They’ve all got their heads together, and when I wandered over, Hen flapped her hand at me and told me I was superfluous. I’m not sure which was more provoking, the sentiment or her vocabulary.’
Miles heaved a disgruntled sigh. Lady Uppington beamed with maternal pride. Richard noticed none of this; his head was craning around the edge of the mummy case, peering at the little grouping beyond the French doors. It was, terrifyingly, just as Miles had described: Jane’s fair head, Henrietta’s glossy chestnut, and Amy’s bouncy curls all bent close together. A steady sibilant sound drifted through the air. Richard didn’t want to know what they were talking about. Which meant, of course, that he rather desperately wanted to know whether they were talking about him.
Richard strained to listen, his fingers grasping the side of the mummy case. ‘No!’ Henrietta exclaimed, bouncing on her bench. ‘You can’t be serious!’ The heads swooped back together. Hiss, hiss, hiss…
Had Richard known what was being said on the balcony, he would have been even more alarmed.
‘What do you mean he didn’t tell you who he was? That’s appalling!’
Within ten minutes, by means of ambiguous half-statements and strategically raised eyebrows, Amy had managed to ascertain that Henrietta knew of Richard’s dual identity. Once that was out of the way, the conversation became much more direct.
‘How could he let you think he was two people?’ Henrietta glowered in the direction of her brother. ‘That’s…’ Having already used appalling, she cast about for another term. ‘Unconscionable!’ she finished triumphantly.