In light of his fortune and remarkable looks, Lydia guessed that most women would overlook Richard’s dubious background. Everyone knew that he was a bastard, for all that he’d inherited the Harmsworth title. He liked to pretend he didn’t care, but she had a suspicion that the pride he hid so well rankled at the gossip. Occasionally she’d wondered if the signs of repressed temper she’d read in him might explode into defiance.
If that happened, life could become very interesting indeed.
And then there was Simon. Simon who she also supposed would marry sometime.
“Just who are you plotting to kill?” Simon whispered under cover of the flirtations entertaining the others.
Lydia started and blushed, and cursed that she did. The color in her cheeks betrayed that much as she wanted to treat Simon as a stranger, it was impossible. How he’d laugh if he knew that she indeed wanted to murder someone. The faceless, nameless, thieving, magnificently lucky woman who would become his wife.
How he’d laugh, when right now all Lydia wanted to do was bawl. Why did he still wield this power over her? What was she doing, even thinking of him like this when she was pledged to a re
spectable man who had never faced down a whisper of scandal?
“Perhaps you should be feeling a little vulnerable right now,” she hissed back.
Instead of reacting with pique or anger, he flung his head back and laughed as if he found her a source of untold delight. And as Lydia stared in helpless enchantment at the man she’d loved and lost, she felt her heart crack into jagged pieces.
* * *
The ball had been a crush so Lydia was drooping with tiredness by the time Cam’s coach arrived to take them both home. If only there was the slightest chance that she’d sleep tonight. At this rate, she’d look an absolute hag for her wedding. Grenville would probably take one peek at her when she came up the aisle and run for cover.
Cam handed her into the carriage before following her inside the vehicle. He shut the door after him and tapped the ceiling with his cane to bid the driver to roll on. With a heavy sigh, Lydia subsided onto the padded bench in the darkened cabin. Then some charge in the air made her sit up straight, every nerve prickling.
“Simon.” Her voice was flat with displeasure.
Whenever he was near, her skin tightened with an awareness that she wanted to deny but couldn’t. Even before she’d detected the patch of shadow on the seat opposite, she’d sensed his presence.
“Don’t lose your temper, sis.” From next to her, Cam grabbed her hand where it curled into a fist in her filmy yellow skirts.
“I have no intention of losing my temper,” she said with icy precision, breaking Cam’s hold. “I assume we’re going straight home. I can endure Mr. Metcalf’s company that long. With my brother as chaperon, even Grenville couldn’t object.”
“How very sporting of you, Lydia.” Simon’s calm amusement made her want to cuff him.
“I thought you might like a chance to catch up with each other.” Her haughty brother never sounded nervous. He sounded nervous right now.
And so the worm should. Simon wasn’t the only person she wanted to slap. How she wished Cam hadn’t got this bee in his bonnet about reuniting her with her childhood sweetheart.
“I believe Mr. Metcalf and I have already said everything that we need to,” she said in the same frigid voice, twining her hands in her lap in an attempt to quash her violent impulses.
A bristling pause descended, filled with the faint creaking of the coach and the cry of a pie vendor a few streets away. As the carriage broke free of the traffic outside the Plaisteads’ house, it gathered speed.
“We need to talk.” Simon’s self-assured baritone fell on her ears like poison.
Her sparking temper incinerated all intentions to maintain a frosty silence. “I don’t think so,” she snapped. “Although I appreciate the chance to demand that both of you end this childish campaign immediately.”
Cam turned toward her in the darkness. “Lydia, Grenville’s not—”
“Cam, old man, it’s not the time,” Simon said quietly. “Leave it.”
To Lydia’s surprise, her lordly brother heeded his friend’s reprimand. “My apologies, Lydia. It’s not my place to interfere.” Before she could come to terms with this blatantly insincere comment, he knocked on the ceiling once more. The carriage lurched to a halt with a suddenness that made her snatch after the leather strap hanging by the window. “I hope you’ll forgive me.”
“Cam, what on earth are you doing?” Lydia asked, seriously worried now.
“Giving you two some privacy.” With a speed that left her gasping, he unlatched the door and leaped from the carriage. “Bonne chance!”
He waved to the coachman to drive on and slammed the door behind him.
Chapter Four