Oh, no. Was he just using her to distract him from a task he found singularly unpleasant? The task of sizing up the current crop of eligible débutantes, and deciding which of them he could steel himself to feel a little affection for?
If that were the case...
And she’d begun to think he really liked her. That they shared something...
‘Do you think we ought to return to our box now? My aunt and uncle will be wondering what has become of me.’
She was wondering what had become of her. She had no reason to feel as though he’d just plunged a knife into her heart. It wasn’t as if she’d come to town looking for a husband. Not unless it was Richard.
Though now the thought of marrying him roused nothing but cold revulsion in her stomach.
Lord Deben dipped his head in acquiescence and they retraced their steps.
‘Until tomorrow night,’ he said just before ushering her through the door.
‘At the Arlingtons’,’ she replied. He had correctly summed up society’s reaction. The morning had seen a veritable flood of invitations arrive with the post. And while her aunt was thrilled that, at last, Henrietta would be moving in her natural milieu and carrying Mildred along in her wake, all she could think, now, was that it would be at such glittering gatherings where Lord Deben would find the woman who would meet all his requirements.
And that it wouldn’t be her.
Chapter Nine
After a fortnight of having Lord Deben make love to her in public, Henrietta was beginning to feel a bit like a length of wet linen being put through a mangle. And he was the one turning the handle, smiling mockingly as he wrung her out. She could even see him hanging her out to dry once he’d tired of their association. He would say he had done what he had agreed—made her the toast of the ton. And she would have no excuse to make a complaint. He’d been honest with her from the start.
She was the one who had begun to change. Not, she huffed, staring out of the fogged-up carriage window as it waited in line to debouch her and her party outside the home of tonight’s hostess, that anyone could blame her, surely? What girl could withstand the assiduous attentions of such an accomplished and handsome rake? The things he said, the smouldering way he looked at her as he said them, all had the effect of melting her insides. And causing her to drift about rooms several times a day, particularly when he was not there.
Because when he was present, she had to make sure he did not guess that his charm was making her weaken towards him. She had to hold him at arm’s length, and pretend that it was all a game to her as well. It was what they had agreed. She had to stick to the agreement.
It was nothing to do with worrying that if he guessed her feelings for him were becoming increasingly wistful, he would stop playacting at being enamoured of her and would treat her with the same disdain he displayed for other ladies who’d foolishly fallen for his charm. According to the gossip.
Although, the last couple of nights, it had not been as hard to act nonchalantly with him as all that. Because she was growing increasingly annoyed with his ability to treat it as a game, when to her, it was becoming, dangerously, all too real.
‘I am so glad,’ said Aunt Ledbetter, as the coach lurched one place further up the queue, ‘that the little misunderstanding about your place in society seems to have been rectified. No doubt you will soon attract the kind of suitors about whom I shall be pleased to inform your father.’
She pursed her lips and looked uncomfortable. ‘I did not like to reprimand you at the time for walking up to Lord Deben in that bold manner the other week, but really, now that it seems as though society is opening its doors to you, I feel I must caution you to behave with a little more discretion. Especially with him. I know I permitted you to go out for a drive with his lordship, which may have led you to believe I approved of him, but since then I have heard such very disturbing things about him that...’
‘You need not worry,’ Henrietta replied quickly. ‘I know that he is not going to offer me marriage.’
Though he was steeling himself to find someone to marry and raise his heirs. She could see it being yet another reason why he’d been so keen to get her to agree to his plan to make her the toast of the ton. He wanted everyone to be too busy wondering what he was doing with her to notice his real motive for attending the kind of events he normally avoided like the plague.