‘Oh, dear, I have shocked you,’ said Lady Carelyon, pulling her down so that they would sit next to each other on the sofa. ‘But it is so rare to hear of any female, not related to him, who is immune to his surface charm that I was sure we should be firm friends.’
‘Oh, well, I...’
‘And I am positively scandalised by this latest display of vice on his part,’ she said as she drew off her gloves.
‘Vice?’
Lady Carelyon took her hands again, in a gesture of sympathy which was completely at odds with the malicious gleam in her feline green eyes. ‘Perhaps nobody has warned you yet that he is a hardened rake. But it is obvious to those who know him well that Deben has clearly grown bored with seducing other men’s wives, now, and has progressed to attempting the virtue of innocent damsels such as yourself.’
Henrietta gasped. What a horrid thing to say! It was bad enough that those dreadful men who’d invaded this drawing room at first had put such a vile interpretation upon their association. But this was his sister. Surely she knew him better than that?
The gleam in Lady Carelyon’s eyes intensified. ‘I can see that I have shocked you by speaking so plainly, but somebody had to give you a warning. And I suspected you would only heed that warning if it came from such a one as I. The word is that you are a girl of much spirit. If anyone less closely related to him than I had dared to speak so, you would have sent them to the rightabout, would you not? But you won’t be angry with me, will you?’ She tipped her head to one side and widened her eyes, like a little girl pleading for a treat from the sweetshop.
‘You are already standing firm, according to the story that reached my ears. Yes, you have begun to take steps to repulse attentions that are becoming unsavoury to you. And I say, good for you,’ she said, patting Henrietta’s
hand in an odiously patronising way. Just as though she were a matron of forty, not a slip of a thing scarcely older than herself.
‘And now I come to the main purpose of my visit,’ she said, giving Henrietta what she thought was a very sly look. ‘Once he realises you are never going to permit him to ruin you, he will be furious. For you will have made him look like a fool. And he will want his revenge. When that time comes,’ she said, leaning forwards and lowering her voice, ‘you will stand in need of friends, my girl. Or he will find some way to grind you beneath his boot heel.’
No, he would not! He wasn’t like that. Even if Lady Carelyon was correct in thinking he was attempting to seduce her and had failed, he would never be as vindictive as she was suggesting. She only had to think of the way he’d dealt with Miss Waverley. He’d wanted to punish her, yes, but not to destroy her. And anyway, he wasn’t trying to seduce her. How could anyone believe it of him?
Or that if he did wish to seduce innocent virgins, he would choose her, of all people?
‘You find that hard to believe?’
Henrietta’s face must be revealing what she was thinking. She’d never been any good at the gambling games her older brothers tried to teach her, because she lacked the ability to act as though she wasn’t excited when she held a winning hand. Or hide her disappointment when the deal had not favoured her.
‘But then he has never permitted you to see the man he really is beneath all that surface charm. As his sister, though, I can tell you exactly what he is like when crossed. He was overindulged from the moment of his birth,’ she said with evident bitterness. ‘Everything he could possibly want was given to him, at the snap of his fingers. And he has grown up to think that everyone else exists only for the purpose of providing him with amusement. He believes that everyone is beneath him and makes sure we all know our place.’
Henrietta cringed. She’d thought that very thing once or twice herself. He didn’t take her seriously. He did think his way was the only way.
‘It started when he was a child,’ Lady Carelyon continued. ‘If ever we chanced upon him at Farleigh Hall, any of his brothers and sisters that is, we had to bow to him. Nor were we permitted to speak unless he deigned to start a conversation.’
‘Well, I don’t suppose it was his fault...’