The Scandal Of The Season. Annie Burrows

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      ‘Miss Furnival,’ he said, his wounded pride smarting so much that his voice sounded harsh, even to his own ears. ‘Still up to your pretty little neck in mischief, I see.’

      The hand he’d just kissed flew to that neck, as though inviting his eyes to follow. Inviting his lips to do the same, at some later date. Or perhaps his teeth. If she was everything Issy had said, then she wouldn’t care which.

      Even though he’d just thrown down the gauntlet? Perhaps because he’d challenged her. Perhaps it was a declaration that she would fight back, with all the weapons in her arsenal. And a fight it was to be, now, he realised with a pang of what felt like loss. The warmth had gone from her smile. From a distance it probably looked the same, but this close to her, close enough to smell the floral fragrance she was wearing, he knew different.

      ‘Mischief?’ She gave a little frown, as though she could not understand what he could possibly be implying. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

      For a moment, he wished she really didn’t have any idea what he meant. That they were not on opposing sides. That he’d been able to bask in the warmth of that first smile, rather than having to make it freeze in place. That he could have taken her hand without reservation and begun to converse with her the way any man would talk to a pretty woman he’d met and felt drawn to.

      But that outcome had never been possible. When they’d first met, he’d known he would shortly be going abroad and that he might be away too long to even suggest, let alone hope, she might wait for him. Known that she’d been too young for him and now…now his mission made fraternising with her an impossibility.

      He tore his eyes from her before her loveliness gained sufficient power to weaken his resolve and focused on the girl next to her. The girl Issy had told him was the daughter of a mill owner. ‘To begin with, foisting a girl like that,’ he said to Miss Furnival, though he kept on looking at the ginger girl, ‘on to a featherbrained creature like the Duchess of Theakstone.’

      The ginger girl flinched. Scowled. And, as he’d regained command of his wayward tendency to wish for the impossible, he turned his head to address Miss Furnival directly. ‘I don’t know how you have managed to persuade her to take part in one of your schemes, but I do know that you are encroaching upon her good nature.’

      ‘One of my schemes?’ Miss Furnival added a shake of her head to the mystified frown she’d manufactured for his benefit. ‘What schemes?’

      ‘Don’t think you can fool me by that look of innocence,’ he snarled at her through a mixture of bitterness and disappointment that she had, apparently, already done so once. ‘Nor anyone else, not for very long. There are those who know what you have done, what you are…’

      She flung up her chin. ‘And what am I?’

      Where to start? ‘An adventuress. A heartbreaker.’ Not that she’d broken his heart. He’d only got as far as wishing she was older, wishing he could get to know her better before the regiment left England, wishing he could ask her to consider waiting for him…

      Thank goodness. Otherwise, when she’d turned up on the quayside, clinging to Gilbey’s arm as the lad stammered out his intention to marry her and carry her on board with them like so much baggage…

      But then, according to Issy, she was a baggage, wasn’t she?

      ‘Do you think,’ he said, ‘I could ever forget what you did to Lieutenant Gilbey?’ According to Issy, that was. Although he still wasn’t completely convinced. And it wasn’t just because she was acting so surprised. Part of him really didn’t want to believe she could look so lovely, yet be so hard-hearted. Perhaps, if he flung her supposed crimes in her face, she would refute them in such a way that he could go back and inform his sister she’d been mistaken. ‘You cajoled him to make a runaway match of it,’ he ventured. ‘And then when I believed I’d managed to extricate him from your clutches, you still managed to wheedle his fortune out of him.’

      ‘You…got him out of my clutches?’ Her eyes widened, briefly, then turned hard.

      His heart sank as she revealed a side of her he’d kept on hoping, right to this very minute, had been a figment of Issy’s imagination.

      But then wasn’t that always the end result of hope? Shattering disappointment. Nothing ever lived up to a man’s expectations. Not military glory, not social preferment and most definitely not, he’d just discovered, a woman.

      ‘If that is your opinion of me,’ she said frostily, ‘then I fail to see that we have anything further to discuss.’ She turned aside as if to cut him. He prevented her from doing so by simply stepping sideways and so maintaining his position directly in front of her.

      ‘On the contrary,’ he said, bitterness and disappointment driving him further than anything Issy could have provoked from him. ‘I have come here tonight specifically to warn you that I have received intelligence as to your manoeuvres. I suppose you have run through Lieutenant Gilbey’s fortune by now. That is why you have come to London. You are hoping to be able to dupe some other gullible fool into loosening his purse strings.’ That was certainly what Issy believed. And, believing it, had not been able to sit back and watch Miss Furnival get away with it all over again.

      ‘I have no intention of doing any such thing,’ she denied hotly.

      ‘Why else would you be using the Duchess to parade you about town, if not to catch yourself a husband?’

      She frowned. Glanced at her companion. Took a breath. But before she could utter a single excuse, he said, ‘You will not get away with it. I will not allow you to get away with it.’ Issy had been right. He owed it to Gilbey, and Gilbey’s family, and every other vulnerable male of marriageable age in England, to put a stop to her scheming before she could really get going.

      ‘Get away with it?’ Her eyes flashed with fury. ‘And just how, pray, do you intend to stop me?’

      If he’d had any doubts about her plans before, that statement exposed them. Because he could not very well hinder non-existent plans, could he?

      ‘For a start,’ he said, thinking on his feet, while wishing he’d taken the precaution of forming some kind of contingency plan, ‘I shall inform the poor woman you have deceived into giving you house room exactly what you really are. And then I will make sure everyone knows that she,’ he said, indicating the ginger girl, ‘the one you claim is your friend, has no right to appear in decent society, either.’

      ‘Cassy…’ The ginger girl took hold of her arm, a look of concern on her face. He turned to address her.

      ‘My quarrel is not with you, miss. If you withdraw from society quietly, I shall pursue you no further. And if you—’ he turned to Miss Furnival once more ‘—confess your crimes to the Duchess, before any harm is done to her, and leave Town, I shall not expose you, either. I am, after all, a man of honour.’

      ‘A man of honour?’ Miss Furnival turned up her nose in scorn. ‘Men of honour go about interfering in matters that are of no concern to them, do they? Flexing their muscles and threatening defenceless females?’

      He hadn’t flexed any muscles, in a literal sense, but somehow by referring to them he suddenly felt aware of several. One in particular that had been lying dormant for some years.

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