Regency Rumour: Never Trust a Rake / Reforming the Viscount. ANNIE BURROWS

voice, does she not? Nobody who was in the drawing room the afternoon she called round could have failed to hear a single word of her conversation with me about my maternal grandmother and how they were such bosom bows, and how appalled she was not to have seen me at any of the kind of gatherings where Lavinia’s granddaughter ought to have been invited.’

      He smiled with satisfaction. His godmother was one of those persons who knew everyone and everyone’s antecedents to at least three generations, and thoroughly enjoyed showing off the extent of her knowledge.

      ‘Did she restrict herself to merely mentioning your maternal antecedents?’

      Henrietta shook her head.

      ‘My father’s connection to the Duke of Harrowgate came up very early on. Nor did she leave out my Uncle Ledbetter’s lineage, which she followed by lecturing us all, at length, about the difference between the middle classes, who may truly be called vulgar mushrooms who push themselves up from nowhere, and younger sons of good families who are obliged to take up a profession. And since then, the invitations to, well, to be frank, rather tonnish events such as this have begun to trickle in.’

      It had only been after Lady Dalrymple’s visit that Julia Twining had called again, which was what had made her take both her repeated protestations of friendship, and her concern about her health, with a large pinch of salt.

      ‘I am only surprised,’ he sneered, ‘that nobody has yet started a rumour that you and I are on the verge of matrimony. Given that her appearance in your drawing room will have dealt the fatal blow to speculation that any kind of scandal could be brewing between us.’

      ‘Oh, dear, would people really …?’ She whisked her fan shut and tapped it absentmindedly in the palm of her other hand. Poor Lord Deben must be regretting his association with her even more. The last thing he wanted was to have his name connected to any innocent, eligible female. He disliked the entire notion of marriage so much that he’d told her he would rather shoot himself in the leg than enter into one.

      ‘No, no, I’m quite sure nobody suspects anything of that nature,’ she said, a rather worried frown puckering her brow. ‘A-at least …’ She glanced about the room, looking rather alarmed. ‘Perhaps we ought not to be standing apart in this corner, in this … intimate fashion.’

      It felt as though she had forcibly thrust him into a stuffy room and slammed the door on him, while he’d been enjoying taking a walk on a particularly fresh and bracing October day.

      ‘Do you dislike the notion so very much?’

      His whole being swelled with indignation. Just because those bucks had let slip a few indisputable facts, and he’d admitted that even his own brother had publicly condemned his licentious lifestyle, the little Puritan was recoiling from the prospect of her name being linked with his.

      How dare she? He was a good marriage prospect. Any other woman would be thrilled, not look as though she’d just inadvertently trodden in something unpleasant.

      But instead of turning on his heel, and putting her out of his mind, the thought that was uppermost in Lord Deben’s mind was a burning desire to force her to recant.

      ‘Me?’ Goodness, but he looked cross. He was probably regretting talking to her so freely now and coming to stand in this rather private little recess. Oh dear, but she hoped he did not now suspect she was trying to entrap him, too. She had better put him straight, at once.

      ‘No! I mean, I had not thought about it at all. And I wouldn’t.’

      She could not believe that women would actually try to entrap a man who’d rather shoot himself in the leg than settle down to marital fidelity. Were they mad? Although perhaps they didn’t know as much about him as she did.

      ‘Why? Because you consider me an irredeemable rake?’

      Well, he was one. She knew that now. The bucks who’d swarmed into her aunt’s house had been incredibly indiscreet, letting slip all sorts of unsavoury facts about him. She hadn’t been able to believe how coarse their conversation had been. It demonstrated not only a lowness of mind, but also an insulting disregard for her sensibilities. They were so keen to discuss the latest exploits of the Devilish Lord Deben, that they’d reminded her of a pack of baying hounds, chasing down a poor unfortunate hare.

      It had been years, they’d revealed, since he’d kept a mistress in the conventional sense. Since they’d seen him take one of them driving in the park. They’d been slavering to guess what this queer start of his might mean. Was he changing his tactics once more? For, after he’d severed connections to the last of his high flyers, he’d methodically worked his way through the willing married ladies of the ton. When he’d sampled all the most beautiful, he’d cut a swathe through the wanton widows. Had he now decided to pursue unmarried girls of questionable birth for sport? After all, everyone knew how easily he grew bored, once he’d made a conquest. His affaires, apparently, never lasted very long.

      Yes, they concluded, he would have far more sport attempting to seduce respectable virgins. He must be looking for a challenge to pique his jaded appetite. A virgin was bound to attempt to hang on to her virtue for as long as possible.

      Only the fat young lord had voiced a protest, so blackened was Lord Deben’s reputation. And then only to point out that if it were the case, surely he would at least start on a pretty girl.

      Her cheeks heated, half with chagrin at not being thought pretty enough to warrant seduction, and half with guilt at knowing far too much about the man who stood so close to her. She ought not to know such things about him. Or about any man.

      ‘I beg your pardon. It is not my business to comment upon your behaviour. I … I think I had better return to my aunt,’ she said, lowering her eyes.

      ‘Yes, run back to the safety of a crowded room,’ he sneered. ‘You do not want your spotless reputation sullied by loitering too long in my presence.’

      She glanced up at him in confusion. For a few moments she had felt as though she could say anything to him and he would understand. It had been an age since she had just been able to talk freely like this. Not since she’d left the all-male household in Much Wakering. Her aunt and Mildred set such store by only discussing acceptable topics that it had felt wonderful to let down her guard and just say whatever came into her head.

      But of course he wasn’t one of her brothers. Or a man she had known all her life. He was practically a stranger.

      ‘You are correct, of course,’ she said woodenly. The one thing she did know about him was that he was a rake. No, make that two things. He was a rake and an earl. And she was a nobody. ‘A woman’s reputation is a fragile thing.’

      ‘Which you believe I am quite capable of casually destroying.’

      ‘No!’ Very well, she knew three things about him. The nonsense those bucks had spouted was so very far from the truth it was laughable. He had no intention of seducing her. His reasons for taking her out for a drive were completely honourable.

      No, she corrected herself. She could not claim that anything Lord Deben did would be completely honourable, not in the way she meant it. He’d tempted her to take a course that she considered most dishonourable. But he had not suggested it to make sport of her, or ruin her. In his own way, he had extended the hand of friendship to her.

      ‘Not on purpose, anyway. I am quite sure that I have nothing to fear from you.’ He did not pursue innocent girls. ‘But don’t forget, I have already been subjected to a deluge of unpleasant gossip just because you singled me out for attention the once.’

      She looked up at him again and what he saw in her eyes struck him like a blow over the heart.

      Not on purpose, she had said, and she had meant it.

      She trusted him.

      And if she felt it was wiser to keep away from him, she did so with regret. It was all there in those eyes that were as transparent as the sky on a cloudless