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

And then, if I appear to pursue you, they will be falling over themselves to become your friends.’

      Even as he uttered the words, it occurred to him that he could do worse than really marry Miss Gibson. At least she would not bore him. He would not wish to limit his intercourse with her to the bedroom. She would be a charming companion. The prospect of marrying her was so very appealing that when she laughed it was all he could do not to flinch.

      ‘Oh, heavens. You cannot really think that anyone would believe I am the kind of girl who would really tempt a man of your … well …’ She felt herself blushing as she thought of some of the remarks the yahoos had made about his love life. ‘Your … experience, shall we say? If you ever do decide to marry, they will expect you to pick someone … exceptional. She will be beautiful, at the very least. Probably wealthy, too, and with far better connections than mine.’

      A wonderful feeling came over him as he saw that he had absolutely no need to make her recant. It was her own powers of attraction she was calling into question, not the entire concept of marrying him.

      With any other woman, he would have wondered if she was fishing for compliments. But Miss Gibson was honest. Brutally honest, at times. So he could just take her remark at face value.

      God, what a novel experience that was!

      Another thing she had said he could take at face value … what was it she’d said, earlier? She had never considered the thought of marrying him. She really had not. There had been no speculative gleam in her eye when he’d taken her out driving. There was no coquettishness about her now. No, Miss Gibson was treating him as though he was her friend.

      ‘Come, now. In the spirit of our friendship, what say you we have a little fun at the expense of all those yahoos,’ he said, ruthlessly using her own terminology to bring her round to his way of thinking. She was not ready to think of him in terms of marriage. But he could soon change her mind, had he unlimited access to her. There had never yet been a woman he could not bring to eat out of his hand.

      ‘I have already told you that you are eminently marriageable. And now that my godmother has made your connections known, people will be ready to believe in our courtship. Next to scandal, it is the one thing people love to think they can see brewing.’

      She shook her head. ‘I have already told you, I have no interest in playing such games. Though,’ she admitted, ‘I am flattered that you think I could figure as the kind of woman you might lose your heart to.’

      ‘Are you?’

      ‘Yes,’ she admitted with a delightful blush. And then ruined it all by adding, ‘Because even an ignorant girl from the country like me can see what a coup it would be, socially, to get an offer from a man of your rank and wealth.’

      A coup. Socially. Had ever a man been so neatly put in his place?

      And there was he thinking she’d actually started to like him.

      His disappointment was out of all proportion to the slap she’d administered, particularly since she’d not done it deliberately.

      ‘Then you had better,’ he said coldly, ‘return to your aunt, had you not, Miss Gibson?’

      He watched her scurry away, like a mouse relieved to have escaped the paws of the kitchen cat. And he pretended the same indifference as would the kitchen cat, balked of its legitimate prey.

      But behind his lazily hooded eyes his mind was racing. There had to be some way of making her change her mind about marrying him. He just had to discover what that might be. He would have to observe her closely, surreptitiously if need be. Until, like a hunter stalking its prey, he would find the optimum moment to pounce.

      And take her.

       Chapter Six

      ‘Miss Gibson!’

      Henrietta faltered to a stop at the malice evident in the speaker’s tone, turned, and saw Miss Waverley emerge from the doorway from where she must have been watching her tête-à-tête with Lord Deben.

      ‘I might have known you would seize this opportunity to corner Lord Deben and thrust yourself upon his notice yet again.’

      ‘It was rather the opposite,’ retorted Henrietta, recalling how Lord Deben had accosted her on her way to the refreshment room.

      ‘You would say that, you brazen hussy,’ hissed Miss Waverley, bearing down upon her. ‘I know what you are about. But it won’t work.’ She raked Henrietta with a contemptuous look. ‘You are making a spectacle of yourself by pursuing him like this. Lady Susan only invited you here so that we could all watch you trotting after him, like some lovesick puppy. So that we could all laugh at you.’

      She did laugh then and it was one of the most unpleasant sounds Henrietta had ever heard.

      ‘He is not really interested in you,’ she said. ‘How could he be? You are just an ugly … nobody. He is very choosy about the females he permits into his bed, you know. They all have to be titled, for a start, and incredibly beautiful. And accomplished, too.’

      ‘Then,’ said Henrietta quietly, ‘that certainly rules you out, does it not?’

      ‘You impudent little … vulgar mushroom!’ As Miss Waverley’s face contorted with fury it occurred to Henrietta that she must not have heard about the way Lady Dalrymple had gone to such lengths to prove she was most emphatically not a mushroom of any variety.

      Or if she had, she’d chosen not to believe it.

      ‘I could have you thrown out of this house for daring to speak to me like that.’

      Henrietta very much doubted it, but Miss Waverley did not give her an opportunity to speak, so determined was she to give vent to the frustrated spite that had clearly been building up while she waited for just such an opportunity as this.

      ‘But I shan’t bother. You are not worth bothering with,’ she said, almost as though she was repeating something another person had dinned into her. ‘And Lady Susan may have taken you up, temporarily, the way she often does with odd people who capture her fancy …’

      Strangely, although she’d been able to discount everything else Miss Waverley had said so far, recognising it as an outpouring of spite, the remark about Lady Susan struck home, for she’d been suspicious of her motives from the start.

      ‘There won’t be any dancing,’ Lady Susan had informed her when she’d told her about this evening. ‘Just the opportunity to mingle with interesting people and indulge in stimulating conversation. My father has read your father’s treatise on the potential uses of de-phlogisticated air,’ she’d said, leaning slightly forwards as though about to deliver a confidence. ‘He was most impressed. And for my part, I am just longing to having one female amongst my acquaintance with whom I can hold an intelligent conversation. There are precious few in town this season.’

      Henrietta had not missed the way Lady Susan’s eyes had flickered briefly towards Julia, who had been sipping a cup of tea and staring vacantly at nothing in particular. And had decided on the spot she did not like her. Not at all.

      And yet it still hurt, somehow, to realise that everyone would now regard her as one of the ‘odd’ people that sometimes caught Lady Susan’s fancy. As odd as some of the other guests present tonight. The wild-haired poetess who’d been pointed out to her in one of the receiving rooms, for instance, or the penniless inventors, grubby artists and belligerent self-made men one would not normally see at a ton event, but who were tonight rubbing shoulders with peers and politicians.

      And Lord Danbury, forcing himself to be polite to people he only tolerated in his house because they amused his daughter.

      It made her feel a bit like one of those performing monkeys in a travelling circus. Especially when Miss Waverley added, ‘But once the novelty