The Regency Season: Ruined Reputations. Mary Brendan

bit her lip. No doubt when in Hugh’s arms, in a blissful haze, she had confided her secrets to him. Mr Vaughan had been the first gentleman for whom she’d formed a tendresse. The lawyer had pursued her when she was eighteen, then repaid her shy devotion by dropping her like a stone to wed the fiancée he’d omitted to mention.

      ‘No...he did not propose. Rather like you, he enjoyed flirting while chasing a dowry to make taking on a wife worthwhile.’

      Hugh strode back towards her, caught her face in a fierce grip when she avoided looking at him. ‘I told you at the time I was wrong to mislead you when I had nothing to give. If things had been different we would by now have been man and wife. Things for me are different now.’

      Beatrice would have pulled back but Hugh caught the tops of her arms, keeping her against him. Oddly, he was calmly certain that whatever he thought he knew about himself, whatever secrets he’d be obliged to expose, he was on the brink of asking her to marry him.

      ‘Things for me are different now, too,’ Bea retorted, glaring into hard hazel eyes. ‘Once home that year I fell in love properly, with a decent man, and soon realised that I’d felt mere infatuation for you.’

      ‘Is that so?’ Hugh asked softly. ‘I wonder if I’m able to infatuate you again now your decent man has disappeared...’

      This time his mouth closed with hers relentlessly, tracking every evasion until she ceded with a little gasp and allowed their lips to merge. She felt his long fingers forking into her hair, dislodging her hat and a few pins. But though she struggled Bea knew she was defeated. Since the moment he had turned up at her father’s house with news of Alex’s mother she had unconsciously craved this. Within a second of his caress skimming her silhouette she had melted closer.

      Hugh sensed her need and immediately deepened the kiss, manoeuvring her jaw to part her mouth. His tongue teased the silk of her inner lip, sliding and circling with slow eroticism, while a determined hand stroked from her back to her buttocks, jolting her into awareness of the effect she was having on him. His hands cupped her face, forcing her back from him so he could gaze at her features. A flush had spread across a soft cheek where his stubble had grazed her and her mouth, moist and temptingly slack, was scarlet and plump from his passionate assault.

      But she was not the sweet ingénue she’d been before. He could read behind the desire in her large eyes that her response was reluctant...measured...and he wondered just how much the doctor had taken before he’d gone away.

      ‘You’re easily infatuated, sweetheart,’ Hugh murmured. ‘I’m beginning to wish I’d bedded down at the Hall last night, after all, and got to know you again.’

      His brutal comment was like a dousing with cold water for Beatrice. He couldn’t have made it plainer that he thought her a wanton, desperate for his attention, just as she had been years ago when she’d promised him anything he wanted, then cried when he’d coolly told her he must stop seeing her.

      A small hand, liberated from entrapment between their bodies, flew up to crack against his unshaven cheek, jerking his head sideways. ‘I’m not infatuated and never will be again...not with you, at least. I’m disgusted by your lust and insolence.’ She backed away, pressing quivering fingers to her pulsing lips. ‘Colin might not be able to marry me under the terms of his inheritance but I’d sooner be his mistress than your wife.’

      Hugh stalked her on their way back, until she realised she’d got the stream directly behind her and could go no further.

      ‘I don’t recall proposing to you...ever...not then, not now,’ he gritted through his teeth, infuriated with himself as well as her.

      He would have risked even worse humiliation at her hands if he’d let those four damnable words circling his mind trip off his tongue.

      ‘But if it’s a lover you want...’ Hugh continued in a deliberately lewd tone as he trailed just one tormenting digit down a hot silky cheek. ‘I’ll provide a better service than the doctor...in every way. Just name it and it’s yours, whatever you desire.’ He grunted a callous laugh as she flinched at his crude proposition. ‘So...the decent man’s gone off to Miss Rawlings to keep his estates safe, has he?’

      ‘Don’t you dare mock him!’ Beatrice cried. ‘He didn’t want to leave me! He had to for his future heirs’ sake!’

      ‘Quite the martyr, then, isn’t he?’ Hugh mocked. ‘Yet Sir Colin, as he demands to be known, gives the impression of a man content with his lot in life...whereas I have just realised I am not, because I want what he doesn’t.’

      Beatrice gulped down an indignant protestation. She had not seen Colin since he’d jilted her, but for her pride’s sake she’d clung to a belief that he was missing her as she missed him. She might tell her family...she might tell herself...that she was glad they’d parted, but in private moments she knew it wasn’t wholly so. There had been tender interludes during their relationship, if no great passion. For this man to brutally throw her fiancé’s faithlessness in her face—even if it were the truth—was galling.

      ‘If Colin seems content it is because he is stoic and sensible enough to know he must accept what he cannot change!’ Beatrice hissed. ‘Whereas you are a disgusting degenerate.’

      ‘Am I? Who told you so?’ Hugh enquired with specious softness.

      Beatrice pressed together her lips, as though to prevent herself repeating what she’d learned about him from Lady Groves: he was a man who preferred spending time with harlots rather than decent women, despite his popularity with debutantes. If the ladies’ comments about the flirtatious Miss Rawlings were to be believed Colin’s future wife seemed, with awful irony, particularly taken with Hugh Kendrick. And if that were not enough then there was the other business which, if she’d guessed correctly, had taken place overseas.

      ‘Come...if you want to slander me, Beatrice, let me have some details and your source.’

      ‘But I’ve not slandered you, have I?’ she breathed, removing tendrils of fair hair that a stirring breeze had lashed across her vivid blue vision. ‘That damning description is accurate and could be added to.’

      He shrugged, cruelly amused. ‘With a little more information, sweet, I’ll be able to judge.’

      The temptation to provoke him into admitting he had dallied with exotic women was too great, and he had invited it. ‘It wouldn’t matter where in the world you were, you’d sooner scandalise decent people than curb your lust.’

      ‘Ah...I see... It worries you that I might have let my eye rove when in India. You told me you weren’t jealous, Beatrice...’ he goaded, glad that she didn’t seem in possession of any firm facts.

      ‘I’m not jealous...’ Bea raged.

      But he was ready for her fist this time and caught the small curled digits inches from his face. ‘What do you want me to tell you, sweet? All of it?’

      ‘Get out of my way,’ she choked in frustration and fury.

      Her eyes continued sparking blue fire despite the burn of tears making her blink. She’d never win this verbal battle and knew she was close to breaking down so must withdraw from it. She was not jealous or upset in any way because of Hugh Kendrick, of that she was certain! Her distress came from the unpalatable news that Colin might already have eased his conscience where she was concerned. It was hard to bear, especially as he must replace her with a woman who seemed likely to stray—perhaps before they’d even wed.

      As a sob raised her bosom, then grazed her throat, Hugh released her and strode away. Gathering the reins of the two horses, he brought them closer to where Beatrice still stood, holding herself rigidly, on the bank of the stream. When she refused to approach he jerked her closer and, without a word, hoisted her atop Molly with such strength that she had to cling to the mare’s neck to prevent herself toppling straight off the other side.

      ‘My offer of carte blanche stands,’ he said with quiet gravity, gazing up at her steadily,