Lady Rosabella's Ruse - By Ann Lethbridge Page 0,27

Perhaps it was the anxiety he saw in her eyes.

‘Oh, no, I had just finished when we encountered those…bullocks.’

‘Bad news?’

She glanced up at him from beneath the brim of her ugly black bonnet. Somehow it made her seem all the more alluring. Like a badly wrapped parcel with intriguing hints of the contents showing at the corners.

‘It is not important.’

A lie. He could see it in the flash of panic in her eyes as her thoughts went back to the letter. He hesitated, confused by a wish she would confide in him, by the desire to help. Surely his desires were all physical. ‘If there is anything I can do…’ he found himself saying.

The shake of her head was a disappointment. ‘They are at school in the north.’ Her hand flexed on his sleeve, a small movement, a slight tightening of fingers quickly relaxed, but it spoke of anxiety.

‘Are they not treated well?’

‘Well enough. I went there myself before…’

‘Before you were married,’ he finished. She glanced up at him, her almond-shaped eyes startled and large.

‘I— Yes.’ She swallowed.

Damn it to hell. She was lying again.

Those tears he’d seen had not been from the encounter with the bullocks. They had dried on her cheeks. His gaze dropped to the letter. The contents of the missive had made her cry. His lip curled. Was it sisters who wrote to her, or a lover?

It wouldn’t take much to discover the truth.

‘How many sisters do you have?’

She sighed. ‘Two.’

‘Younger than you, obviously, if they are still at school. Surely your parents…’

‘My parents are dead.’ She bit her lip. ‘I am responsible for their…for them until they are of age.’

For their what? He frowned at the almost imperceptible change in what she had been going to say. ‘An odd situation for a woman of your age, surely?’ He calculated her age at no more than twenty-three or four. ‘There must be other members of your family better situated to take on such a burden?’

She shook her head. ‘No one I trust.’ If anything, she sounded a little bitter as if there was someone, but they had failed in some way.

This time, she was telling the truth. Apart from that one small hesitation, every word rang true. The anxiety had been there all the time, he realised, a shadow in her eyes when he first saw her, and while she searched the house, but today it had developed into dread.

Bad news had arrived in that letter.

And she wasn’t going to confide in him. Not yet. If ever. He wasn’t the sort of man women trusted with anything important. A bitter taste filled his mouth at what he’d once taken pride in.

They paused while the dog halted to investigate a fallen tree stump. It lifted its back leg and then waddled on.

She took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders and smiled calmly. It was like watching someone draw down a screen, blurring the sharp edges of what lay behind. The smile was a mask. ‘Digger likes you,’ she said. ‘You are honoured. He hates everyone, except Lady Keswick.’

He had no choice but to follow her lead, to step back from her private life and return to civil conversation. ‘He likes you, too.’

‘He tolerates me. He has bitten the ankles of every gentleman who passed through the front door, except you.’

‘Wise dog.’ He bared his teeth. ‘He knew I’d bite him back.’

She laughed. The sound was a punch to his stomach, because he felt proud of that laugh. Because whatever troubled her, he’d managed to dispel the cloud for a moment. He’d felt this feeling before, but not for years. And never as strong.

Saints above, what was it about this woman that had him half-seas over? Dizzy like a drunkard because she had laughed at something he’d said. So what if she kissed like an angel and sang like one, too. There were hundreds of beautiful women in London and he’d sampled a good few of them without wanting to fall at their feet.

In the end, they’d all succumbed to his advances. This one was the only one who’d offered a challenge in years.

They broke into a clearing. Sun shafted down through the gaps in the canopy and bathed the grass and the cornflowers in golden light.

‘How pretty,’ she exclaimed. ‘None of these was open yesterday.’

She let go of his arm and strolled about, picking the flowers, her face glowing.

How on earth could he have thought her akin to a crow, or a nun? Never in his life