do is be present to make a young lady swoon.”
She lifted her chin a notch. “I do believe you lost all of that charm when you crossed the line from confident to arrogant.”
“So you think I was once that charming?” he parried with a cocksure grin.
Another time and place, Simon might have chuckled at his return. But knowing just a glimmer of their history, he didn’t find Lord Belgrave’s statement humorous in the least.
Isabelle lifted her chin a notch, any more and someone might confuse her for an ostrich, then brought her hands to her chest and in a sing-song tone said, “Oh dear me, I never thought I’d see the day where the haughty Sebastian Gentry, Lord Belgrave, had to fish for compliments.”
Simon’s eyes flew to Lord Belgrave. There was no way he couldn’t pass by the chance to see the older man’s face! “Does that mean that you’ve spent your whole life thinking about me, then?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“Not even just a little?”
“No. Not even just a little.”
Like a spectator at Gentleman Jack's, Simon’s head bobbed back and forth between Isabelle and Lord Belgrave with each statement.
“It doesn’t have to be for a positive reason that you thought of me, my dear. Just that you did,” he said, grinning.
“And fill my mind with something more unsavory than what’s found at the bottom of a privy? I should think not.”
Simon held his breath in a refusal to laugh or make any sound that might keep him from hearing Lord Belgrave’s response to that statement.
“Ah, then it was of fond thoughts, indeed,” he concluded with a knowing grin.
She fisted her hands into her skirt. “Fond thoughts, indeed. Why, I must confess that only four months ago my carriage rolled past where a young lady had slipped on the ice on her front steps. A gentleman she seemed to know ignored her cries for help and walked right past her. It was in that moment, I briefly gave into my girlish insensibilities and wondered whatever happened to you.”
“Did you now?” A stoic look came over his face, transforming him to marble. “And how do you know that cad wasn’t me?”
She looked down to examine her nails before meeting his eyes and giving a casual shrug. “Oh, wouldn’t you know, he was far too handsome to have been you.”
A little over a month later, mindlessly walking down the street Simon still winced at her words the way he had that day in Mrs. Finch’s drawing room.
He still couldn’t puzzle out the how or why those two had rekindled their romance.
He frowned. Was his provoking of Rae just as callus as Lord Belgrave? He hoped not. Simon’s intent was just good-natured fun. But did she understand it that way? He tried to think back on the few times he’d seen her this Season and had been afforded the opportunity.
She’d all but outright refused to speak to him at any of the balls until last night, but he’d always been sure to wink at her when he saw her. Or when they were alone, he’d give a low sweeping bow. It always made him laugh when she blushed and grimaced at him. His favorite had come in the form of waggling his eyebrows at her at that blasted statue museum.
Good-natured. All of it.
But why do you do it? The question called to him from the back of his mind, and he immediately thrust it from his thoughts. It is best not to explore that, he reasoned.
Just like it’s best not to explore the reason that every time you need a scapegrace when put into a sticky situation regarding ladies you always say your interests lie with one Miss Henrietta Hughes, asked that annoying voice in the back of his head.
Simon’s mouth went dry. Oh, gads, please no. He racked his brain…
Dancing with Isabelle at the ball earlier in the Season, he’d stupidly decided she’d make a good wife and he might as well ask her to marry him since she seemed to be drowning in the sea of sharks in London. When she’d rebuffed him…he claimed an interest in Rae. Damn.
When he’d pretended to have written an ode to a lady. He’d supposedly written it for… Rae. Damn and blast.
What was it about this young lady that consumed him so much?
Never mind. He didn’t want to know. The truth was she didn’t like him. And not just in the way that Isabelle and Lucy didn’t like him, Rae truly didn’t like him. Which was fine