Passions of a Gentleman (Gentlemen of Honor #3) - Rose Gordon Page 0,56

Simon was still standing in the doorway— “wants to propose to someone named Henny.” He looked over at Rae who was trying in vain to make sense of why on earth he’d just referred to her as Henny! “I’m supposing that’s her.” He shrugged. “He needs to ask her and quick,” Seth continued, biting his lip. “He’s been looking real sick the past few days—and not the way that Mr. Sweet looks when he has a cold and his nose turns red and his eyes swell up the size of pastries. No, he looks more like Mrs. Finch, who just happened to be spawning, did when she was told Mr. Finch went—”

“Seth, that’s quite enough,” Simon hissed.

“No, leave him be,” Drake said. “I’m quite interested in the rest of this description.”

“Well, Mr. Finch went home with a barmaid and—”

“On second thought, I think your Uncle Simon might have been right,” Drake said, then cast an uneasy look at his three girls who were listening to Seth’s story with rapt attention. Or perhaps they were just staring at Seth with their hearts in their eyes.

Seth shrugged again. “The man looks positively ill. Why, just look at him.” He gestured to Simon and all eyes went to him. “He’s been green all week.”

“All week,” Rae whispered before she could stop herself.

“All week,” Seth confirmed. The boy looked like he was about to burst with mirth. Simon, meanwhile, looked as if he were about to burst with something else. Embarrassment? Rage, perhaps? No, that couldn’t be; he wasn’t one to be prone to fits of rage.

“All right, I think you’ve earned your dessert,” Juliet said then turned to her husband. “And I think Simon has earned the right to speak to Henrietta without an audience.”

Rae wasn’t sure how she felt about being left alone with Simon, but it seemed as if the circumstance could not be avoided.

Drake, the girls, Seth, and Juliet each walked out without so much as a word to either Rae or Simon. (Although, the look on Juliet’s face spoke volumes.) Drake, however, grumbled something about being banished from his own drawing room, lingered at the door and exchanged a look with Simon that Rae couldn’t see.

Presumably deciding Drake was taking too long to leave, Juliet reached her slim hand back into the room and took hold of her husband’s wrist and gave him a little tug.

Drake grumbled a little more than lumbered from the room.

As soon as his form had crossed the threshold, Simon closed the door.

Rae ran her clammy palms over her skirts and stared at him.

He returned her stare and made no move to get closer to her.

Now that they were alone, Simon didn’t know what to say to her. “That wasn’t the proposal you deserved,” he said at last. “I’m sorry about that.”

Rae shrugged. “It wasn’t a proposal at all.”

“No,” Simon allowed, a small measure of hope welling up in his chest. Instinctively, Simon closed the gap between them and reached for her hands. “Rae, will you—”

“No.”

All the air in Simon’s lungs left his body in one swift whoosh and if felt as if she’d shot him in the heart with an arrow. Dropping his hands, Simon took a step back. He hadn’t prepared for a no and didn’t know what to do or say now.

“I would have said yes on Saturday.” The waiver in Rae’s voice grabbed his attention—and his heart.

“I’m sorry,” Simon admitted. “I shouldn’t have left. I-I…” He swallowed uncomfortably. “I didn’t know what else to do. I wanted to stay, but I needed some time to make sense of it all.”

“Make sense of it what?” She blinked her red-rimmed eyes.

“Us. This.” He made a vague gesture around the room. “All of it.” Sighing, he ran his hand through his hair once more. “After the catastrophe with Isabelle, and then the misunderstanding with Lucy, the last thing I wanted to do was become entangled with another young lady and create more fodder for gossip. So when my heart started beating outside of my own chest and walking around in your reticule, I had to get away. You didn’t deserve the gossip and stigma that would have come with being the third young lady this Season I’d formed an attachment to—even if it was genuine this time.”

“Wasn’t that for me to decide?”

“Yes,” he said with another swallow. “I just—”

“Assumed you knew best,” she finished for him challenge and fire swirling in her blue eyes.

“Not exactly.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “At first,