Read Online A Gentleman and a Scoundrel (The Regency Gentlemen Series) by Norma Darcy - Free Book Online Page B

arrangement.”
    “Did you?” she answered, smoothing the fur of the kitten.
    He stiffened and his jaw tensed. “You have had a change of heart then?” he asked.
    “ My heart is true,” she replied quietly. “ My heart does not bend with the wind.”
    “Neither does mine.” He flung up his hands in exasperation. “I have been to your father’s estate and back to London to look for you. Are they the actions of a fickle heart?” he demanded.
    “I don’t know what is in your heart,” she replied miserably. “You tell Malvern we are engaged and then I hear stories…”
    “What stories?”
    “Caroline Hinchcliff.”
    “Who the devil is Caroline Hinchcliff?” Nicholas asked.
    “You tell me.”
    “Never heard of the chit.”
    “You danced with her twice at the Almacks or so they say,” said Louisa, her eyes sparkling with tears.
    “Did I? It seems unlikely, I don’t recognise the name…and twice is a bit particular, you know…blow me if I can remember…Hinchcliff…what did you say her first name was? Catherine? No, Caroline wasn’t it? Yes Caroline Hinchcliff. Oh I know whom you mean! Oh Lord, don’t tell me you’re bent out of shape over Caroline Hinchcliff? She’s Tom Hinchcliff’s widow! She’s only just put off her widow’s weeds. I knew Tom very well up at Oxford. Capital fellow, got his leg shot off in the war. Dreadful business. Bled to death on the battlefield, but enough of that! Almacks…yes, I wore my new evening coat. Dreadful squeeze. Almacks, you understand, not my new coat. I daresay I was the only friend she had in the room and so danced with her as a favour. You wouldn’t want me to be uncivil , would you? You wouldn’t have wanted me to ignore her? She was agreeable enough, reasonably pretty, I suppose, although not a beauty and a dreadful whinnying laugh like a horse.”
    “She…she was your friend’s widow?” asked Louisa, unable to keep the hopeful note from her voice.
    “Yes! I cannot believe you have been jealous of Caroline Hinchcliff. Louisa, you goose. As if I could have eyes for anyone but you.”
    She coloured, feeling suddenly very foolish. How could she have let such a trifling rumour so overset her happiness? Did she not trust him?
    “Is that why you left London so suddenly?” he demanded. “And without telling anyone where you were going? Do you not think that I, as your fiancée, might have been told?”
    She hung her head. “I needed to be alone…to think…”
    “What was there to think about?”
    “ You know…after what happened at Vauxhall…when Malvern found us,” she replied uncomfortably.
    Nicholas flung away from the tree. “Malvern! I swear you care more for his good opinion than you do for mine.”
    “That’s not true!”
    “Then why did you look so mortified when I told him we were betrothed?” he demanded. “Are you so ashamed of me?”
    “No, of course not! Nicky…you know I never could be.”
    “Then why?”
    “I…I…I don’t know. You took me by surprise, that’s all. I didn’t know how to answer.”
    “Don’t you want to marry me?” he asked, looking as forlorn as the kitten in her lap.
    “Of course I do, what a thing to ask your fiancée!”
    “Well…just thought I’d be sure, in case you changed your mind. You haven’t, have you?”
    “Nicky! How can you ask?”
    He looked surprisingly gloomy at this declaration of devotion from his lover. “God, what a coil!” he said suddenly. “And only Malvern knows it beside you and I and Marcus of course―now don’t fly up into the boughs! Marcus won’t breathe a word to anyone. But I must say I wish it was out in the open instead of all this sneaking around behind everyone’s back. Then at least I would not have had to put up with Malvern’s cursed interference. He rang such a peal over my head, I can tell you! It was all I could do not to land him a facer. Prosing on and on like an old woman! And what right has he to tell me what to do? What business is it