Someone to Love (Westcott #1)(51)

“But how very . . . rude,” Anna said.

“Yes,” the duke agreed. “He was.”

“You,” she cried. Sometimes his affectations were too much to be borne. “You were very rude.”

He thought about it as he sipped from his glass. “But the thing is, Anna,” he said, “that he did say perhaps. That implies a choice, does it not? I chose not to present him to you.”

“Why?” She frowned at him.

“Because,” he said, “I would have found it tedious.”

“And I find your company tedious,” she retorted, handing him her glass—he dropped his quizzing glass on its ribbon in order to take it—and turning back toward the box.

Too late she realized that she had attracted attention. A lane opened in front of her but for different reasons, she suspected, than when it had opened for the duke. She entered the box alone, but the duke was close enough behind her that no one remarked upon the fact. Cousin Alexander was standing talking with the colonel and Uncle Thomas while Aunt Louise and Aunt Mildred were conversing with each other, their heads almost touching.

“You are looking flushed, Anastasia,” Aunt Mildred remarked. “I daresay it was hotter out in the corridor than it is in here.”

“I am flushed with enjoyment, Aunt,” Anna said as she took her seat again. Her eyes met the duke’s, and she would not look away because he did not. He raised his eyebrows and had the gall to look almost amused.

He would have found it tedious to present that gentleman to her, indeed. How humiliating to the man himself, and how . . . rude to her, giving the impression as he had that she was not yet ready to be presented to polite society. What did he expect? That her mouth would pour forth obscenities and blasphemies, all learned at the orphanage?

And then, before looking away and resuming his own seat, he smiled at her. A full-on, dazzling smile that made him look like a golden angel and made her feel several degrees warmer than just flushed.

She disliked him, she decided. She despised him. And it was definitely repulsion she felt for him rather than attraction.

She smiled as Cousin Alexander seated himself beside her again and engaged her in intelligent conversation about the play.





Twelve




“You know, Avery,” Harry said cheerfully as he surveyed himself in the long pier glass in his dressing room. “I think maybe this was the best thing that could have happened to me. While I was my father’s only son and heir, I could not even think of joining the military. I certainly could not do so after his death. But I have always envied those fellows who could, and now I can be one of them with a clear conscience. It is all going to be a great lark. And I am going to like wearing a green rather than a scarlet coat. Every officer and his dog wear scarlet. This will turn heads. Female heads, that is. Do you not think?” He turned to grin at his guardian.

The boy did indeed look dashing in the uniform of the 95th Rifles. And Avery did not doubt his enthusiasm, though there was definitely a slight edge of hysteria to it. Harry would do well—if he remained alive. And perhaps indeed what had happened would be the making of him. He was speaking with a forced bravado now, but he would make it reality. There was something admirable about Harry, after all.

“I do believe you will always turn female heads,” Avery said, looking his ward over without the aid of his quizzing glass, “the color of your coat notwithstanding. You are ready?”

Harry was leaving today to join his regiment, or the small part of it that was in England, replenishing its numbers after losses in battle. Within a day or two they would be embarking for the Peninsula and the war against Napoleon Bonaparte. There would be no time for the boy to ease his way gently into his new role. He might find himself in a pitched battle within days of his arrival.

“Aunt Louise will not shed buckets of tears over me, will she?” Harry asked uneasily. “Leaving my mother and the girls a week ago was one of the hardest things I have had to do in my entire life. Worse than watching my father die.”

“Her Grace will keep a stiff upper lip,” Avery assured him. “Jessica will be another matter.”

Harry winced.

“Her mother has allowed her out of the schoolroom,” Avery told him. “If she were not allowed to say farewell to you, she would probably run away to sea as a deckhand or some such thing and I would have to exert myself to go and fetch her home.”

“As you did with me when I enlisted with that sergeant,” Harry said. “Did I tell you how much you made me think of David confronting Goliath, but with a quizzing glass rather than a slingshot? Devil take it, Avery, but I wish I could simply click my fingers and find myself with my regiment. Not that I do not love my relatives. Just the opposite, in fact. Love is the damnedest thing.”

Was it? But it was indeed hard to be sending Harry off, possibly to his death. “I shall try my utmost to contain my own tears,” he said.

Harry gave a bark of laughter.

The duchess and Jessica were awaiting them in the drawing room. So was Anna.

Avery eyed her with displeasure. She had actually quarreled with him two evenings ago. She had found his company tedious and had stalked away from him, regardless of the curiosity she was stirring among those gathered in their vicinity. He would wager half his fortune that fashionable drawing rooms had been buzzing with the story yesterday and probably would again today unless someone had been obliging enough to wear a yellow waistcoat with a purple coat or elope with a handsome, brawny footman or otherwise arouse some new scandal. And now here she was to sob all over Harry when he least needed it.