Secrets of a Summer Night (Wallflowers #1)(61)

It was a sign of how arrogant Hodgeham had become that he would accost her in a place where they could so easily be seen. Gasping in outrage, Annabelle spun to face him. She was confronted by the sight of his portly torso crammed into tight evening clothes, while the oily scent of his cologned hair assaulted her nostrils. “Lovely creature,” Hodgeham muttered, his breath pungent with the scent of brandy. “Recovering nicely, I see. I think perhaps we should resume our conversation of yesterday, before I was so pleasantly diverted by your mother.”

“You revolting—” Annabelle began in fury, but he interrupted the flow of words by clamping his fingers on either side of her jaw and squeezing hard.

“I’ll tell Kendall everything,” he said, his bulbous lips very close to hers. “With sufficient embellishment to ensure that he will look upon you and your family with the purest disgust.” His ponderous body pressed hers against the wall, nearly squeezing the breath from her. “Unless,” he said, his sour respirations striking her face, “you decide to accommodate me in the same manner that your mother has.”

“Then go and tell Kendall,” Annabelle said, her eyes blazing with hatred. “Tell him everything and be done with it. I’d rather starve in the gutter than ‘accommodate’ a repulsive swine like you.”

Hodgeham stared at her in incredulous fury. “You’ll regret it,” he said, flecks of spittle gleaming on his lips.

She smiled with cold contempt. “I don’t think so.”

Before Hodgeham let go of her, Annabelle caught a movement out of the corner of her vision. Turning her head to the side, she saw someone walking toward them—a man who was moving with the stealthy strides of a stalking panther. It must have appeared to him that she and Hodgeham had been caught in an amorous embrace.

“Release me,” she hissed to Hodgeham, and shoved hard at his bulky girth. He stepped back, finally allowing her to take a full breath, and shot her a glance of malevolent promise before walking in the opposite direction of the approaching man.

Rattled, Annabelle stared into the face of Simon Hunt as he took her by the shoulders. He was watching Hodgeham hurry away, with a hard, almost blood-thirsty gaze that made her blood turn cold. Then he looked down at her in a way that caused her breath to catch. Until that moment she had never seen Simon Hunt without his usual nonchalance. No matter how she had insulted or cut or spurned him, he had always reacted with predictable jeering self-assurance. But it seemed that she had finally done something that had provoked genuine fury. He looked ready to strangle her.

“Were you following me?” she asked with forced calmness, wondering how he had managed to appear at that particular moment.

“I saw you walk through the entrance hall,” he said, “and Hodgeham trailing after you. I followed because I wanted to find out what was going on between the two of you.”

Her gaze turned defiant. “And have you found out?”

“I don’t know,” came his dangerously soft reply. “Tell me, Annabelle—when you said that you could do better, was this what you had in mind? Servicing that idiotic lump of lard on the sly, in return for the pitiful recompense he gives you? I wouldn’t have believed you to be that much of a fool.”

“You sodding hypocrite,” Annabelle whispered furiously. “You’re angry with me for being his mistress and not yours—well, you tell me something—why does it matter to whom I sell my body?”

“Because you don’t want him,” Hunt said through his teeth. “And you don’t want Kendall. You want me.”

Annabelle did not understand the seething tangle of emotions inside herself, or why this confrontation had begun to fill her with a strange, terrible exhilaration. She wanted to hit him, throw herself on him, provoke him until the last few fragments of his self-control were smashed to powder. “Let me guess—you’re prepared to offer me a more profitable version of the same arrangement that I supposedly have with Hodgeham?” She laughed scornfully as she saw the answer on his face. “The answer is no. No. So once and for all, leave me alone—”

She stopped as she heard the chatter of more people coming along the hallway. Exasperated and desperate, she whirled around to find a door that she could slip through, to keep from being seen alone with Hunt. Catching her in one arm, Hunt hauled her inside the closest room and shut the door smartly.

Registering the shape of the piano and the clutter of music stands, Annabelle jerked away from Hunt. He reached out to steady a flimsy music stand that had nearly been overturned by the brush of her skirts. “If you can stand to be Hodgeham’s mistress,” Hunt muttered, following as she retreated farther into the music room, “God knows you can stand to be mine. You could say that you’re not attracted to me, but we both know that you’d be lying. Tell me your price, Annabelle. Any sum you’d care to name. Do you want a house of your own? A yacht? Done. Let’s get this over with—I’ve had enough of waiting for you.”

“How romantic,” Annabelle said with an unsteady laugh. “My God. Your proposition is somewhat lacking in subtlety, Mr. Hunt. And you’re wrong in your assumption that my only option is to be someone’s mistress. I can get Lord Kendall to marry me.”

His eyes were as dark as volcanic glass. “Marriage to him would turn into a living hell for you. He’ll never love you. He’ll never even know you.”