The Wedding Game(42)

Amy was not surprised by the fact. She had warned him on the day before that if the deal had been done, there would be no escape from it. Like all men, everywhere, he had not been willing to take the word of a mere woman on something that would have been painfully obvious had he known Lord Geoffrey Summoner as well as she did.

Now he understood. He hated her father. And though he did not love her, he harboured no ill will towards Belle. But for Amy he seemed to have no feelings at all. He had hardly looked at her, though they’d been standing scant feet apart. Words and his smiles had been tossed in her direction as if he wanted her to think nothing had changed between them. But when she’d tried to catch his eye, he had looked past her, through her, or at anything else but her.

Perhaps yesterday’s torrid interlude had meant nothing to him. Maybe he was embarrassed that it had happened at all. But if she’d been expecting some acknowledgement that it had been more than a moment’s diversion, she was to be disappointed. It was over and they would never speak of it again.

It proved that she had been right all along about men. They thought no further than their own needs, unless forced to do otherwise, as Ben had been by her father. It was all the more annoying that a part of her would always wonder if Ben’s response to her today might have been different had she had allowed him to finish what they’d started.

It was a sign of weak character that she was thinking about that at all. If she had any regrets, they should be that she had not put a stop to things much sooner than she had. What had happened was unchaste, undignified, unladylike...

And wonderful. She sighed.

At the sound Mellie, who had been dozing on the hearth rug of the parlour, looked up and growled at no one in particular.

‘Silly dog,’ said Belle, tossing the last bit of her biscuit to him and setting her tea cup aside.

‘Do not spoil him,’ Amy said, stretching out her foot so she could rub his exposed belly with the toe of her slipper.

‘I still have not taken him to the park to play ball with Guy,’ Belle said, staring out the window as if hoping that the gentleman would appear.

Amy frowned. And there was another fine example of manhood. They must consider themselves fortunate that they had stopped him before he had irretrievably compromised her sister. Though he had been all but underfoot for the entire Season, they had seen no trace of Guy Templeton since the incident at Vauxhall, four days ago. Hopefully, the formal announcement of the engagement would be enough to scare him away permanently.

But none of that made it any easier to explain his absence to Belle. ‘Now that you are to marry Mr Lovell, you will not be able to socialise with other men as you used to.’

‘We are not going to socialise,’ Belle said, looking at her as if Amy was the one who did not understand. ‘We will be playing with Mellie. And it is not other men. It is just with Guy.’

And there was another problem to be corrected. ‘Now that you are engaged, you must go back to calling him Mr Templeton.’

‘But he said I should call him Guy,’ Belle said, clearly confused.

‘Things have changed between you since then,’ Amy said, as gently as possible. ‘Mr Lovell would not like you being so informal with another man.’

‘But Mr Lovell is Mr Templeton’s friend,’ she offered hopefully, sure that this would make a difference.

‘No one’s friendship is that strong,’ Amy replied.

‘When I see Mr Lovell, I will ask him if it is all right.’ Belle was clearly not convinced.

Just then, a footman entered with the afternoon post. At the top of the stack was a letter from Mr Benjamin Lovell. It was addressed to The Misses Summoner. Amy stared at it for a moment, afraid to break the seal.

If the contents were in any way personal, he would not have addressed it to both of them. But that did not keep her from wishing that it was a billet doux. When she had been actively courting, no man would have had the nerve to send such a thing to Lord Summoner’s daughter. But if she was to spend her life alone, without even Belle for company, it might be nice to have a stack of ribbon-bound letters to remind herself of what might have been.

It would be even better if they were written in Ben Lovell’s elegantly masculine hand. She stared down at the folded paper in front of her, memorising each line and loop of the address, focusing on the sight of her surname. Without thinking, she ran a fingertip across the words, imagining the forceful pressure of his pen to the paper.

In response, she felt a rush of heat, sudden as a lightning strike. It coursed through her body to settle in the wet place between her legs. If this was all it took to make her want him, than he had been right. There was no way they could reside under the same roof. Even if nothing happened between them, ever again, people would have but to look at her to know what she wanted from him.

Now he’d sent a letter. It was better that it go directly to his intended, if only to teach Belle that future communications between them did not have to be shared. Amy took one last look at it, then handed it to her sister. ‘Mr Lovell has written you. Open it and see what he has to say.’

Belle cracked the wax that held the paper closed and looked at it only a moment before handing it back with a confused shrug. ‘Help me, Amy.’

No wonder she needed help. The tidy script on the outside degenerated into a confusion of crossed writing inside. Why had he bothered to turn the paper on its side to write the second half of the missive? There was no need for economy. They could more than afford the postage for a second sheet of paper.