Page 55 of The Society Catch
‘I do not interrupt.’
‘Yes you do. Now, sit there where I can see you and I will tell you the story ofmyevening at the Duchess of Bridlington’s ball in return for your tale this morning.’
‘The Duchess’s…’No! he couldn’t have heard what she’d said in the woods, he was asleep, unconscious.
‘Ssh.’ Giles placed one finger fleetingly on her lips. ‘No interruptions, remember? I had hardly been back in London two days, but I met the Duchess in Piccadilly and she invited me. So I went: it was as good a way of taking my mind off what I knew was going to be a difficult interview with my father as any other.
‘I was not expecting to see Suzy, but before I knew it she had lured me into a retiring room and was wheedling me into teaching her to drive.’
‘To drive?’
Giles’s finger pressed on her lips again and this time lingered for a moment. ‘To drive – which her father was adamantly opposed to because a female relative had been badly injured in a carriage accident. However, as Suzy knows only too well, she has been able to wind me round her little finger since I was seven years old. Like a fool I agreed to ask the marquis and of course the little madam was instantly immensely grateful, as only Suzy can be.
‘So there I am, faced with the unenviable task of persuading her father to let me teach her to drive. I only agreed because if I hadn’t she would have prevailed on someone else to teach her and at least her parents trust me to keep her out of trouble.’
Complete confusion was blurring every certainty in Joanna’s mind. He was speaking of Lady Suzanne with deep affection but in the most unloverlike terms. He had known her since he was seven, her parents trusted him to keep her out of trouble…
‘She…’
‘Ssh. At least the minx has good hands – you saw her in the Park. But, as you may have gathered when we met at the masquerade, she also uses me to rescue her from the endless pranks she gets up to. She went to that romp with a quite ineligible party and made sure I got the message about whereshe was in sufficient time to come and remove her before things became too hot.’
Joanna ducked away from under his hand. ‘But you love her.’
‘Like a sister,’ Giles agreed amiably. ‘But I am most certainly notinlove with her. I would as soon marry a cageful of monkeys and I have only the deepest sympathy for Lord Keswick. You will not repeat that yet, please, it will not be announced until the new Season. My father had decided she would be perfect for me and that was the other reason he was so angry with me –until her parents told him about Keswick.’
‘But…’
‘Anyway, as I said, no sooner had I arrived back in England when Suzy had embroiled me in her usual battle of wits with her father. Off she flits and I emerge from the retiring room to find you looking like death.’
Joanna twisted right away until she was crouched on the furthest side of the bed. ‘You were not unconscious in the woods, you heard me and now you are saying that because I…Oh.’ She buried her face in her hands, too humiliated to continue.
‘Joanna.’ She remained huddled, her face hidden. ‘Joanna.’ She looked up and saw Giles was regarding her patiently. ‘Did you believe I was asleep?’
‘Of course I did. Do you think I would have said what I did otherwise?’
‘Exactly. I congratulate myself it was as good a bit of acting as the time I had to pretend to be dead while being prodded by a French bayonet. So, if I was in love with darling Suzy there was not the slightest reason for me to tell you this, was there? I could just have tactfully removed myself.’
‘Even so, I have embarrassed both myself and you.’ Joanna forced herself to speak calmly, although she could not meet his eyes. Somehow she had to get out of this room before the floor opened up and swallowed her. ‘I am sorry, I will go away nowand return to Mama and Papa tomorrow.’
‘You know very well that you cannot run away from me, Joanna. I have captured you before, I will have no difficulty doing so again.’
‘Why do you want to humiliate me like this?’ she whispered.
‘Joanna, darling, come back over here.’
‘No. And do not call me that. Just because you feel sorry for me because I have made a complete fool of myself there is no need to patronise me.’
‘Joanna, at least look at me.’
Reluctantly her head came up and she met his eyes. He was regarding her ruefully. ‘I am making a compete mull of this. Joanna,I love you.I thought you were in love with someone else, so in love that you would defy your family, risk ruin rather than compromise that love. How could I even admit to myself how I was beginning to feel about you?’
‘You love me?’ she whispered. This was not real, it must be some dream, some hallucination. Perhaps she had struck her head when she fell and had not realised. ‘How? When?’
‘I think, looking back, from the moment I came out of that room and you looked up at me with huge, pain-filled eyes. You were beautiful, brave and I wanted to hit the man who had made you feel like that.
‘Then when I found you at the Thoroughgood house something should have told me. I have never felt such killing rage before. I knew I was not safe to be alone with them, I just did not realise why.’ He regarded her, his face more calmly serious than she had ever seen it. ‘I told myself it was simply what I would feel about any young woman trapped like that and I told myself that the way I found myself thinking about you, the effort it took not to touch you, kiss you… I told myself that was desire – impure, but simple.
‘When I kissed you that evening after I had talked to youabout life in camp, I should have known then, but I kept denying it to myself. How could I fall in love with you when all you thought about was that man? God, but I wanted you. When you ran away from me and I caught you in that field it was all I could do not to take you there and then on the grass amidst those flowers, under the sun.’
