Page 71 of My Hellion, My Heart
“Poor dear,” Gwen said, her good humor ebbing. “Perhaps she should stay with the carriage? Irina, you could come with us.”
The offer had much more appeal than the alternative. She’d have to drag Jane to the flower and then perhaps deal with fainting. Or worse.
“Thank you,” Irina said with a nod to Jane, who scurried happily back into the carriage.
Inside the main greenhouse, the cool spring morning became a humid summer day with voices rising up to the soaring glass ceilings and becoming strangely muffled. There was a sickly sweet odor that greeted their noses, too, and Irina figured it was therafflesia patma,more easily remembered as the death flower.
Gwen was rambling excitedly about not just the flower the dozens of people were all here to view and smell, but of upcoming balls, parties that had passed, and whom had been seen with whom. Irina tried to keep up with the flow of gossip, but like the night before, when the memory of faces and names of the men she’d danced with had started to fade, so too did Gwen’s voice.
Until the countess said one name that yanked Irina from the haze: “Lord Langlevit.”
Irina stopped in the center of the greenhouse, where thick shrubs of bright pink bougainvillea were flowering, and looked at Gwen, who seemed to be looking at someone.
Irina followed her gaze and saw the last person she’d thought to see here. Henry was walking toward them, a small piece of paper in his hand. He stopped before them and tipped his head.
“Your Highness. Lord and Lady Lyon,” he said, his eyes lingering on Irina an extra moment. “I am surprised at how many people I know wish to subject themselves to this particular fragrance.”
The pungent odor had intensified since they’d first entered the greenhouse, and now, meeting with Henry when she had not wanted to at all, made Irina feel just as ill as Jane had claimed to be.
“And yet you have come, as well,” Gwen put in.
He held up the scrap of paper in his hand, and Irina could see the etching of a flower with enormous petals and a black hole in the center of the cabbage leaf-like petals.
“My mother has an interest in such things. If she were in London, she would have come. I thought I would see it for her,” he said, tucking the small sketch into his breast pocket.
It was kind of him, and Irina instantly wished he hadn’t explained. It made it more difficult to remain angry with him.
“You are an artist, my lord?” Gwen asked because Irina’s own tongue had suddenly become heavy as sand.
“Far from it,” he replied. “I can copy a basic likeness, nothing more.”
Lord Lyon took his handkerchief and put it to his nose. “My dear, I do not think I can get much closer than this again.”
Gwen sighed with mock annoyance. “I think perhaps you should have stayed with the carriage, too. Come now,” she said, taking her husband’s arm. “We’ll wait by the orchids while the princess has a look.”
Irina wanted to insist that they both stay, but knew it was pointless. She would have had to face Henry at some point. Last night on the balcony, he’d yet again pulled her close then pushed her away. Why did he keep doing that? And worse yet, why did she keep allowing him to do it?
“Shall we?” Henry gestured toward the crowd of people surrounding what she knew must be the death flower.
“You needn’t accompany me,” she replied, walking forward and ignoring his arm, which he’d extended graciously. She didn’t want to be gracious in return. She wanted to bite his head off and spit it out.
He made no sense, and when she was with him, she made no sense, either. Even here, in public, among scores of other people, Irina did not trust herself. When she was not with him, she seemed to spend every moment building a fortress around her heart. A fortress that fell, time and time again, whenever she was with him.
“I know,” he replied, coming to walk beside her anyway. It was abominable, the way his mere presence obliterated every ounce of her good sense. Because deep down, she was glad he had ignored her dismissal. It was sickening.Shewas sick. And it made her angry.
“I think it best if we stop seeing so much of one another,” she murmured, aware her voice would carry easily.
They had stopped behind the crowd and were waiting for their turn to step forward.
“I don’t want that,” he replied, also softly.
She refused to look at him, and instead stared ahead at a trio of ladies in soft pastel-colored walking dresses.
“No, you wouldn’t, would you? You want to kiss me. You want to bed me. But you don’t want to marry me,” she said, practically breathing the words to keep them from other ears. “For all your warnings against the gentlemen placing wagers and seeking my hand in marriage as a prize, you, my lord, are the most dangerous one of them all.”
He angled himself toward her, and she could feel the heat of his body, even through the already humid air.
“Those men care nothing for you.”
