Page 41 of To Bed the Bride
He smiled at her, that smile that had the ability to wipe the thoughts from her mind. He really shouldn’t have that effect on her. Her fiancé was in the drawing room. The majordomo was lurking somewhere. Any moment now he’d pop around the corner.
“What happened in there?”
Logan smiled. “Meet me tomorrow and I’ll tell you.”
“What?”
“Meet me tomorrow,” he repeated. “I’d like to talk to you without so many eager ears about.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“I shouldn’t.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “But I’d like to see Bruce again. Could you arrange that?”
“I walk him three times a day in Queen’s Park,” she said, opening the door and standing aside.
“I’ll be there.”
She watched as he descended the steps and signaled to his driver. Only then did she close the door, knowing that she had to turn and go back to the drawing room. She glanced up at the steps longingly, wishing she could retreat to her room now. First, however, she’d have to make whatever excuses she could to her relatives and Michael.
It was obvious that she was the topic of conversation when she returned to the drawing room. Everyone stopped talking at her appearance.
Michael was standing there with Daphne and Thomas. Deborah was seated next to Hamilton, whose face was flushed. His white muttonchops were still quivering with outrage.
What had Logan said to them?
“What was that all about, Eleanor?” Daphne asked.
Eleanor hated it when Daphne assumed that superior attitude, as if she was somehow the arbiter of everything that was right, proper, and just. Especially when Eleanor was without a valid explanation.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Why did McKnight want to talk with you?” Michael asked, his face expressionless. She’d learned to gauge his mood by the look in his eyes, however, and right now he was irritated.
“I don’t know,” she said again, wishing she wasn’t being forced to lie.
The truth would be too difficult to explain at the moment. The time for doing that was when she and Logan had first encountered each other tonight. She should have said something to the effect of, “Oh, yes, I remember you, Mr. McKnight. We met in Scotland.”
Instead, they’d pretended not to know each other.
“What did he talk about?”
She didn’t lie easily, but she found herself doing so now. “He expressed an interest in Hearthmere’s horses.”
He stared at her for one long uncomfortable moment before nodding.
“You shouldn’t have agreed to accompany him to the door, Eleanor,” her aunt said. “He was wrong for singling you out. You compounded the issue by agreeing.”
“It won’t happen again,” she said, wondering if that was enough groveling for everyone.
It was a curious feeling being a pariah. She felt as though they were all looking at her out of the corners of their eyes and waiting for her to do something else shocking.
Michael was still annoyed. That was obvious from the way he said his farewells with barely a word to her while thanking her aunt and Hamilton fulsomely for the evening.
It was a distinctly unpleasant experience being frozen out. She would never mention Logan McKnight again. Nor would she let anyone know that she had every intention of meeting him in the morning.
