Page 61 of A Scandalous Proposition
Adam was still too angry to trust himself to say very much. He paced the length of the salon as he waited for Florentina to rejoin them. To her credit, she didn’t keep them waiting long. A jolt of awareness temporarily deflated his anger as he espied her glorious hair cascading ’round her shoulders. But he forced himself to ignore his reaction by recalling the situation he’d just rescued her from.
‘Have the goodness to explain yourself,’ he said coldly.
‘Why should I explain anything to you?’
‘Well now, let me see.’ His calm tone belied his towering rage and he rounded on her, finally giving vent to the fury that had been building inside him since setting out to find her. ‘Perhaps I mistakenly thought you owed me an explanation for your extraordinary behaviour tonight. Perhaps I was foolish enough to imagine there could be a rational explanation for your choosing to attend such a debauched assembly. Perhaps I was even demented enough to imagine you might wish to thank me for rescuing you.’
‘Yes, you extricated me from a difficult situation, it’s true. But I had the situation under control.’
He harrumphed. ‘So I observed.’
‘And had you given me the opportunity I would have thanked you for your intervention long since. But instead, you dragged me from that house as though I was some sort of chattel and threw me over your horse like a sack of coal. Not satisfied with that, you rode back here at such a breakneck pace that I was flung all over the place, and I’m black and blue all over.’
‘Count yourself fortunate that I’m in a lenient mood or by now you wouldn’t be able to sit down.’
‘How dare you! You have no right?’
‘I have every right.’ He drilled her with a blistering gaze.
‘How lovely it must be, always to occupy the moral high ground. You stand there, eyes flashing with accusation, demanding explanations you have no right to ask for.’ She twirled away from him and stared out the window. ‘I’m not one of your soldiers, you know. I don’t have to obey your orders or justify my behaviour to you.’
‘Perhaps I misjudged you and you’re accustomed to attending such assemblies.’
She turned to face him again, arms akimbo. ‘Well, I now know what you think of me.’
‘Florentina. Adam.’ Christine’s gentle voice deflated the situation, and Adam made a huge effort to curtail his anger. And the urge to grab Florentina by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. ‘I think you do owe us an explanation, my love. We’ve been out of our minds with worry since we realised where you’d gone.’
Florentina let out a long breath. ‘You are right, of course.’ She turned to Adam, her features arranged into a contrite expression that didn’t sit comfortably with the fire still flashing in her eyes. ‘Thank you, Lord Fitzroy, for coming to my aid.’
‘You’re entirely welcome.’
‘Lord King placed considerable pressure on me to attend.’
‘So Christine advised me earlier. But I shouldn’t have had to learn that from her. You should have told me yourself.’
‘Why? You’ve already resolved to take on Dawson and have more than enough problems of your own at the Court. I couldn’t add to your burden.’
‘That surely was a decision for me to make.’
‘Had I told you, what would your response have been?’
‘Why, I’d have called King’s bluff, of course. He couldn’t prove you were connected to Chamberleigh. He was merely acting on Philippa’s spiteful intimations.’
‘Perhaps, but if he was determined to find out, he only needed to follow me when I call here in the afternoons.’
‘You still should have told me, Florentina. You’re my mother’s companion, and her peace of mind is of great importance to me.’
‘I couldn’t risk your calling Lord King out. And you might well have done that if you’d known.’
Adam felt the remnants of his anger falling away in the light of this admission. She’d been motivated by concerns for his welfare. His spirits soared. It was rather insulting that she assumed King could best him in a duel, but he could overlook that slur.
‘Thank you.’ He gravely inclined his head. ‘However, after tonight King will no longer cause you any problems.’
‘But he might well cause them for you.’ She looked up at him, imploring him with her eyes. ‘That’s why I went there this evening. I wanted to charm King into admitting that he fathered the duchess’s baby.’
‘By allowing him to seduce you?’ Adam raised a challenging brow, his anger returning. It would be a long time before he could dispel the imagine of King’s eyes bright with lust as they rested upon Florentina’s breasts.
‘Oh, he wouldn’t have seduced me. I had the situation completely under control.’
