The Rogue and the Rival (34 page)

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Authors: Maya Rodale

BOOK: The Rogue and the Rival
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“Don’t even say it!” Angela cried. “Do you really think I’m going to marry you now?”
“A man can dream,” he said with an exaggerated sigh.
“That’s about all,” she said coldly while folding her arms across her chest. This resulted in her breasts being pushed up higher, and closer together, and if they hadn’t had an audience . . .
“Well, Huntley,” Lady Palmerston cut in, “I’m quite curious. Why did you come to town after all this time?”
“Because I couldn’t stay away. And I arrived just in time to save you, Angela, from making a mistake. Don’t go back to Frost.”
Her only answer was to pummel him on the chest with her tiny fists.
“Woman, you are going break my ribs again!”
“Again?” Emilia and Lady Palmerston echoed him. Angela stopped hitting him, only to pluck up the bouquet of roses from the vase (thank heaven for small favors; that crystal looked like it might do serious damage), and she began smacking him with a dozen long-stemmed roses of every color and every meaning.
“You have no right!”
Thwack.
“You can’t just leave me and then walk back into my life and expect that things haven’t changed.”
Thwack.
“And when I might just have a chance at happiness and making things right!”
Thwack thwack.
“You’re probably just in it for the competition! As long as you win, who gives a damn about the prize?”
Thwack
.
“Oh, I want the prize.”
“Which is why you ran off when you had it.”
“We’ve already covered that, Angela,” Lady Palmerston cut in.
“What can I do to prove to you that that I love you? That I am the one for you?” he asked plainly. Here he stood, his back up against the wall, not fighting the blows she showered upon him. He deserved those. But here he was, still, now covered in rose petals and thorns.
“When I figure it out, I’ll let you know. Good-bye, Phillip.” She threw the roses down on the table and walked out of the drawing room.
“That went quite well,” Phillip remarked to Emilia once they were in the carriage.
“How on earth do you figure that?”
“If she didn’t care, she wouldn’t have been so blazing mad.
Isn’t she adorable when she’s angry?”
“I think if you had said that to her, I might have had to have a footman carry your unconscious body home.”
“I thought the same myself.”
“Phillip Kensington shows restraint. I never thought I’d live to see the day.”
 
“Oh he is insufferable! He is impossible. I cannot believe no one has strangled him to death yet. I mean, the nerve! To just waltz in here and—”
“Walked. He didn’t waltz,” Lady Palmerston pointed out.
“Whatever. The bloody nerve to walk in here and—” Angela continued her pacing, as if walking back and forth in the drawing room would relieve some of her vexation. Lady Palmerston sipped her tea and watched her walk to and fro with a bemused expression.
“Tell you he loved you. The sheer audacity of it is mind-boggling.”
“He didn’t say that,” Angela immediately retorted. “He just gave an excess of stupid excuses and—”
“Oh, he did say it,” Lady Palmerston said, picking up a pile of invitations and letters, which she began to look through.
“He did not.” Angela paused in her pacing.
“He did. You were too busy smacking him with the bouquet of flowers. Speaking of which, Groves!”
“Yes, madame.” The butler materialized in a second. He was in the habit of standing just outside the drawing room doors, and likely eavesdropping when he wasn’t called upon.
“Please have someone see to the mess.”
“He probably only said it in self-defense,” Angela protested, since now that she thought about it, she could recall the exact sentence he had uttered:
What can I do to prove to you that I love you? That I am the one for you?
“Or you beat the truth out of him. Remarkable strategy. In fact, I don’t know why more women don’t employ it.”
“He did take it all rather well,” Angela said thoughtfully, thinking of how he never once told her she was overreacting or even tried to stop her. “But do you think that I was too hard on Phillip today? I missed him so, but I am so bloody livid that he left. Seeing him just reminded me of it.”
“Gad, no, you were not too hard on him. He deserves no less. In fact, I’m inclined to think that he deserves the same treatment from all the girls that he ruined.”
“He didn’t ruin
me
, though,” Angela said, knowing that it was the truth. Of all that he had done, he was not guilty of that.
“Right. He only broke your heart. You should have probably saved that rage for Frost then. Have you given him an answer to his invitation yet?”
“I will tell him tonight that I won’t join him. For now, I’m going to go work on my sketches for an hour before it is time to dress for this evening.”
“Very well. I shall tell Groves that we are not at home, for I am in need of a nap. I am simply exhausted from this afternoon’s entertainment.”
 
With his glacial blue eyes, Lucas Frost watched Lord Huntley exit Lady Palmerston’s town house. He had watched as Huntley arrived, too, with flowers in hand. Lucas was pleased to see that he left covered in rose petals.
Lucas knew that Phillip had called the previous day. His footman, who had been assigned to watch the house, reported it. Some might call employing a footman for such purposes nefarious. He thought of it as protective. He had lost her once, and he would not relinquish her again.
It was her innocence that he had loved. He loved her naïve wonder at the world and her faith in him and his decency, even as he had deceived her. And he, cad that he was, though cloaked in respectability, had ruined it in one afternoon, due to one ill-conceived plan. He wanted all of that back.
Because of his father’s debts, he had been forced to marry Beatrice Gilford. The daughter of a tradesman, she was plain, a bit crude in her manners, and frighteningly intelligent. But she was rich, and she traded her dowry for his title.
But she preferred books on antiquities to him. And then she preferred someone else to him. But it didn’t matter, because Lucas had always loved another. He had loved Angela with every breath in his being. But he had to marry Beatrice, unless . . .
He had executed his plan to secure Angela, never anticipating the flaws. That her father would not offer more money than Mr. Gilford. That her father would call him out, rather than insist Angela go with him. Lucas shot wide, deliberately. Just to ensure he would miss, he had downed large quantities of brandy first. He just never anticipated the old man’s heart giving out, right there on the dueling field. Technically, it was not his fault. But it was. He felt the incessant weight of guilt and the chronic ache of regret as if his bullet had gone straight through the man’s heart.
Lucas had waited seven years for fate to provide this chance to make right what had gone so horribly wrong. He would marry her and make an honest woman out of her. And though this marriage would not bring her father back, it would in some way make it so that the old man had not died in vain. And it would soothe Lucas’s own tortured soul.
He had been making progress.
And then Huntley had shown up.
Lucas had been suspicious when Angela’s drawing featured Huntley. How had she known him? Had another man been with his woman (for after all this time, he still thought that she was his)? But Angela never spoke of him, and no one knew of Huntley’s whereabouts. Still, Lucas wondered. How could one have competition for a ruined girl? And how could he lose that girl to a notorious scoundrel such as Lord Huntley?
But Huntley had shown up twice now. Thrice, if one counted his appearance at the ball the previous evening. Lucas had seen the way the man looked at his Angela. And he had seen her look back at him for far too long. He panicked. He proposed the weekend trip, and she had not yet accepted. It had been too soon, and he had startled his darling.
Or he had been too late.
She was clearly angry with Huntley, if the man’s appearance as he left was any indication. Now might be the perfect time to pay a call.
“Miss Sullivan is not at home,” the butler stated.
“But I . . . I’ve been watching, and I know she has not gone out.” The words burst out of his mouth before he thought to censor them. It was only the slightest lift of the butler’s eyebrow that indicated that he had said too much.
“You may leave your card.”
Lucas did so, even though the butler very well knew who he was. He had been calling regularly for weeks now, ever since the season began and Angela had by some miracle returned to him.
And now he was losing her. And he needed her, dammit! He needed her to marry him so wrongs could be made right. So that he might sleep at night without seeing her father’s cold, dead eyes in his dreams. He was losing his chance at redemption, and he would not let that go easily.

 

Chapter 18
Angela
did not have to look long for Lucas Frost. She had not been at the ball for more than five minutes when he found her, taking her arm in his and steering her toward a darkened corner of the ballroom.
She did, however, have to look for her chaperone. Lady Palmerston had been swept up in the crowd, and Angela had lost sight of her. And now, here she was in a darkened corner with a man. Alone. She acknowledged a twinge of irritation with her aunt for leaving her alone in this situation when she had deliberately asked not to be.
“You were not at home when I called this afternoon. Where were you?” Lucas asked, after the initial pleasantries of conversation had been covered. His voice was as light and smooth as possible, yet there was no mistaking the accusation there. It was as if he had expected her life to revolve around him, at his convenience. That might have been true once, but it no longer was.
“I was working on my illustrations,” Angela answered truthfully.
“You should have seen me, instead,” Lucas urged, and a knot began to form in her stomach. She did not like the way he was speaking to her.
“Is there something you wished to speak to me about?” she asked directly, looking into his eyes. They were so cold, so blue. And she couldn’t recall if that coldness had been there years before.
“No, I just think that I should warrant more of your attentions than your drawings. After all that we have endured together ...”
She laughed bitterly. All that
we
endured
together
. What utter bullocks. The truth was that she had suffered alone. And she suffered pain now. Her laughter stopped abruptly.
“Let go of my arm; you are hurting me,” Angela said coldly.
“I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized.” And all at once her pain was etched into his features. He loosened his grasp, but he did not let go. And she realized that he certainly felt strongly for her now. It also occurred to her that she did not feel the same.
“It’s fine,” she answered automatically, even though it wasn’t.
“Dare I ask your answer to my invitation?” He was pleading now; she could see it in his eyes. And this is why she had not wanted to be left alone with him, or to rely on her own judgment. She was tempted to agree, if only to avoid hurting him.
But she looked into his eyes and found herself wishing they were warm and dark instead of cold and blue . . .
“I cannot go with you, Lucas. I’m sorry.”
 
“Waltz with me.”
Angela knew that voice. It was low, warm, and it belonged to Phillip. His words were murmured for her and her alone. And still, after all this time, he made her heart beat a little heavier, with a little more force.
Angela glanced to her left, to see that her aunt was engaged in conversation with Lady Stillmore, and thus not paying the slightest attention to her. Not that it mattered, she didn’t need permission. She just needed to pause and note how her anger from the afternoon had faded slightly. Doubts, insecurities, and confusion remained. What had
not
changed was that no man before him or since him made her feel the way he did. He knew her in a way no one else did, and that terrified her and yet made her feel secure in equal measures. Phillip also had a way of looking at her, touching her, standing next to her, which made her keenly aware of every inch of her body. It was distracting.

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