Page 8 of Bad Luck Bride

“Staying at a hotel is rather a novel concept, I know. But there it is.”

Kay recovered her wits with an effort. “I didn’t know a hotel of this caliber allowed dogs.”

He laughed. “Why, Kay, what a thing to say. Are you angry with me for some reason?”

That question was too much. “Don’t pretend, you bastard,” she choked. “If I’m angry, you know exactly why.”

Something glittered in those brilliant blue eyes, the triumph of knowing he’d gotten under her skin, and she cursed herself for giving him that sort of satisfaction.

“Do I?” he murmured, his voice low and mocking. “And even if I do know, society doesn’t, do they?”

She stiffened, looking away, knowing he had a point, hating him all the more for it.

When their elopement had become public knowledge and sordid fodder for the gutter press, each of them had chosen the onlypossible course: denial. They’d claimed that they hardly knew each other, that the elopement had never happened, and that the rumors were nothing more than ill-founded gossip. Their simultaneous efforts hadn’t mattered, sadly, since most people hadn’t believed either of them. Nonetheless, the course had been set, and there was no changing it now.

Granted, the odds were low that anyone they knew was watching them at this particular moment, but if he was in London for the season and staying at the Savoy, there would surely come an occasion when someone they knew would see them encounter each other. If she displayed any hint of her animosity and contempt for him, it would only serve to confirm society’s long-held suspicions. She might as well stand on a rooftop and shout out to the world the humiliating admission that yes, he really had ruined her and jilted her, and she hated him for it.

No, however hard it might be, polite indifference was the only choice open to her.

Resolved, she looked up, but the smile curving the edges of his mouth fractured that resolve at once, and she wondered what would happen if she just hurled sensibilities and propriety and playing safe and watching eyes to the wind, hauled back, and slapped that faint, insolent smile right off his arrogant face.

“You want to know what I think?” he asked, breaking into her turbulent thoughts.

She forced herself to offer a polite smile. “Not really, no.”

His smile widened a fraction, showing that her offhand reply hadn’t fooled him for a second. “I think the sight of me makes you angry because you still care.”

Of course that’s what he’d think, the conceited scoundrel. “Thatmust be it,” she countered brightly. “I’m absolutely pining. Can’t you tell?”

He flashed her a grin, his teeth startlingly white in his bronzed face. “Glad to hear you admit it.”

Kay’s palm began to itch.

Thankfully, however, she had no chance to give in to her temptation to do him violence, because another voice entered the conversation at that moment, saving her.

“Devlin?”

Both of them turned as a woman came to his side, a young blond beauty with a face Kay recognized. About the same age as Josephine, Lady Pamela Stirling had attended the same finishing school as Kay’s young sister and had been the acknowledged beauty of the season during her coming out two years before. She was also from one of Britain’s finest, most influential families, a family Kay could not afford to antagonize.

As Kay wondered how a girl of barely twenty even knew Devlin Sharpe, much less knew him well enough to call him by his Christian name, Devlin turned to the girl, his impudent grin softening.

“Darling,” he greeted, his voice low and unmistakably tender.

Darling?Kay’s mind echoed the word in shocked disbelief.Darling?

“I need to make introductions, I would imagine,” he went on, and when he looked at Kay again, she forced herself to don an expectant smile of greeting. “Lady Kay, allow me to present my fiancée.”

Fiancée?She stared at the couple, thinking she must have misheard, but then, Pamela’s fingers curled around Devlin’s arm in a clearly proprietary gesture, and Kay realized she had not misheard anything.

“There’s no need for introductions,” Pamela said, returning Kay’s pasted-on smile. “Lady Kay and I already know each other.”

“You do?” Devlin asked, sounding surprised.

He wasn’t the only one, she thought. Her own wits seemed to have disintegrated, and she couldn’t seem to stop staring at Lady Pamela’s hand tucked intimately into the crook of his arm. But when he pressed his palm over Lady Pamela’s gloved fingers in an obvious show of affection, smiling at the girl as if utterly besotted, Kay stiffened, her considerable pride coming to the fore and reminding her that a warm, friendly demeanor was absolutely vital. Anything less would only reinforce Devlin’s conceited presumptions, and that was something Kay refused to allow.

“Of course we know each other,” she answered his question with a pretense of hearty good cheer. “We met at Willowbank Academy, if I remember rightly.”

“School?” Devlin gave a disbelieving laugh. “You two could never have been at school together.”

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