Page 76 of Not Quite a Lady
‘You laughed at my crocodiles,’ she said, breathless.
‘Only a little bit,’ he coaxed, resting one hand on the panelled wall, just by her right ear. ‘You have to admit that a chaise longue with scaly legs is just a trifle amusing, especially when theyemerge from under the ruffles on your hem.’
‘Very well, I suppose it is.’
Was he going to kiss her, or just tease her all afternoon? And what would she do if he did kiss her? Lily swallowed hard as Jack moved closer, his hand brushing the fabric of her skirts at waist level. She could feel her breathing quickening, her eyelids lowering.
‘Careful, you’ll fall.’ Jack caught her neatly round the waist as the door she had not seen behind her opened to his touch and Lily found herself in a long gallery, lit on one side with tall windows and hung on the other with what looked like hundreds of pictures.
What a fool, to think that he had been about to kiss her – worse, to want him to.
Lily smiled brightly, trying to ignore the all too familiar urge to reach out and touch Jack. ‘What a lot of pictures.’
Inane. Try and think of something intelligent to say you fool. All these ancestors…
Jack obviously shared her opinion of her originality. ‘Yes, indeed.’ His voice was dry. ‘They are of varying interest, but that is not why I brought you here.’
‘No?’
And as it obviously is not to make love to me, or to abjectly beg my pardon for calling me totty-headed – really that hurts more even than bird-witted! – just why are we here?
Lily made a show of studying the nearest canvas. As the rain lashing down outside and the thick cloud rendered the unlit room positively gloomy she could make out little more than a dead stag.
‘No. I want to get to the bottom of exactly what happened about the duel.’
‘Why? I told you downstairs.’ Lily tossed her head and moved on to the next picture. Now this was better: a pretty girl in anarbour and a lovely Baroque frame, all ormolu curlicues.
‘As it concerns my honour I would like to knowexactlywhat you did and who you told about it.’ Jack was not sounding remotely amused any longer. ‘Just how many people did you approach in your attempt to stop it?’
‘I asked Lady Billington’s advice, and she said it would be impossible to stop. And I asked Lord Gledhill – you know about that – and he almost had a fainting fit and so I asked Doctor Ord. That is all. Satisfied?’ She glared at him over her shoulder, but his face was impossible to read in the gloom.
‘No I am notsatisfied.’ Jack took several long strides down the gallery, unpleasantly reminiscent of the paces he had taken on the duelling ground. ‘How the devil did you get the surgeon to take you with him?’
‘I tricked Dr Ord into telling me when and where and then told him I would go in my own carriage if he refused to help me.’
‘You are unprincipled, manipulative, domineering…’
‘Yes, of course I am. For a woman it is often necessary if one is to get what one wants. We do not have the freedom men have.’
‘Thank God for that. I shudder to think what the result would be if you were given free rein.’
‘You are just upset because you had successfully hidden the fact you were wounded from your family and I let the cat out of the bag. I am sorry about that, I would not have done it, truly, only I could not imagine how you could hide such a nasty gash.’
‘Just how close were you that morning?’ Jack asked softly. When he wanted to he could move like a cat, Lily had not realised he had come so near.
She turned and cut around him, pretending to be intrigued by a group of smaller pictures hanging together further along the wall.
‘I was in the tangled knot of undergrowth on the lip of the depression. Very close.’
‘Close enough to be killed by a stray bullet, you little idiot!’
The next thing Lily knew, she was flat up against the wall again, this time with Jack’s hands one each side of her head, effectively caging her with his arms. Cautiously she ran a hand over the lumpy linen-fold panelling behind her: no convenient door handle this time.
‘I never thought about that,’ she confessed, shaken. If Adrian’s shot had been angled upwards it would have whistled past her head. If she had been lucky.
‘No, of course you did not. Do youeverthink through consequences, you maddening woman?’
The honest answer was,Not often enough, but Jack was perfectly capable of supplying that response for himself. Lily hung her head.
