Page 62 of The Reckless Love of an Heir
It was the first time Henry noticed that Alethea subtly cut Susan out – and it had been deliberately done. She called him forward to drive his curricle close to speak with Susan, and used Susan to draw him into conversation. That done… Susan was then ignored. Just as Stourton had now served his purpose and was ignored.
In a moment when Stourton responded to Alethea, Henry looked at Susan. She was watching others in the park, hiding in full sight.
He thought back, he could not remember how things had been when they were young. But certainly, when he was injured and at home, on the rare occasions the sisters were together in a room Susan was silent and Alethea talkative. Yet Susan had not been uncommunicative when he’d been with her alone.
Perhaps that was why Susan hid herself in corners and in libraries – to escape her sister’s cuts?Self-centred and careless…Susan had very good reason to think of him thus. She had endured such cuts in his presence and he had done nothing, and even possibly played his part.
Damn.
His change of heart towards Alethea was a blessing, then. He may be self-centred but he had never been cruel, he would loathe that in a wife. Although he doubted Alethea realised she was doing it, it seemed a habit rather than an intent, and verbally she always protected Susan. It was selfishness. The characteristic Susan abhorred in him.
When they left the park to return to the Forths’s, as they pulled out of the gates of Hyde Park, he looked at Susan in the moment when he flicked his reins to lift the horses’ pace into a trot. ‘I will tell Alethea tonight, I have decided against a match between her and I.’
Susan’s head spun and an expression of horror faced him. ‘No! You cannot! It would break her heart, Henry!’
‘Her heart is not involved any more than mine is.’
‘But she is set on you.’
‘We are all of us to suffer then? Is that the way you wouldhave it? She and I to marry for the sake of a foolish promise, probably made when our fathers were deep in their cups, and you… You would choose to suffer too, because you would have to stand outside this marriage and watch us learn to hate each other. And besides, Alethea is not set on me, did you not see her flirting with Stourton?’
‘She is only flirting with him because you left her and went to Brighton.’
He glanced at Susan as a spike of anger pierced through his side. ‘What would you have had me do then? Call at your house and act as though nothing had occurred between us?’
Her grey eyes became stark with confused emotions. ‘Nothing should have happened.’ Her voice broke with the pain she had spent the last hour and a half hiding. ‘And… I do not know what to do.’ She was upset, afraid and full of guilt – he saw it. ‘I am miserable.’
‘I shall forever be miserable, Susan, if you do not agree to explore this.’
She did not respond.
He would kiss her again, that would be how he would manage this. She would not be able to deny another kiss. He did not then attempt to talk to her, and so they travelled the rest of the journey in silence, behind Alethea and Stourton, as Alethea continually glanced back, as though to check he was watching her.
When they reached Uncle Casper’s, Susan claimed a headache and ran away to her room, leaving him to act the damned fool in the middle of Alethea’s flirting with Stourton. It annoyed him, but not for the reasons she hoped.
16
While Alethea was introduced to Baron Stokes and his young wife, Susan looked beyond them into the ballroom.
It was full of people. Alethea had told her she did not think many of Henry’s friends were expected, they had remained in Brighton. Her father had said the Duke of Pembroke was hosting a family dinner and so Uncle Robert, Aunt Jane, and most of her mother’s and father’s friends would not be in attendance.
She hoped the family dinner would keep Henry away too.
Her stomach rolled over in trepidation.
‘And this is my youngest daughter, Susan.’ Her father introduced her.
Susan curtsied as the Baron said, ‘Good evening.’ She curtsied again to his wife.
Her father touched Susan’s elbow and turned her away.
She faced the Earl of Stourton greeting Alethea. He bowed deeply as he kissed the back of Alethea’s gloved fingers. The invitation to this ball had only been accepted because the Earl of Stourton had encouraged it. The Baron was his friend and theoccupants of the ballroom those within his social circle. Susan assumed their invitation had been sent on the Earl’s request.
It gave her more hope that Henry would not be here, perhaps he did not have an invitation.
Stourton led Alethea away. He was avidly courting her. There had been three posies from the Earl this morning, in different colours. As well as the one from Henry, which he seemed to have forgotten he was sending.
Oh, she had to stop thinking about him. She had been unable to do anything else but think of him since their carriage ride – no, since their kiss. It was only that now the memories of their conversation outweighed the memories of his kisses. She did not wish to think of him. Nothing might come of her thoughts or any feelings she had for him no matter what he said. She would not betray Alethea.
