Page 59 of Miss Dashing
She did her best to flounce off, but hadn’t the energy for a grand exit. By the time she reached her room, she was shaking with a combination of fatigue, anger, shock, and horror. The whole scene had been outlandish, and yet, Johnny had spoken confidently of signed documents. Then too, matrimonial schemes had been Isaac’s dearest preoccupation for several years.
She was nearly too tired to undress and certainly too far gone to do more than take down her hair and fashion it into a single braid. No hundred strokes with the brush or entering the day’s tasks or tomorrow’s challenges in her journal.
What if Phillip hadn’t taken the situation in hand?
Rape wasn’t necessary to compromise a lady. If she screamed for help and was caught in a private situation with a man who looked guilty, tongues would start wagging.
And Johnny had known that.
Hecate climbed into bed, furious in her bones, but grateful too. Philliphadcome along. Phillip had sorted Johnny out. Johnny’s stupid, wretched, miserable plan had been foiled, and Hecate was no more compromised than she was engaged to be married.
Johnny Brompton could take his handsome, scheming self straight back to the coldest depths of the worst winter Canada had to offer, and Hecate would wish him Godspeed.
ChapterThirteen
“You can let go of me, my lord,” Johnny Brompton said. “I’m sure dear Hecate will lock her door against thieves, brigands, and cousins overcome by passion.”
Phillip let loose of Brompton reluctantly. The problem wasn’t that Brompton required further restraint, but rather, that while keeping hold of him, Phillip could resist the temptation to beat the rotter bloody.
“Does the English language work differently in Canada?” Phillip asked. “Does ‘I am unwilling for you to court me’ suggest the lady was inviting your advances? Did her struggles to free herself somehow translate into welcoming your assault?”
Brompton tossed himself onto the bench and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I rushed my fences. I don’t deny it. Badly done of me.”
He’d not rushed his fences. He’d crashed straight through them, destroying all in his path.
“You have to admit,” Brompton went on, “a woman sometimes protests too much.” He tried for a smile of manly self-deprecation.
Phillip, instead of calming down, was growing angrier. What if he’d not heard Hecate relocking his door? What if he’d tarried a few minutes more to don waistcoat and neckcloth? What if Brompton had trailed Hecate and accosted her in her very bedroom?
“Miss Brompton was not protesting,” Phillip said. “She was making it absolutely clear that your advances were unwelcome. You are not to touch her, not to be alone with her, not to impose on her in any manner whatsoever.”
“That will be a bit difficult, given that we are engaged.”
“She told you she has no intention of being coerced to the altar.”
Brompton looked up at Phillip. “What are you doing wandering about the garden, half undressed, at such an hour? Were you eavesdropping? Waiting for your own opportunity to persuade Hecate to the altar?”
“I was stopping a rapist from committing a hanging felony.”
Brompton made a face. “You’re gentry, aren’t you? Despite the courtesy title. Gentry can be so uppish. I would not have raped her. Rape can get loud. A man has to be furious to make a proper job of rape. I’m not furious, I’m besotted. There’s a difference.”
Phillip would have said the Bromptons generally were lazy, scheming, venal, and shallow, but their nastiness was petty. They were too lazy for true evil.
Johnny’s casual assessment of the conditions conducive to rape, his reference to makinga proper jobof violating another person, put him in a different league. He was not a garden-variety Brompton, but rather, a man whose ambitions had honed self-centeredness into arrogance and determination into ruthlessness.
“You don’t need Miss Brompton’s money, apparently,” Phillip said, “so why court scandal by forcing yourself on her?”
“She would have come around,” Johnny said as casually as if his horse would have won the match, given another furlong. “She will come around. The law is on my side.”
He was too smug, too sure of himself. If Phillip remained in his presence, he’d pummel Brompton flat. Hecate wouldn’t appreciate the drama, but the feel of Phillip’s fist plowing into the Canadian Casanova’s chiseled jaw would have been delicious.
“The law is not on your side,” Phillip said, “and more to the point,the ladyis not on your side. She doesn’t need a husband, and you don’t need a fortune, so for the sake of all concerned, leave her alone.”
Brompton rose and stretched, not a care in the world. “What business is it of yours? The matter is one for the Bromptons to resolve, and if they don’t resolve it to my satisfaction, I will see to it that Edna and Eglantine are no longer received, Portia and Flavia are pariahs, and Isaac and Charlie must resign from their clubs. I can do it too. I’ve had ten long, cold years to study on the matter.”
He sketched an elegant bow and sauntered off into the darkness.
Phillip debated joining Hecate in her room, but if she needed one thing more than to be free of her strutting cousin, it was a good night’s rest. He returned to the summer cottage and pulled off his boots, but didn’t go to bed. Instead, he fell asleep on the terrace, his fitful rest interrupted when the first cold drops of rain pattered down from a starless sky.
