Page 3 of Let Me Be Your Hero
Nor did she have any desire to renew their acquaintance.
“Mr. Bassingthwaighte,” she said coldly. “Do excuse me. I was just leaving.”
She turned on her heel and managed to take two steps toward the front of the gardens before she was waylaid by a hand around her upper arm.
“Don’t play coy with me,” Mr. Bassingthwaighte snarled. “We both know why you’re here.”
She tried to keep her voice from trembling. “You are mistaken, sir, if you think my reasons for being here have anything to do with you. Now, I will thank you to unhand me.”
He only tightened his grip. “You’ve been leading me on a merry chase these past few weeks, pretending you wanted nothing to do with me.”
Izzie tried and failed to yank her arm free. “Idon’twant anything to do with you.”
“But tonight,” he continued, ignoring her, “when you saw me heading for the dark walks, you decided to follow me.”
Izzie gave another futile pull at her arm. “I most certainly did not!”
“Was this your plan from the start? To string me along for a few weeks, then make it up to me tonight? Or were you overcome with jealousy when you saw me slip away, knowing what I would be doing back here and that I would be doing it with a woman other than you?”
“Whoever you met with, she is welcome to you!” she snapped. “I offer her my most profound sympathies. Now, unhand me this instant.”
He laughed, but not in a nice way. “That’s part of your game, isn’t it? You like to act all high and mighty, don’t you? To pretend you’re too good for the likes of me.”
“I am too good for the likes of you! And my reasons for visiting the dark walks have absolutely nothing to do with you.”
“Oh, really?” Mr. Bassingthwaighte looked openly skeptical. “There’s only one reason people visit these dark walks.”
Izzie happened to know that was wrong. To be sure, she had learned tonight that most people visited the dark walks in order to fornicate, for lack of a better term.
But based on what she had overheard, there was a small but persistent minority that came there to discuss acts of treason.
“You wanted an assignation,” Mr. Bassingthwaighte continued, leaning in so she could smell the wine on his breath. “That’s why you’re here.”
“Not withyou,” she said without thinking. She quickly realized her error. A planned rendezvous with any man in the dark walks would be enough to ruin her. It would have been better to claim she’d lost her way and hadn’t meant to be there at all.
This statement also made Mr. Bassingthwaighte’s lips twist cruelly. “So fickle, Lady Isabella? How quickly your affections move from one man to another.”
This was patently unfair. She had danced with Mr. Bassingthwaighte a handful of times and had a half-dozen conversations with him. But she had made him no promises, nor had she whispered any words of affection. He had managed to extinguish her budding regard for him when he referred to her book asrubbish.
But it did not seem wise to say as much when his hand was gripping her arm in a way that seemed likely to leave a bruise.
“Let me go,” she whispered.
He responded by grabbing her other arm and slowly drawing her toward him. “Why should I?”
“My brother will call you out!”
This was normally a potent threat. Harrington was one of the best shots in all of England.
But Mr. Bassingthwaighte just laughed. “No, he won’t. What good would it do to shoot me? You would still be ruined. Heneeds me alive so I can marry you. That will be the only way to quash the rumors.”
He continued droning on about how he expected Izzie to be more obedient once she was his wife. Izzie paid him little mind. The future he was describing was not going to happen. She would make sure of it.
He might not be worried about Harrington calling him out. But Harrington was useful in more ways than one and had shown all his sisters precisely where to knee a man for maximum impact.
She marked the moment he became so involved in his speech that his attention started to drift. As he cast a long-suffering gaze toward the trees, she brought her knee up, taking him square in the groin.
Harrington’s advice worked better than Izzie could have hoped. Mr. Bassingthwaighte released her at once, clutching his intimate bits with a piteous moan. He crumpled forward, winding up on his knees in the dirt.
