Free An Escapade and an Engagement by Annie Burrows Page B

attention to
them by behaving in such an obvious manner, but he was also making her
uncomfortable?
    Well, he couldn’t rearrange the man’s face, but he could spare
Lady Jayne’s blushes by distracting his other guests from what was going on.
    Turning his back on them, he devoted himself to doing just
that.
    ‘My darling,’ Harry murmured, ‘we cannot go on like this. It is
such torment.’
    ‘Oh, Harry,’ she said, gazing mournfully into his ardent
face.
    She dreaded having to tell him it was all over. But it was
wrong to keep him dangling like this, in a mix of agony and hope. The longer she
put off the moment of parting, the worse it would be for him.
    ‘Come to me where we met before,’ he begged her. ‘This time I
shall have a carriage waiting, so that we can escape from them all.
Forever.’
    ‘No!’ Oh, this was dreadful. He was still thinking in terms of
making a runaway match, while she was looking for an opportunity to sever the
connection entirely.
    ‘You need not be afraid,’ he said cajolingly. ‘I understand how
badly Lord Ledbury frightened you, coming upon us like that and uttering all
those threats, but I swear I shall never let him hurt you. Once we are married I
can protect you from him, and all those like him. My treasure…’
    ‘It is not that,’ she snapped. There were so many things wrong
with that statement she did not know where to start. She was not afraid of Lord
Ledbury. And she did not need Harry to protect her from him or anyone. And how
dare he accuse her of being too timid to run away with him? If he thought her so
lacking in nerve then he did not know her at all! If she had really loved him
nothing would have made her hesitate. Nothing!
    She glanced round at the other occupants of the box. Lord
Ledbury was standing next to Milly, including her in a conversation that also
encompassed his other guests. Whilst also managing to distract Lady Penrose from
the fact that she and Harry were standing far too close, and whispering…
    ‘Then what is it?’
    She would scarcely get a better chance than this, whilst
everyone else was busy exchanging greetings and deciding which chair to take.
Now was the time to tell Harry it was over.
    Time to stop making excuses for herself. Time to grow up and
shoulder responsibility for her actions, not feebly hope somebody else would
sort out the mess she’d made. She should never have taken up with Harry when he
came to London searching for her, no matter how wonderful it had felt to have
him persist in his pursuit of her in the face of her grandfather’s
objections.
    She took a deep breath, looked him straight in the eye…and
pictured the aftermath. Harry would be devastated when she told him it was over.
Nor would he be able to disguise his hurt, or the fact that she had caused it.
He was not made of such stern stuff as Lord Ledbury. Nobody, to look at him, would ever be able to guess he was experiencing
such deep emotional as well as physical pain.
    In fact at that moment she did look
at him, and it struck her that now she had owned up to not being even slightly
in love with Harry that Lord Ledbury cast him completely in the shade. The very
perfection of Harry’s features, when compared with Lord Ledbury’s battle-scarred
visage, made him look…well, like a pretty youth play-acting at being a soldier.
While Lord Ledbury was the real thing.
    ‘Oh, Harry.’ She sighed again, shaking her head. She could not
do it. Not here. It would be downright cruel of her to dash all his hopes in
front of these theatregoers. ‘I…I just want to talk to you, that is all.
Alone.’
    She needed to tell him it was over in a private place, where
his grief would not expose him to any loss of dignity. And if that meant
breaking her pact with Lord Ledbury, to see him only where he could watch over
them, then so be it. She owed Harry that much.
    ‘I don’t suppose…’ She caught her lower lip between her teeth
as a plan began to take shape in her mind.