“He does,” she agreed miserably. “He had insisted he considered his actions a duty on account of his friendship with Shelbourne. And I believed him until…”
Lady Jo leaned forward in her chair. “Until? Do not leave us in suspense.”
“Until he kissed me,” she admitted, her cheeks going hotter as she made the revelation. Not because she was embarrassed, but because she could not help but to recall Huntingdon’s kisses. “I had arranged to meet the Marquess of Dorset at the Duke and Duchess of Bainbridge’s ball, and Huntingdon somehow discovered and met me in the library himself. I had arranged for Lady Clementine Hammond to walk in upon us and solidify my ruination. I scarcely had enough time to send Huntingdon out the door before Lady Clementine arrived.”
“If she had caught you and Huntingdon in an embrace, all London would have known in the outside of ten minutes,” Callie said.
“That is why I chose her.” Helena smiled sadly. “Imagine her dismay when she walked in to find me alone, a volume of Lord Byron in hand.”
“Everyone knows she thrives on scandal,” Jo agreed. “I overheard her bragging about how many society marriages she is responsible for. Fifteen at last count. But let us return to the more salient information you have just provided. Huntingdon kissed you?”
“He did,” she admitted, glancing down at her abandoned teacup as she struggled to decide how much she wished to reveal to her friends.
She trusted them implicitly, of course. But how could one properly say that a gentleman had pinned her to the floor of the lady’s withdrawing room and slid his hand inside her drawers while ravishing her mouth with kisses?
“He has agreed to ruin you himself?” Callie guessed. “I confess, I am surprised. Huntingdon is such a cold man. Proper to a fault, as well.”
Ah, there was the crux of the matter.
Huntingdon was proper. He cared a great deal about his reputation, his honor, and his familial duty. If she attempted to get him to ruin her, she would effectively set fire to everything he held dear. Including his betrothal to Lady Beatrice.
She could never do that. Could she?
She inhaled slowly. “He has not agreed to ruin me himself. I wish he had. Instead, he has apologized for his actions quite profusely. He told his betrothed about the kisses, though he did not reveal I was the one he kissed. He told me his actions were loathsome and unworthy. He insisted they would never be repeated. And yet they were.”
Jo’s dark eyebrows rose. “He has kissed you on two separate occasions, all while claiming he wants to protect your honor and keep you from causing a scandal? It sounds to me as if Lord Huntingdon protests too much.”
Helena nodded, still at sixes and sevens over what had happened between them. “And that is why I am considering doing something drastic.”
“How drastic?” Callie queried.
“I can refuse the match with Lord Hamish, but my father has vowed he will turn me out if I do not marry as it pleases him,” she said slowly. “But causing a scandal and making certain Lord Hamish will no longer want to marry me has proven impossible to achieve thus far because of Huntingdon. There is only one option remaining. Huntingdon has already compromised me. If I go to my family with this information…”
She allowed her words to trail off. For the thought of what she must do was itself so daring, so damning, she was not prepared to give voice to it. Hungtingdon would be furious with her. So furious she was not certain if he would ever forgive her. Lady Beatrice would possibly end the engagement. But Helena herself would almost certainly be free.
“Your father may demand you marry Huntingdon instead,” Jo pointed out. “Are you prepared for that?”
Hardly.
Yet Helena nodded as if she were. “If I am forced to marry anyone, I would choose him. For years, I have loved him from afar. He has no notion of my feelings for him, and nor does he return them. But I would happily marry him.”
If only she could say the same of Huntingdon. He was attracted to her. He certainly felt the sort of base urges toward her she had read about in Shelbourne’s naughty books. But lust and love were two different beasts entirely, and Helena did not fool herself that Huntingdon could ever love her. Especially if she revealed what had happened between them. It would be a betrayal of the first order.
Huntingdon prized loyalty, duty, honor. He wanted to marry a woman like Lady Beatrice, who would never dream of debasing herself to escape a marriage. A woman who was quiet and poised and ineffably lovely. One who had no doubt never rolled about on the lady’s withdrawing room floor with him.
Yes, there was a definite possibility that in revealing everything to her family, she would suddenly have within her grasp everything she had ever wanted—her freedom and the man she loved. But in so doing, she would make him hate her forever.
“Lord Huntingdon is the man you choose above all others?” Callie asked.
Helena did not hesitate in her response. “Yes.”
He would always be her choice. Even if she had never been his. Much to her shame.
“Then you know what you must do,” Jo added.
“Follow your heart,” Callie prompted.
Before she could say more, a knock at the door heralded the arrival of the biscuits, cakes, and quail eggs. Helena’s heart was thumping as wildly as if she had just escaped a runaway carriage. But her answer and her course were clear and yet murky as mud.
She was going to save herself by ruining the Earl of Huntingdon.
Huntingdon was seated in his study, poring over correspondence from the steward of his Shropshire estate, when the door slammed open. All thoughts of falconry and repairs to the leaking western wing roof vanished as Shelbourne stormed across the Axminster. At his rear, Huntingdon’s butler appeared quite out of sorts. But never mind. Shelbourne was a well-known visitor here.
Even as a sense of alarm swept over him, Huntingdon nodded to his servant, indicating he would not require anything else. He would speak to Lord Shelbourne alone.
“Sid,” he greeted his old chum, rising in proper greeting. “I hardly expected you this morning.”
“I dare say you did not,” bit out his friend, an angry sneer curling his lip as he did not halt his stride. “Nor did you expect this.”
Before he could react, Shelbourne’s fist connected with his jaw with so much force, he bit his own tongue. Pain shot through him as the coppery tang of his own blood blossomed. Bloody damned hell.
Huntingdon rubbed his jaw, eying his friend warily. “What the devil are you about?”
But as he asked the question, suspicion rose. There was only one reason his oldest friend would rage into his study with the fury of an invading enemy army and plant him a facer. And that one reason was tall, blonde, and beautiful.
And perfidious, if what he suspected was true.
“Tell me it is all a vicious falsehood,” Shelbourne spat, looking as if he were a heartbeat from hitting Huntingdon again. “Tell me you are not a villainous, spineless, maggot of a man! A man without any virtue or honor. A man without loyalty. One who would betray his friend’s trust by abusing his innocent sister in cruelest fashion.”
Helena.
She had told her brother.
He had spent every moment since his ignominious display in the lady’s withdrawing room alternating between cursing himself and wishing he could be within that moment all over again. With Helena’s supple curves beneath him. With her lips clinging hungrily to his. With her taste on his tongue and her scent filling his head. With desire coursing through his veins and the hot, sleek flesh of her cunny beneath his fingers.