“You might as well order the sun not to streak across the sky.”
Fish walked out and left Libby alone with her morbid rumination.
It had been incredibly difficult to greet Lord Roland and his daughter, but she could have managed it without much effort if Luke hadn’t been standing at Penny’s side, looking very much as if he belonged in that very spot and nowhere else.
Fish was correct that Libby would vanish until his interest waned. If he was off courting an heiress, what was it to Libby?
But she wasn’t leaving London just because Luke was fascinated. She was also leaving because she was smitten to a dangerous degree. If she’d continued to dally with him, she was terribly afraid that, for once, she would have misbehaved in a manner she’d regret, and she absolutely refused to have him break her heart.
Since their catastrophic meeting out in the driveway, she hadn’t seen him again, but she kept pondering their next encounter. What would he say? How would she reply?
He’d be determined to explain himself, but she’d rather jump off a cliff than listen to any of his excuses. He’d proved himself a liar and a libertine, which placed him in a wretched pot with every despicable cad of her acquaintance, and she was inordinately crushed by the discovery.
It didn’t matter how Fish nagged, didn’t matter how much Simon wanted to gamble. It didn’t even matter that she would give up the opportunity to befriend Lord Roland. They weren’t staying and that was that!
The door opened, and she glanced over, expecting it to be Fish, having forgotten something, or Simon obeying her summons. It was neither of them though, and when she realized the identity of her visitor, she was so incensed she was amazed she didn’t explode into tiny pieces.
“Get out of here! Right now!”
“No,” Luke said. “I thought we should talk.”
“There isn’t a single topic we need to discuss, Lord Barrett.” She imbued the word lord with a hefty amount of venom.
The brazen oaf shut the door and spun the key, then he stuck it in his pocket so she couldn’t escape until he deigned to release her.
“Are you insane?” she hissed. “You can’t be in here with me! We most especially can’t be locked in! Have you any notion of the trouble we’ll stir if we’re caught?”
“No one saw me,” he ludicrously stated.
“You can’t be sure of that.”
She marched over and yanked on the knob, hoping against hope that the key hadn’t worked, but she was trapped with him.
Fish had stripped her out of her traveling costume and removed her corset, so she was attired in her chemise and petticoat, a robe over the top. It was the second time he’d observed her in such a scandalous condition, and she wouldn’t faint merely because he’d barged in when she wasn’t dressed. But without corset and gown, she’d shed some of the armor required to keep him at bay.
She whipped around and said, “Give me the key.”
“No. Now listen . . .”
“Listen to you? Are you deranged?”
“Yes, I very much believe I might be, but you have driven me to this ledge of lunacy.”
“Your fiancée is downstairs!”
“She’s not my fiancée yet,” he had the audacity to claim.
“That’s your defense? You haven’t proposed yet, so it’s all right for you to be in my bedchamber?”
He grinned. “I continue to stumble on you without your clothes, and I’m taking it as a positive sign.”
“What is there about any of this you deem to be positive?”
“I have previously suggested this solution, but you’ve chided me for it, and I’m suggesting it again. We should have an affair.”
Of all the comments he could have voiced, it was the one most guaranteed to fuel her rage.
“We are in your betrothed’s home and you have the gall to proposition me?”
“If I decide to wed Penny, which I definitely haven’t, I won’t be married for ages. There’s no reason we can’t pursue an amour.”
“There’s every reason!” she irately said.
“Name one.”
“I would never hurt Lady Penny in the way you’re requesting. You don’t seem to care about how she would view a liaison between us, but I certainly do.”
“I don’t intend to tell her about it.”
“Of course you don’t. You’ll simply skulk around behind her back. Perhaps bad luck would strike, and you would plant a babe in my womb just before your wedding. Wouldn’t that be a lovely gift for your bride as you begin your life together?”
“What would you advise then? For the next two weeks, will we ignore each other?”
“It’s my goal for this evening, but as of tomorrow, I will no longer have to fret about you.”
“Really? Why is that?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Leaving for where?”
“That, Lord Barrett, is none of your business.”
“You’re not leaving.” He scoffed as if the notion was ridiculous.
“You are not my husband or my father, so you possess no authority to boss me.”
“I suppose you think you’ll vanish on me, and when I finally return to London, you’ll be gone.”
“You’re about to become engaged!”
“And I told you the wedding is months away—if at all!”
She felt as if she was speaking in a foreign language he didn’t comprehend. How could they assess the quagmire so differently? It made her realize that they hadn’t been as intimately attuned as she’d assumed.
She stormed away from the door. The manor was packed with guests, and any of them could walk by and hear them arguing. She would not humiliate herself by having people discover she had a man in her room.
He didn’t have the grace to slink out like the cur he was. He followed her into the bedchamber. She closed the door, isolating them further, but hopefully, tamping down any sounds that might waft into the hall.
She was about to scold him but, as if she were invisible, he sauntered over to a chair in the corner and plopped down. There was a decanter of wine on a table next to him, and he poured himself a glass.
She stomped over and snatched it away. “You’re not loafing and
