Read An Escapade and an Engagement for Free Online

also accounted for the way he was darting her assessing
glances now, as though she was an unexploded bomb that might go off in any
direction should he make an unwise move.
    Not that he would have succeeded in making her cry if he had shouted at her. She had learned almost from the
cradle the knack of keeping her emotions well controlled. It had started with
her determination never to let her father reduce her to tears. She’d refused to
give him the satisfaction!
    By the time they drove through the gates of the park she had
managed to compose her features into the carefully blank mask behind which she
always sheltered when on the receiving end of a dressing-down.
    Though there was nothing Lord Ledbury could say to her that she
had not heard a thousand times before—from someone whose opinion actually
mattered to her.
    ‘You are angry with me, Lady Jayne,’ he observed
dispassionately. ‘It appears that since we parted you have decided to regard me
as your enemy.’
    ‘How can I be anything other than angry,’ she retorted, ‘when
you think you have me at your mercy?’
    He sighed. Her emphasis on that word think confirmed his belief that she was no docile creature to meekly
reform after a stern talking-to.
    ‘Even those who have been at war a long time can become allies
against a common foe. Or act within agreed limits under a flag of truce.’
    ‘I…I don’t understand.’ But she was intrigued. What could he
possibly be thinking to make a remark like that?
    ‘Perhaps we have more in common than you might think. For
example, you told me that you were sent to London to contract a marriage, in
spite of your preferences. Well, I too have been set upon a path I would rather
not have trod. And before you rehash that argument about men only ever doing
what they want, no matter who they tread down in the process,’ he put in
quickly, when she drew a breath to give him the benefit of her opinion, ‘I would
advise you not to judge us all by the conduct of the males to whom you are
closely related. For I assume it is their conduct which has formed your opinion
of my sex?’
    ‘I… Well, um, yes.’
    It had started with her father. He had made no secret of the
fact that he resented her for being the only child of his to survive past
infancy, when what he wanted from his wife was an heir. If she ever
inadvertently crossed his path, the way he would look at her—his eyes so icy,
his lips flattening in displeasure—would chill her to the marrow. It meant that
she had spent most of her childhood roaming wild about their estate in an effort
to keep well out of his way. There had been one groom who had taken it upon
himself to teach her to ride, but apart from him she had never met a man who’d
shown her the slightest bit of concern.
    Until she’d gone to live with her grandfather. And his horror
on discovering that she could barely read or write, let alone know the first
thing about mixing in polite society, had resulted in him going to the other
extreme. He had hired a succession of tutors and governesses who invariably gave
up on her, telling him that she was impossible.
    The real problem was that no matter how hard she had tried to
absorb all the information they’d attempted to cram into her brain, there had
always been more. So that no matter how hard she’d worked, she had never managed
to measure up. It had felt as though not a single day passed without her being
sent to her grandfather’s study to hear how far she fell short of the standards
he expected from a young lady living beneath his roof.
    * * *
    The set of her lips as she went into a brown study put
him in mind of exactly the way he felt about his own brothers. Mortimer, his
father’s pride and joy, had gambled and whored his way through life, only to end
up breaking his neck by falling from his horse dead drunk. And Charlie, his
mother’s precious baby, had been packed off to France, where he was living
exactly as he pleased—no doubt at enormous