Page 50 of Notorious

“So you were not expecting it?”

He gazed into space and shook his head slowly. “No.”

“But—but you accepted his apology?” Good God, please say yes.

His eyes flickered back to hers, and he smiled—this time with genuine amusement. “Yes, Drusilla, I accepted his apology.”

She could listen to him say her name all day—and all night—long. She kept that mortifying observation to herself.

“Was his apology, er, unusual behavior?”

“Very—especially in a place as public as White’s. Which was packed to the teeth, by the way. As if the ton was expecting something like this to happen,” he added musingly.

Her eyes darted to his pantaloons, and quickly back up. “Are you going to tell your mother?”

“I’ve already paid a call on my mother and stepfather.”

“Lady Exley must have been frantic.”

“She’d calmed down by the time I saw her.” He saw Drusilla’s questioning look. “I sent a message to Exley House last night, directly from White’s. I did not wish her to worry herself into a state all night. A woman in her condition needs rest—sleep.”

But he hadn’t bothered to send a message here—to Drusilla. Did he not think she would worry? Probably not after their argument over Theo. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, but he must have noticed something in her face.

“I would have sent you a message as well, but I assumed you would already be catching up on much-needed sleep.”

“Yes, that is true. I fell asleep almost before my head hit my pillow,” she lied, forcing down the hurt. “I’m sure your mother was relieved.”

“Ha! She had forgotten her relief by this morning and commenced chastising me the moment I entered her chambers.” He shrugged and then took a drink of wine before turning his attention—and his gorgeous green eyes—back to her. “But none of that matters. What matters is that it is over. There is nothing we can do about the incident, but at least people are not laboring under the misapprehension that I, er, defiled you in the Abingdon conservatory.”

Drusilla dropped her gaze, her face heating at the word and what it meant—not that she had any personal knowledge of defiling. Even now that they were legally married, Drusilla remained perfectly . . . well, filed.

“We shall attend the requisite functions and face down the curious stares, and, I daresay, your reputation will be as pristine as ever by the end of the Season.”

She looked up at his words, a dreadful thought hurtling out of the recesses of her mind. He was staring at her, his smile gone, his gaze speculative. He’d stopped speaking, but the words were pouring off him all the same.

“We needn’t have married, after all, then.” Her voice was thin, reedy. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Visel’s apology would have cleared either of us of any inappropriate behavior. After a brief period of awkwardness, we could have gone on as we were.”

He shrugged, the gesture smacking of fatalism. “There is no point in dwelling on such things, no matter how much either of us might regret it. We must do our best to move away from all this—to put it out of our minds.”

His cool, uncaring stare acted like fuel on a fire and her mouth opened and words started to flow.

“I do hope you are able to bear up under your regret.”

He frowned, and she could tell he was struggling to keep his temper.

Good. She was glad—childishly so, she knew—that she wasn’t the only one who was angry.

“You know that is not what I meant, Drusilla.”

As it happened, she did believe he’d not meant to be insulting, but the knowledge—the certainty and the guilt—that he must bitterly regret the marriage he’d been shoehorned into—burned into her like the most caustic acid, dissolving her tenuous restraint in the process. She was being unfair, but she could not bring herself to be otherwise.

He met her hostile stare with a weary smile. “I know things might appear rather dire now, but our lives will not always be so dramatic or hectic. Things will settle, and we will get back to the way we were.”

“I’m sure you will.”

He put down his half-finished glass, his gaze sharpening. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean exactly what I said. I doubt you will let marriage change your life, will you?”